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Women tenors and basses - a brief introduction | |
How were the tenor and bass vocal parts performed at the Pietà in Vivaldi's day? It has usually been assumed that women could not sing low enough, and several alternative theories have been proposed:
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Vivaldi's Women challenge the cultural stereotype which assumes that female voices are naturally high and that it is wrong for them to sing low. To determine your lowest note, hum slowly down the scale until the pitch becomes uncertain – then try one note higher than this. Here are the first two choral phrases of Vivaldi's Laetatus sum, giving the names of four of Vivaldi's singers with whom you might identify. Try to imagine that you entered the Pietà as an illegitimate girl, and are simply known by your first name and your instrument or voice (e.g. Cecilia dal Contralto, Silvia dal Violin); Apollonia was so famous that only her first name was used. As an experiment, try each part in turn: soprano, contralto, tenor and finally bass. Remember that pitch in 18th century Venice was similar to today's (A=440) or a little higher, so there is no need to sing a semitone lower at so-called "baroque pitch" (A=415). Most women can sing the tenor part quite easily, and some can manage the bass except for the low G2; even this is possible for a small number of gifted singers. The bass line was always doubled by continuo instruments, so the low voices are never left exposed. In scores by some of Vivaldi's Pietà contemporaries an alternative bass note is sometimes given an octave higher - the low G2 of the bass part below, for example. |
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Vivaldi's Women Female Vocal Range Survey Our recent survey (sample: 132 women aged 14-80) suggests that about 20% of women are capable of singing tenor, and 2% could sing bass (down to F2 or lower, see below). In current western vocal teaching female voices are usually trained upwards - women's speaking voices are typically just a fifth to an octave higher than mens', but in singing most teachers concentrate on the head register, so that the difference appears much greater (if men developed their countertenor registers the situation would appear very different!). At the high end of the voice we see that 20% of women can sing a high B5 and 2% a top G6 ("in alt"). Vocal range and vocal quality are not the same thing, of course; women who normally sing alto or even soprano may be able to manage the tenor range, whilst others with a more "masculine" sonority may not. |
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The residents of the Pietà in Vivaldi's day Priora Meneghina’s inventory of Maestre e Figlie di Choro dated 24 May 1718 lists 59 musicians, of whom 26 were singers (some of these were also instrumentalists):
This is just one piece of evidence of musical practice at the Pietà. We should remember that the name ("dal Tenor" etc.) specifies only the woman's primary instrument or voice. There were many named sopranos, contraltos, violinists, cellists and organists. Violinists may also have played the viola or viola d'amore, and wind players normally played several instruments. These musicians were nothing if not versatile and could switch voice or instrument as the music demanded. The data has to be interpreted in conjunction with known musical requirements of the time: no woman is named as a trumpeter, and Anna is the only named bass, though Vivaldi's scoring sometimes requires a trumpet or two bass singers, for example, as does that of Porta (1726-37) and Porpora (1742). We believe that the women operated a "shift" system, not all performing at the same time. Little is known of the old Pietà church (the present building dates from 1745, four years after Vivaldi's death); it probably resembled the church of the Ospedaletto, and the galleries would scarcely have accommodated the whole coro at once. |
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case study: Porpora “Magnificat a due cori” (Pietà, 1742) Interestingly, this piece dates from the year of Anna dal Basso's death. Vivaldi had died in 1741, and Porpora was maestro di coro for just one year. This is just one example of "ossia" notes in the bass (shown in red) - |
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As well as Anna dal Basso we know of at least two other Venetian women basses:
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- click here to see an example of a female bass/tenor/contralto trio on YouTube |
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text and musical examples © 2009 Richard Vendome | |