CHAPTER VIII
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.