Guide to Choir
Singers
(author unknown)
Soprano Alto
Tenor Bass
In any choir, there are four voice parts: soprano,
alto, tenor, and bass. Each voice part sings in a different range, and each one
has a very different personality. Sometimes these four are divided into first
and second within each part, prompting endless jokes about first and second
basses.
There are also various other parts such as
baritone, countertenor, contra alto, mezzo soprano, etc. These are mostly used
by people who are either soloists, belong to some excessively hot shot classical
a cappella group (this applies especially to countertenors), or are trying to
make excuses for not really fitting into any of the regular voice parts. We will
ignore them for now.
You may ask, "Why should singing different notes
make people act differently?" and indeed this is a mysterious question and has
not been adequately studied, especially since scientists who study musicians
tend to be musicians themselves and have all the peculiar complexes that go with
being tenors, French horn players, timpanists, or whatever. This is beside the
point, however; the fact remains that the four voice parts can be easily
distinguished.
THE SOPRANOS are the ones who sing the highest,
and, because of this, they think they rule the world. They have longer hair,
fancier jewellery, and swishier skirts than anyone else. They consider
themselves insulted if they are not allowed to go at least to a high F in every
movement of any given piece. When they reach the high notes, they hold them for
at least half again as long as the composer and/or conductor requires and then
complain that their throats are killing them and that both the composer and
conductor are sadists.
Sopranos have varied attitudes toward the other
sections of the chorus, though they consider all of them inferior. Altos are to
sopranos rather like second violins to first violins - nice to harmonise with
but not really necessary. All sopranos have a secret feeling that the altos
could drop out and the piece would sound essentially the same, and they don't
understand why anybody would sing in that range in the first place - it's so
boring. Tenors, on the other hand, can be very nice to have around; besides
their flirtation possibilities (it is a well-known fact that sopranos never
flirt with basses), sopranos like to sing duets with tenors because all the
tenors are doing is working very hard to sing in a low-to-medium soprano range,
while the sopranos are up there in their range (the stratosphere) showing off
effortlessly. To sopranos, basses are the scum of the earth. They sing too damn
loudly, are useless to tune to because they're down in that low, low range, and
there has to be something wrong with anyone who sings in the F clef. Although
while they swoon while the tenors sing, they still end up going home with the
basses.
THE ALTOS are the salt of the earth - in their
opinion, at least. Altos are unassuming people who would wear jeans to concerts
if they were allowed to. Altos are in a unique position in the chorus in that
they are unable to complain about having to sing either very high or very low,
and they know that all the other sections think their parts are pitifully easy.
But the altos know otherwise. They know that while the sopranos are screeching
away on a high A, they are being forced to sing elaborate passages full of
sharps and flats and tricks of rhythm, and nobody is noticing because the
sopranos are singing too loudly (and the basses usually are, too).
Altos get a deep, secret pleasure out of
conspiring together to tune the sopranos flat. Altos have an innate distrust of
tenors, because the tenors sing in almost the same range and think they sound
better. Altos like the basses and enjoy singing duets with them - the basses
just sound like a rumble anyway, and it's the only time the altos can really be
heard.
Altos' other complaint is that there are always
too many of them and so they never get to sing really loudly.
THE TENORS are spoiled. That's all there is to it.
For one thing, there are never enough of them, and choir directors would rather
sell their souls than let a half decent tenor quit, while they're always ready
to unload a few altos at half price. And then, for some reason, the few tenors
there are always really good - it's one of those annoying facts of life. So it's
no wonder that tenors always get swollen heads - after all, who else can make
sopranos swoon?
The one thing that can make tenors insecure is the
accusation (usually by the basses) that anyone singing that high couldn't
possibly be a real man.
In their usual perverse fashion, the tenors never
acknowledge this but just complain louder about the composer being a sadist and
making them sing so damn high. Tenors have a love-hate relationship with the
conductor, too, because the conductor is always telling them to sing louder
because there are so few of them. No conductor in recorded history has ever
asked for less tenor in a forte passage.
Tenors feel threatened in some way by all the
other sections - the sopranos because they can hit those incredibly high notes;
the altos because they have no trouble singing the notes the tenors kill
themselves for; and the basses because, although they can't sing anything above
an E, they sing it loudly enough to drown out the tenors. Of course, the tenors
would rather die than admit any of this.
It is a little-known fact that tenors move their
eyebrows more than anyone else while singing.
THE BASSES sing the lowest part. This basically
explains everything. They are stolid, dependable people and have more facial
hair than anybody else. The basses feel perpetually unappreciated, but they have
a deep conviction that they are actually the most important part (a view
endorsed by musicologists but certainly not by sopranos or tenors), despite the
fact that they have the most boring part and often sing the same note (or in
endless fifths) for an entire page. They compensate for this by singing as
loudly as they can get away with - most basses are tuba players at heart.
Basses are the only section that can regularly
complain about how low their part is, and they make horrible faces when trying
to hit very low notes.
Basses are charitable people, but their charity
does not extend so far as tenors, whom they consider effete poseurs. Basses hate
tuning with the tenors more than almost anything else. Basses like altos -
except when they have duets and the altos get the good part. As for the
sopranos, they are simply in an alternate universe that the basses don't
understand at all. They can't imagine why anybody would ever want to sing that
high and sound that bad when they make mistakes. When a bass makes a mistake,
the other three parts will cover him, and he can continue on his merry way,
knowing that sometime, somehow, he will end up at the root of the chord.
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page last updated
26 Mrz 2007
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