as a choral director, because you are dealing with singers having to produce specific pitches, you have to base your decision on what notes the singer can produce primarily. you may end up with a tenor, who can't sing above an F, singing bass just because he has a good low range and is limited in the high range. if this tenor, for example, takes voice lessons or, even just by singing more, finds his upper range then, it would be right to be flexible enough to suggest he change gradually to singing tenor. there is also the danger that this same singer may stay stuck in bass by singing bass. however, unless he is going to go through the process of changing (either with a teacher or some 'sing with the cd' method) then his only two options are, sadly, sing what you can or don't sing.
in regard to timbre, a group of mostly untrained singers are going to produce a wider variety of timbres than traditional catagories can handle. this variety in timbre is best handled in how you arrange the singers if you are looking for a 'blend' (there was a book by howard swan called something like 'a symposium on choral conducting' that dealt with that subject).
mike
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