RSCM Report, Part Five: Alto, Tenor, or Bass?

As mentioned elsewhere, I was granted the grace of singing alto this year at the Course. Of the three parts that I can sing, it is my favorite, but there are usually plenty of women to cover the part, for adult women are not permitted to sing soprano at the Course; alto is their only option. Unless one is in a Choir of Men and Boys, one rarely encounters male altos, and they are generally considered to be eccentric relics.

There is some truth to this; most of the male altos I have known are indeed eccentric, comparable to their equivalents in the string orchestra, the violists. Female altos tend to be the most intelligent of adult female singers; that does not seem to apply to the men.

Perhaps with practice I could easily switch among the three parts, or have a beautiful seamless voice from top to bottom. Without regular practice, or no more than I get, my register shift is problematic, and more so in "alto mode" than when I am singing tenor or bass.

The alto sound spins in the forehead. At its best, it feels free, high, and pure, almost disembodied -- though in fact it is as firmly rooted in posture, inside space, and breath as tenor or bass. At the end of the Dyson Magnificat in D, the Amen is on the fourth-line high D, fortissimo. To sing it is, for a moment, to have the voice of an angel.

The challenges of alto: maintaining tall vocal space and support whatever the vowels, consonants, and dynamics; keeping the tone rich and warm, not fussy and contrived, which is especially challenging around the register shift; blending seamlessly into chest register at the bottom of the range. This last is more difficult when I am vocally tired; the notes become unreliable, crack, or fail to sound. As mentioned the other day, I inflicted quite a bit of this on the trebles in front of me at Sunday evensong, along with many faulty pitches on the higher notes.

The bass sound feels as if it is in the chest, earthy, masculine, and strong. To sing a bass line with energy is to be, for a moment, a mighty hero of old, striding across the pages of history. As a bass, one feels the responsibility of supporting the others, making it possible for them to soar. Men who sing bass tend to be solid, responsible citizens, the sort of men upon whom a community is built.

The challenges of bass: bringing some of the bright clarity of head voice all the way down to the bottom of the bass staff and below to keep the sound from becoming dull and "woofy"; staying agile and flexible, because bass lines frequently leap from low to high, and the nature of the bass vocal production tends toward less flexibility than the others; lightening up on the sound as it rises above the staff and incorporating falsetto and head register for the high notes; secure intonation, for if the bass fails in this, the choir fails.

Tenor lives at the junction of the two worlds, spirit and earth. For me, most of the tenor tessiatura is right at the register shift. The challenge is to cross back and forth with effortless fluency, and when I am vocally in "tenor mode," I can do this pretty well -- the very same part of the voice where I struggled this week while in "alto mode." Singing tenor demands a flamboyance which I lack. The tenor is always the star and routinely gets the girl; the bass occasionally gets the girl; the alto, never.

Lest I feel any pride in the ability to sing three voice parts, there are at least five of the young men, plus Lindsey Gray, the director of the RSCM who was visiting the Course for a couple of days, who could do the same, and probably better than I can.

I was disappointed with my singing this year. I peaked at the Wednesday Evensong, giving it my all for the Howells, the Vierne Kyrie (both of which I have mentioned repeatedly, for they were the finest music of the week), and the Dyson in D. Thursday showed the results, and I never really recovered. By the Sunday services, I was not singing very well; my tone was flat and lifeless, with lots of cracking on low notes, and insecure pitches on high notes, with most of the high D's and above entirely lacking.

Next year, if I am permitted to sing alto, I hope to do better. To that end, I have switched my voice for daily Matins at the church to alto. This, plus about fifteen minutes of warmup every morning, are about all of the singing I do outside of the leadership of choir rehearsals and Sunday services. If I sing in the alto range every day at Matins and use it more in choral rehearsals, that may be enough to make me more dependable next summer. At this writing, I have been home for over a week and can already see some progress, after a rocky start.

But when next summer arrives, I will probably have to sing bass.