Vocalist.org archive


From:  "Tako Oda" <toda@m...>
"Tako Oda" <toda@m...>
Date:  Mon Apr 23, 2001  5:37 pm
Subject:  Re: Who are hautes contre???


chenweijie81@y... wrote:
chenweijie81@y... wrote:
> if haute contre have such a high and light chest voice,does that
> affect the volume of the sound in their chest voice???

Generally the voice is smaller, but that goes for the highest
coloraturas too. But there is another reason the sound is softer in
general. The haute contre is bridging to a higher register that has a
higher inherent range than the chest voice, which means A440 will be
softer in the upper voice than it would be in chest. There is a lot of
finessing that must occur to switch from a G4 in chest to a A4 in what
many would call a supported falsetto production. You have to limit
your chest volume to make the break smoother.

> From what u have said,it's as if the haute contre don't
> have to bring his head voice down at all since he himself have such
a
> high chest voice.I wonder if they sounded like real
counter-tenors...

There are still haute contre out there. IMO, the haute contre is
simply on the spectrum of countertenors, just with a higher break.
Most other countertenors use the exact same two main registers but
switch lower. They are often considered tenors, though, since
they use their tenor ranges for the majority of their ranges. There is
a great deal of debate about what is a real countertenor. If you
search our archives, you will find a lot of stuff.

Tako


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