On 22 Jul 2005 at 10:51, John Howell wrote: > Our (very good) community chorus has > one (count them, ONE!) female tenor, and yes, that is her natural and > healthy voice range. She dresses as the women do, and stands at the > border between the tenors and the altos. No physical distraction, > and nobody who doesn't actually know her would notice that she was > singing with the tenors rather than the altos. If we had an alto > countertenor (which we don't), he would stand in about the same place.
And not all choruses stand in sections. The Oberlin College Choir under Daniel MOe always stood in quartets, SATB, so that everyone had to know their parts and blend with all the others, rather than depending on their section mates to carry them. And even standing in sections, how hard is it to place the women tenors on the boundary between men and women. If you're on risers you probably have lots of leeway for placing the singers where you want and even with no non-standard singers (i.e., no women singing tenor and no men singing alto), you may still have unbalanced numbers of singers in the sections and end up with a couple of women standing in a row that is otherwise all men. I just don't see it as a very important issue in choral singing, as long as the musical results are satisfactory. And believe me, I've seen plenty of male altos who blended better with the women than some of the women blended with each other, especially in the cases of early music repertories where you are sometimes fighting against the modern operatic sound of some of the sopranos. The countertenor soloist here (all on one line; and no, I'm playing neither of the viol parts here): <http://www.dfenton.com/Collegium/HimmelsChor/07- Buxtehude%20Jubilate%20Deo.mp3> would blend much better with the soprano here (all on one line): <http://www.dfenton.com/Collegium/HimmelUndErde/Bernhard- Ach%20Herr,%20strafe%20mich%20nicht.mp3> than he does with this soprano (all on line): <http://www.dfenton.com/Collegium/HimmelsChor/06- Sch%FCtz%20Wohl%20dem,%20der%20nicht%20wandelt%20im%20Rat%20der%20Gott losen.mp3> (sorry about the horrid URLs) Unfortunately, those two singers never got to work together. (and, interestingly enough, the countertenor is a Texan, though he had never sung countertenor before joining our group about 6 months before the Buxtehude was recorded) -- 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
