On 22 Jul 2005 at 1:42, Neal Schermerhorn wrote: > Phil Daley wrote: > > > It would be discrimination if there are no classical guitarists > auditioned. > > Well, guess what. No parts exist in these ensembles for classical guitar. So > why would they audition classical guitarists? > > My guess is they auditioned him mistakenly thinking he was a tenor. (I never > read the article, BTW, but so what. Feel free to pull the straw man.) > Whatever he auditioned for, they should have realized early on he was not > delivering what they were after. > > > To say he could "play viola" doesn't even deserve a comment. > > Oh, sure it does. Because a countertenor asking to sing a soprano part or > alto part is no different than a guitarist claiming to be able to playa > viola part. "I can read the clef, I can match the tone really closely. Why > not let me?" > > Would YOU allow a classical guitarist to play viola parts in an All-State > orchestra? After all, you'd never hear his unique tone diference in the > amalgamation of all the players.
None of this makes the slightest bit of sense to me. The Texas policy of rejecting a countertenor singing alto (I don't know if he was auditioning as alto or sopranto) makes no sense if the repertory performed would have originally been performed by all men. It would be like auditioning players for an orchestra playing Baroque music and rejecting any harpsichordists to play the continuo part in favor of pianists. Sure, piano is fine if it's all you've got, but if you've got a decent harpsichordists, why not use her? Now, choral music is rather different, and likely the all-state program would include music from various repertories, not just limited to older music. But if there *is* older music that was written for male singers, then it's the *female* altos that are the ones singing the wrong parts, and the Texas rule makes a fetish of this modern performance practice at the expense of incorporating someone singing with the original voice type. So, if you're talking about transcription of a part for a different instrument, it's the normal modern performance practice in many repertories that is the transcription. Last of all, these all-state choirs in my experience tend to have 100s of singers in them. One lone countertenor is not even going to begin to change the overall blend of an alto section with 20-50 members, especially given the wide variety of vocal quality and control among that many *girls* of high school age. But that's a determination best left to the conductor and the audition judges. It shouldn't be made by a flat rule. And I definitely believe that the "no female tenors" rule is more justifiable than the "no countertenors singing alto" rule. The former is, at least, historically appropriate. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
