Frank E. Miller

SUBDIVISIONS OF THE VOICE

It should be remembered that in the old days, from which traditions of phenomenally high voices have come down to us, musical pitch was lower than it is now. In those days a tenor, for example, could carry up his voice in the adjustment for the middle or in phenomenal cases even for the chest register, instead of changing to the head register, more easily than can be done now. In fact, nowadays, when a composer calls for a very high note, it usually is transposed, so that actually the supposedly high C of Di quella pira nearly always is a B flat. Probably there has been no general deterioration in voices, popular opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. Phenomenal voices always have been rare, and doubtless are no rarer now than at any other period. At any time any opera house would have been proud of two such tenors as Caruso and Bonci, or of two such sopranos as Melba and Tetrazzini, while there is no period in which a Sembrich would not have been a rara avis. The artist who, seemingly taught by nature, spontaneously employs the correct registers and sings the most difficult music with ease and accuracy, always has been an unusually gifted person—a vocal phenomenon, in fact.

The preceding chapter gave only the main divisions for male and female voices—alto and soprano for female and baritone and tenor for male. There are subdivisions of these. Contralto is a subdivision of alto, mezzo-soprano of soprano; and soprano itself may be dramatic or florid. Baritone is a division of bass; and tenor is either dramatic or lyric. Even when one of these subdivisions of voice is able to enter the range of another, it cannot do the same things with the same ease as the one which naturally belongs there. An alto of extraordinary range, like Schumann-Heink, may be able to achieve high soprano in the head register. It is a valuable accomplishment, insuring ease in singing of rÔles that lie in the balance between high alto and mezzo-soprano, but it does not make the singer a soprano. A dramatic soprano may be able to sing florid rÔles, but never with the success of the soprano whose natural gifts are of the florid order. A Wagner singer rarely succeeds in the traditional Italian rÔles, nor a singer of these in Wagner rÔles. Lilli Lehmann always insisted that Norma was one of her great rÔles, and craved the opportunity to sing it here. At last the opportunity came, but it is not on record that the public clamored for its repetition or ranked her Casta diva with her singing of Isolde's Liebestod. Melba, one of the most exquisite of florid sopranos, once attempted BrÜnnhilde in Siegfried. One performance, and her good judgment came to her rescue. It is to Sembrich's credit that she always has remained within her genre and for this reason never, so far as I know, has made a failure. The sign-post that stands at the entrance to the path leading to vocal success might read as follows: "Find out what your voice is, and remain strictly within it."

The voice which, because of its great range, best illustrates the three-register division of the vocal scale, is the soprano. The average soprano ranges from

but combining the three types of soprano voices, the soprano compass is as given in the previous chapter, the extremes being, of course, exceptional.

Among types of sopranos, the dramatic averages the greatest compass. The voice is heavier than florid soprano and incapable of being handled with the same agility. But it contains more low notes and almost as many high ones, unless in the latter respect one compares it with florid soprano voices of the phenomenal order. Otherwise, so far as the high notes are concerned, the difference lies in quality rather than in compass. The Inflammatus in Rossini's Stabat Mater, which is written for dramatic soprano, contains the high C, and no one who has heard Nordica sing it need be told of the noble effect a great dramatic soprano can produce with it.

It is possible to sing the three highest notes of the chest register of dramatic soprano with the adjustment for the middle register; and the higher notes of the middle register with the adjustment for the head register. This option is not merely a convenience. Its artistic value is great. In loud phrases those optional notes which naturally lie in the chest register are delivered most effectively in that register; but in piano phrases they are more effective when sung with the adjustment of the middle register. The same thing applies to those optional tones which naturally lie in the middle register. In loud phrases they are sung best in their natural register—the middle; in piano phrases, in the head register. These are two capital illustrations of the value of the overlapping of registers and the necessity of training a voice to be equally at home in both registers on all notes that are optional.

Theoretically, the florid soprano produces the three lowest notes of its range in the chest register; the notes from

in the middle; and the notes above these in the head register. In practice, however, the small larynx and the limited cup space found in florid sopranos make it difficult if not impossible for them to adjust their vocal tracts to the chest register. The problem is met by bringing the head register as far down as possible into the middle; and by singing what theoretically should be chest tones in the middle register. It hardly need be pointed out that the lower notes of florid sopranos are weak. This accounts for it. Florid soprano, the voice of the head register, is a voice of extraordinary agility—the voice of vocal pyrotechnics. To achieve it Nature appears to have found it necessary to sacrifice the heavier middle and chest registers which make for dramatic expression; with dramatic sopranos, on the other hand, to sacrifice the muscular flexibility which makes for agility. Mezzo-soprano is a voice that lies within the compass of dramatic soprano, usually extending neither quite so low nor quite so high, but governed by the same laws.

