Beyond my pay-grade!
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Interestingly, Russell Oberlin always insisted he was a counter-tenor and not a male alto. His naturally very high tenor voice just went up and up without an apparent break:
I note the announcer mentions the French Haute Contre tradition. I don't think Russell O. is one of those, really. His voice might not to be everyone's taste, but he was a phenomenon. (I was lucky enough to hear him live back in the 60s)Comment
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Yes, I remember Oberlin. His voice was interesting, but unfortunately his poor tuning always put me off.
Some of that YouTube recital fares well though. Michael Tippett did a disservice by attaching the term countertenor to Alfred Deller. One appreciates why he did it and it seemed logical at the time, but it was misconceived. We are stuck with it now.
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Sorry - can you help: so what IS / are the distinctions between a male alto and .........well, any of the other derivations?Comment
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I think there are a lot of unanswered questions about early voices, but the essential difference is quite simple. The male, cathedral alto as we now think of it is a voice produced by falsetto and the earlier countertenors and haute-contres were basically 'chest' voices (Jérôme de Lalande in 1787 says that the Italian tenore voice 'c'est la hautre-contre françoise'). That does not necessarily mean that English coutertenors and French hautre-contres sang in the same way. I was reading a thread on Facebook the other day where someone had asked whether it was true that French singers literally screamed on stage. The consensus was 'no', but there is evidence that they sang loudly, unlike the Italians. As with any other voice, an early countertenor needs distinguishing from a contratenor part - the two are not necessarily the same thing, especially in music that pre-dates the advent of choirs. For more information, I heartily recommend Simon Ravens's book The Supernatural Voice . Also, one of the chapters in Andrew Parrott's Composer's Intentions is a reprint of an article in Early Music that comes to similar conclusions - and he follows it with a chapter on the hautre-contre.Originally posted by DracoM View PostLast edited by Vox Humana; 03-04-20, 18:25.Comment
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MANY thx. Lots to ponder.Comment
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Je croise entendre encore [Bizet Les pecheure de perles] is a good example of an aria written for a French tenor. Not sure who is singing in this clip...it sounds like two performers of the same piece. The second has a slightly more 'fragile' voice'. The tessitura of the whole piece is high, but the extra-high notes, with a fermata, are sung in mezza voce. Imagine what a Pavarotti-type voice might do to it.
Are we getting off-topic?
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