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 3 - Are We Too Loud? The Impact of Volume on Singing Styles
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
After dinner Grace Moore offered to sing, and we put out our cigarettes […] Now the drawing room at Number Three is large, but not enormous, and we were not quite prepared for what happened. She went to the piano, and began with a bit from ‘Butterfly’ and the first few notes shook the chandeliers, nearly blowing us from our chairs. She has a voice of tremendous volume, but to my mind no very great beauty. We literally vibrated until she adapted her notes to the size of the room.
Sir Henry ChannonWhen Grace Moore, primadonna of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, was heard by the diarist ‘Chips’ Channon at a private party in 1936, she unwittingly provided a pithy example of how modern singing technique and the tastes of previous ages grate. The ‘Number Three’ in question was the London residence of the Duke and Duchess of Kent in Belgrave Square: this ‘not enormous’ drawing room, then, was quite literally the aristocratic salon – albeit in its dying day. Moore had developed her voice to fill the world's largest opera house, and to judge from Channon's description, in this intimate context she appeared as the proverbial elephant dancing on a sixpence. Humour aside, this raises a serious – if basic – question: how loud is loud? And how does volume influence the way in which we sing?
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- Information
- The Supernatural VoiceA History of High Male Singing, pp. 66 - 70Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014