Response to Timothy Fink regarding Gender Gap Shrinking in Voice
2012; Routledge; Volume: 69; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2769-4046
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoIN RESPONSE TO SOME EARLIER OBSERVATIONS I made regarding the changing female voice, Professor Timothy Fink writes the following interesting letter: Several years ago I was the music director for the Elton John musical Aida, and it dawned on me that all the male-female duets were harmonized in 3rds. my when I sang Curly in Oklahoma it was 6ths and 10ths! Gender role shifts in society are reflected in the quantity and quality of the female roles being written and their characterizations. Belting is no longer the old battle axe, but the attractive ingenue. However, these strong female characters have adopted formerly masculine attributes, singing in the same voice they speak in-anything resembling the classical head voice reflects a weaker, old-fashioned character. In fact, the 2002 stage version of Thoroughly Modern Millie makes use of this new reality: the modern Millie belts, while her old fashioned friend, the operetta singer, sings in head voice. It's not just operettas that are out of style, it's the vocalism too. Likewise for men. The old sound of Curly as originally played by Alfred Drake is too butch, too wife beater, and not reflective of the more sensitive modern male ideal. Listening to the 2002 revival of Oklahoma and Hugh Jackman's Curly, you'll hear the same key but a tenor timbre. Alas, baritones and sopranos have all but disappeared from the contemporary MT stage. Because musicals alternate speech and song, believability is improved by the singing voice matching the speaking voice. With gender parity there is a more gender-neutral expectation of sound. Covering for men is forbidden. A natural, speech position larynx, and a bright open, unmanufactured (untrained) sound is the style. The nineteenth century technology, the singer's formant, has been replaced with the microphone. I've had an interest in the science of voice pedagogy since my days at the University of Colorado when I was introduced to the writings of Berton Coffin (and his vowel chart) and studied with Barbara Doscher. Now as a university professor, I direct, conduct, and teach voice for both music theater and opera. So I spent my sabbatical in 08 reading everything I could on and going to various university music theater studios and New York to witness the evolving pedagogy in action. I noticed a number of teachers vocalizing the female students on semi-closed vowels (/o/, /oe/, /e/) but with a heavier vocal adjustment (more thyroarytenoid). The resulting sound is different from the open, wide-mouthed, toothy, 2nd harmonic belting, but still relates to it in timbre because it doesn't flip into head voice. The singer experiences a resonance shift, often calling it mixed; the listener hears it as the belt (or pop) continuing on up the scale. You [Dr. Titze] seemed to suggest in an earlier piece in JOS that belting is only 2nd harmonic quality. I'm not sure the MT voice teachers would agree. Years ago Dr. John Large published a piece about where male operatic singers experience the cover happening. They experienced it earlier with the closed vowels /i/ and /u/ (around C^sub 4^), later with /o/ and /e/ (around E^sub 4^), and lastly with /a/ at around F*^sub 4^ or G^sub 4^). My female MT belters experience the same thing, but about a third or fourth higher or more. Couldn't this be a similar acoustical shift? You [Prof. Fink] give important observations and descriptions of what is happening in a shrinking vocal gender gap. …
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