The Voice: Its Production, Care and Preservation

by Frank E. Miller

Tenors are lyric and dramatic, a distinction that explains itself. The lyric tenor is light and flexible. The dramatic tenor is a ringing, vibrant voice, especially on the high notes. Probably it is the splendor of these high notes that is responsible for the theory that they are produced by carrying the chest register upward. In point of fact, a genuine chest register rarely is employed by tenors. Their easiest, their natural singing range, is in the middle register, and the tones which in the notation of the tenor compass are assigned to the chest register, really are sung in what is more like a downward extension

of the middle register. Just as the larynx of the soprano is not as large as that of the alto or contralto and is not capable of the open adjustment required by the chest register, so the larynx of the tenor is smaller than that of bass or baritone and, like the soprano, less capable of the open adjustment for chest register. The result is the same—a perceptible weakness on the lower notes, the great qualities of the voice lying in the middle and head registers, especially in the latter.

The lyric tenor is a lighter voice than the dramatic for the same reason that florid soprano is lighter than dramatic soprano. The cup space within the larynx is, comparatively speaking, small. Thus, while the head tones of the dramatic tenor are powerful and vibrant, the lyric tenor's head tones are lighter and more graceful, but are lacking in brilliant, resonant dramatic quality. A tenor like Jean de Reszke, who sang baritone for several years, must have a larynx somewhat larger than that of a genuine dramatic tenor, and his production of robust tenor notes in the head register must have required a most artistic series of adjustments of his voice tract throughout this entire register. But while it cannot be denied that Jean de Reszke was an artist in the truest sense of the term, it also cannot

be denied that his high voice just lacked the true vibrant tenor quality and had a suspicion of baritone in it.

Some tenors who cannot sing unusually high in head register are able to acquire what is known as falsetto, and even tenors who are not obliged to resort to falsetto sometimes employ it for special effects. Falsetto is produced by carrying the adjustment for head register to its extreme limit. Practically it is the artificial reproduction within the throat of an adult of the small larynx before the period of mutation. In singing falsetto the false vocal cords drop down to within a quarter of an inch of the true cords and even closer, reducing the cup space in the larynx to its dimensions before mutation. To secure a good quality of tone in falsetto the singer must have complete control of the cup space—be able to diminish it not only by allowing the false cords to drop down almost upon the vocal cords, but also by contracting it laterally. If he can do this, he can produce some genuinely artistic effects in falsetto. When a tenor cannot control the muscles that contract the cup space, his falsetto will be of a poor quality—a mere "dodge" to add some higher notes to those of his legitimate vocal range.

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