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
CHAPTER 2 - The Ancient World to the Middle Ages
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
Like the famous tunnel at Colditz which began at the top of a chapel's clock tower, the history of the falsetto voice in Western music begins in the most improbable of places. As a specific, identifiable style of singing, falsetto may have first surfaced in fifteenth-century Europe. But to find out why this happened then and there, we first have to trace a course back many centuries, and many thousands of miles away. We also have to begin with another type of voice altogether.
The Eunuch in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds
The castrato plays a significant role in the early history of falsetto chiefly because wherever the castrato voice has been cultivated, a more general appreciation of high male singing – in all its guises – seems to have been fostered. It can be no coincidence that during the early Renaissance one nation, Spain, almost simultaneously introduced both the castrato and falsetto voices to the rest of Europe. But there is another, more practical reason why one cannot discuss the falsettist without first introducing the castrato. Particularly in the Renaissance church, which appreciated the castrato voice aesthetically but disapproved of it socially, complicit records hid the true nature of the castrati by describing them as falsettists. This was possible because the two shared the same territory, singing the same part at the top of the choral texture.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Supernatural VoiceA History of High Male Singing, pp. 12 - 37Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014