In a message dated 10/30/2002 7:21:13 AM Eastern Standard Time,
thomas8@t... writes:
> Someone earlier mentioned Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as a bass-baritone: I
> have never seen him billed as such either.
>
mark,
i think i have seen him billed as a bass-baritone on occasion.
certainly, he most often billed as a baritone. some coffee table book on
opera called him a hybrid of bass-baritone and lyric baritone.
what makes fischer-dieskau a bass-baritone, to me, is how he uses his
upper range. it is significantly lighter than most operatic baritones and,
i believe he does this to access higher notes than he would be capable of if
he sang like other classical singers. in listening to andreas schmidt, a
student of fischer-dieskau, we hear the same approach to the upper range yet,
schmidt is capable of 'leaning' on these notes in a way that fischer-dieskau
is not.
richard cassilly introduced me to the notion that a person's fach is
determined by where their 'climax' notes were. considering that most
professional singers can access more range than is usable and that these
singers should be capable of sustaining a larger tessitura than most amateurs
are capable of, the determining factor then becomes what one can do
exceptionally well and not what one is limited by.
timbre is so easily varied and voices are so different from individual
to individual, i find it absurd to categorize voices by timbre. the
designation of bass, baritone, tenor, etc. is one of range, similar to
violin, viola and cello. within these 'ranges' are a variety of types.
these types can be leggiero to robusto (if we accept this variety within one
catagory, tenor, i feel we must allow for it in all voices).
mike
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