The Voice: Its Production, Care and PreservationMiller, Frank E. (Frank Ebenezer)
Philosophy
The Voice: Its Production, Care and Preservation
Miller, Frank E. (Frank Ebenezer)
Singing -- Instruction and study; Voice -- Care and hygiene
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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