For altos the ordinary compass is

A low alto or contralto is supposed to go down to the E below; while altos of unusual range go high as

I even have seen the alto compass in notation run up to "high" C; but to control this high range an alto would have to be another Schumann-Heink who has cultivated upper notes in the head register. The tone-quality of some alto voices approaches so nearly that of the male voice, especially in the lowest tones of the chest register, that these altos are known as female baritones. In fact there is no voice in which register affects tone-quality as plainly as in alto. For in alto voices the chest register is apt to give tones that are heavy without corresponding vibrance and sonority, while tones produced in the adjustment of the head register are apt to be too thin. The middle register, however, produces in the alto voice a tone that is rich without being too heavy, so that it avoids undue heaviness on the one hand and on the other a thinness that is in no way comparable with the light tones of soprano, but simply a thin and unsatisfactory alto. Alto tone in the middle register therefore gives the standard tone-quality for alto voice; and when singing in chest or head register, an alto should endeavor to relieve the chest notes of their heaviness and the head notes of their thinness by giving them as much as she can the quality of tones in the middle register. This can be accomplished by bringing head tones down to middle and by carrying the middle register adjustment down into the chest register. But all this is as much a matter of correct ear and trained will power to make the voice reproduce the mental audition as it is of physical adjustment.

The great prizes of the operatic stage and concert hall go to the higher voices—to sopranos, for example, instead of to altos. Yet the proper training of an alto voice is a most difficult matter because, while the chest register is the natural singing register of alto, it produces too "big" a tone—a tone so big as to be heavy and unwieldy. The middle register in alto really is an assumed position, yet it is the register in which the standard alto tone is produced. Teachers who either are ignorant of these facts or disregard them are apt to carry up the cumbersome chest register until it meets the thin head register, producing a voice whose low notes are too heavy and tend toward the uncanny and by no means agreeable female baritone quality, while the higher notes are thin and undecided in character.

The male voice-range is the same as the female, save that it lies an octave lower; its mechanism is the same; and its registers are the result of identical physical functions. Thus, allowing for the octave difference, the tenor voice and the laws that govern it correspond for all practical purposes with soprano.

Tenors are lyric and dramatic, a distinction that explains itself. The lyric tenor is light and flexible. The dramatic tenor is a ringing, vibrant voice, especially on the high notes. Probably it is the splendor of these high notes that is responsible for the theory that they are produced by carrying the chest register upward. In point of fact, a genuine chest register rarely is employed by tenors. Their easiest, their natural singing range, is in the middle register, and the tones which in the notation of the tenor compass are assigned to the chest register, really are sung in what is more like a downward extension of the middle register. Just as the larynx of the soprano is not as large as that of the alto or contralto and is not capable of the open adjustment required by the chest register, so the larynx of the tenor is smaller than that of bass or baritone and, like the soprano, less capable of the open adjustment for chest register. The result is the same—a perceptible weakness on the lower notes, the great qualities of the voice lying in the middle and head registers, especially in the latter.

The lyric tenor is a lighter voice than the dramatic for the same reason that florid soprano is lighter than dramatic soprano. The cup space within the larynx is, comparatively speaking, small. Thus, while the head tones of the dramatic tenor are powerful and vibrant, the lyric tenor's head tones are lighter and more graceful, but are lacking in brilliant, resonant dramatic quality. A tenor like Jean de Reszke, who sang baritone for several years, must have a larynx somewhat larger than that of a genuine dramatic tenor, and his production of robust tenor notes in the head register must have required a most artistic series of adjustments of his voice tract throughout this entire register. But while it cannot be denied that Jean de Reszke was an artist in the truest sense of the term, it also cannot be denied that his high voice just lacked the true vibrant tenor quality and had a suspicion of baritone in it.

Some tenors who cannot sing unusually high in head register are able to acquire what is known as falsetto, and even tenors who are not obliged to resort to falsetto sometimes employ it for special effects. Falsetto is produced by carrying the adjustment for head register to its extreme limit. Practically it is the artificial reproduction within the throat of an adult of the small larynx before the period of mutation. In singing falsetto the false vocal cords drop down to within a quarter of an inch of the true cords and even closer, reducing the cup space in the larynx to its dimensions before mutation. To secure a good quality of tone in falsetto the singer must have complete control of the cup space—be able to diminish it not only by allowing the false cords to drop down almost upon the vocal cords, but also by contracting it laterally. If he can do this, he can produce some genuinely artistic effects in falsetto. When a tenor cannot control the muscles that contract the cup space, his falsetto will be of a poor quality—a mere "dodge" to add some higher notes to those of his legitimate vocal range.

