Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface: A Declaration of Disinterest
- Acknowledgements
- CHAPTER 1 The Discovery of Alfred Deller
- EXTEMPORE 1 An Inartistic Trick: Physiology and Terminology
- CHAPTER 2 The Ancient World to the Middle Ages
- EXTEMPORE 2 A Famine in Tenors: The Historically Developing Human Larynx
- CHAPTER 3 Renaissance Europe
- EXTEMPORE 3 Are We Too Loud? The Impact of Volume on Singing Styles
- CHAPTER 4 Late Medieval and Renaissance England
- EXTEMPORE 4 Reserved Spaniards: Cultural Stereotypes and the High Male Voice
- CHAPTER 5 Baroque Europe
- EXTEMPORE 5 Into Man's Estate: Changing Boys' Voices and Nascent Falsettists
- CHAPTER 6 Baroque England
- EXTEMPORE 6 A Musicological Red Herring: The Etymology of the Counter-Tenor
- CHAPTER 7 The Nineteenth Century
- EXTEMPORE 7 The Bearded Lady: Gender Identity and Falsetto
- CHAPTER 8 The Early Twentieth Century
- EXTEMPORE 8 The Angel's Voice: Falsetto in Popular Music
- CHAPTER 9 The Modern Counter-Tenor
- Bibliography
- Index
EXTEMPORE 1 - An Inartistic Trick: Physiology and Terminology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface: A Declaration of Disinterest
- Acknowledgements
- CHAPTER 1 The Discovery of Alfred Deller
- EXTEMPORE 1 An Inartistic Trick: Physiology and Terminology
- CHAPTER 2 The Ancient World to the Middle Ages
- EXTEMPORE 2 A Famine in Tenors: The Historically Developing Human Larynx
- CHAPTER 3 Renaissance Europe
- EXTEMPORE 3 Are We Too Loud? The Impact of Volume on Singing Styles
- CHAPTER 4 Late Medieval and Renaissance England
- EXTEMPORE 4 Reserved Spaniards: Cultural Stereotypes and the High Male Voice
- CHAPTER 5 Baroque Europe
- EXTEMPORE 5 Into Man's Estate: Changing Boys' Voices and Nascent Falsettists
- CHAPTER 6 Baroque England
- EXTEMPORE 6 A Musicological Red Herring: The Etymology of the Counter-Tenor
- CHAPTER 7 The Nineteenth Century
- EXTEMPORE 7 The Bearded Lady: Gender Identity and Falsetto
- CHAPTER 8 The Early Twentieth Century
- EXTEMPORE 8 The Angel's Voice: Falsetto in Popular Music
- CHAPTER 9 The Modern Counter-Tenor
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
As the term implies, falsetto is a false voice. I consider falsetto to be merely an illegitimate way of getting an effect which, at best, is only vulgar; good voices never have occasion to adopt such an inartistic trick.
Sims ReevesI think Sims Reeves was the greatest singer I ever heard, but when he wrote or spoke, like Jean de Reszke, he often attested nonsense.
Charles LunnTo hear the falsetto voice at its most natural, take a seat in the stand of an average sports match on a Saturday afternoon and wait for the home team to score. At that moment, high above the usual throaty cheers, around you in the crowd you will hear some men whooping with delight. What you are hearing may not be singing, nor is it a thing of beauty, but it is falsetto. The irony of this scenario is that even in the most macho and uninhibited of environments can be found a naturally produced voice which, at various times in the last eight hundred years, has been deemed both effeminate and false.
The excited sports fan offers one example of falsetto being used naturally. Perhaps a more telling one, from a singing perspective, is the response many men show if they find themselves alone in a cavernous space. Particularly if the space is dark – a cave, for instance – the temptation will be to probe the acoustic with a loud falsetto hoot.
- Type
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- Information
- The Supernatural VoiceA History of High Male Singing, pp. 6 - 11Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014