There are singers whose control over the registers is so expert that, when they are called upon to follow a loud, singing, vibrant head tone with a pp effect on the same note, they can accomplish this by imperceptibly changing to falsetto. They can glide from head into falsetto and back again without a break and add the charm of varied tone-color to natural beauty of voice. This is especially true of dramatic tenors. If they can vary the naturally full and sonorous quality of their head tone with an artistic falsetto, they are able to secure many beautiful effects by an interchange of registers. Whenever the high tones of a lyric tenor sound thin, it is because high head tones do not lie naturally within the singer's range and he is obliged to substitute falsetto for them. "Baritone tenors" usually cannot achieve their higher notes in head register and are obliged to adopt falsetto, but as their voices are naturally fuller than those of the lyric tenor their falsetto is more agreeable.

Falsetto is a remnant of the voice before mutation, the male singer who can produce falsetto having such control over the larynx that he can contract the cup space until it reverts to its original boy size. This accounts for the peculiar quality of the male falsetto—its alloy of the feminine. Boys sing soprano or alto; and a man's voice must be naturally high and possess such a genuine tenor quality that nothing can rob it of its true timbre, to be effective in falsetto. This is why the average "baritone tenors"—singers who begin as baritones but whose voices lend themselves to being trained up—rarely are able to penetrate an ensemble with a clear, ringing high note of genuine tenor quality. A good tenor falsetto is in fact a reversion to boy-soprano with, however, the quality of adult high voice predominating to such a degree that it has the tenor timbre; and in proportion as the high notes of the male voice result from artificial training instead of from natural capacity, the boy-soprano timbre will creep in and weaken the tenor quality in falsetto. Some basses and low baritones can be trained to reach the high notes of the male vocal compass in falsetto, but as natural facility to produce these notes is lacking in such voices and their production is due wholly to artifice, the reversion to the boy quality of voice is so complete and it predominates to such a degree that these voices are known as male altos.

Falsetto usually is associated with tenors, but falsetto also can be employed by women, the results, as with men, depending on whether the voice is naturally a high one or not. I repeat that with voices which naturally are high, falsetto is not a "dodge," but a legitimate artistic effect. Furthermore, singers who in addition to control of the regular registers have control of falsetto, frequently find physical relief in passing from head to falsetto and back again.

Basses are of three different kinds. Basso profundo is the lowest bass; basso cantante is a flexible bass usually unable to sing quite as low as basso profundo; baritone is the highest bass—a voice midway between bass and tenor and partaking somewhat of the quality of both. The bass compass parallels that for contralto and alto at an interval of an octave and, in their use of the registers, basses and contraltos and baritones and altos have much in common. As with contralto, the natural singing register of basses is the chest register. The middle register is awkward to establish in bass voices, as the size of the larynx gives a large open cup space which is unsuited to the chest register. Therefore, with basses, when the capacity of the chest register is exhausted, it is best for the production of the notes above to make a complete change of adjustment to head register. Thus in bass the middle register practically is eliminated.

The high bass or baritone compass is from

It was seen that the question of registers with altos and contraltos was a complicated one, and similar complications exist with baritones. Some baritones can employ the middle register with ease, so that like certain contraltos they can sing in three registers—a rather weak chest register, middle and head (or falsetto) registers. The training of baritones is difficult, and should be determined by the tendency of the individual baritone voice—whether it inclines toward bass or toward tenor. For example, Jean de Reszke was at the beginning of his career the victim of faulty voice diagnosis. He was pronounced a baritone and trained for baritone rÔles, with the result that he suffered from an exaggerated condition of fatigue after every appearance. Later the probable tenor quality of his voice was discovered, and when it had been developed along physiological lines best suited to its real quality, undue fatigue after using it ceased.

The division of the vocal scale into registers is not an artifice. It is Nature's method of assisting vocalization, her way of relieving the strain of the voice. A certain portion of the vocal scale lies naturally in the chest register. But if this open adjustment is carried up too far, the tones are strained and eventually ruined. On the other hand if, at the proper point, the singer passes into the middle register, the strain is relieved; and the relief experienced is even greater when passing from middle into head, entirely releasing one set of muscles and calling an entirely new set into play.

The so-called "breaks" in the voice occur at points where one register passes into another; and it should be the aim of proper instruction in voice-culture to eliminate the breaks. They are due to the change in adjustment which each register calls for. The best method of "blending the registers"—of smoothing out the breaks—is to bring a higher register several tones down into the one below and thus bridge over the passage from one adjustment to another. To do this consciously would defeat its aim. It must be done in spontaneous response to the mental conception of the tone or phrase to be emitted. It must become second nature with the singer, a physiological adjustment in answer to a psychical concept—a detail, in fact one of the most important details, in that true physiology of voice-production which also takes psychical conditions into consideration.