Kings of the High Cs

Today an operatic tenor who does not have a ringing, full voiced “top” is likely to find his career limited to minor roles in lesser opera houses. The high C sung full voiced from the chest is a phenomenon that dates only from the first third of the 19th Century. Until the time of Donizetti and Bellini, a light, agile voice, was the ideal for tenors. Today, we would call that kind of singer a tenore di grazia, and it is no longer considered ideal, at least in the operas of Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, and their successors.

Before about 1835, the legacy of the castrati was a light, agile, but technically accomplished singing style. One of the finest singers of this type was the French tenor Adolphe Nourrit, a cultured man as well as a fine tenor who created some of the most brilliant tenor roles of Rossini and Meyerbeer. At the Paris Opera, he was the king of tenors, the favorite of Rossini himself. The fine French tenor Giovanni David, the creator of the role of Rodrigo in Rossini’s Otello in 1816, is said to have begun experimenting with pushing the “chest voice” above the tenor’s “break” (where the chest voice begins to yield to the head voice, or falsetto) at high G.

But the real change occurred in 1837, when the tenor Gilbert-Louis Duprez, newly returned to Paris from a triumphant stay in Italy, stunned the audience at the Paris Opéra, with a series of chest-voice top Cs in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell. The style of agile, light-voiced tenors like Nourrit was eclipsed virtually overnight, seemingly for good. Thereafter the tenor who could not manage an interpolated high C in the aria Di quella pira in Verdi’s Il trovatore (which is not in the score) was liable to find himself hooted off the stage, especially in Italy. Heroic, dramatic tenors such as Caruso and Gigli became the leading stars of the operatic stage throughout much of the 20th Century.

We have seen the rebirth of the Rossini tenor repertoire recently, with the appearance of such fine singers as Juan Diego Florez, Lawrence Brownlee, and others. While they sing full-voiced throughout their range, the head voice plays a role in the astounding agility with which these singers execute Rossini’s extremely difficult music for the tenor voice. As a result we are hearing some of the finest performances of Rossini’s music today since the music was first performed almost 200 years ago.

Sipes and the Artful Fugue

Erica Ann Sipes is a talented pianist and cellist living and working in Blacksburg, Virginia. Her blog always provides interesting insights on music performance. Her recent post, "Fugues, Glorious Fugues" manages -- in a few short paragraphs -- to present impressions of this form from the inside as a performer, and on the outside as a casual listener.

Sipes also includes this wonderful video from Lenzorg (and you know how we love fugal videos).



Erica Ann Sipes writes;

I love it when music is magical.
I love it when beauty is combined with order.
I love fugues!

We couldn't agree more.

How to Listen to Classical Music -- w/o baggage

Benjamin F. Carlson continues his excellent series of posts about appreciating classical music. Written in a no-nonsense manner, Carlson's goal is to introduce his fellow twentysomethings to the genre, in part by stripping away all of the perceptions about classical music that just get in the way.

How to Listen to Classical Music, and Enjoy It makes a number of good points, but there's one that really gets to the heart of what classical music on WTJU is all about (and something we think about all the time).

Carlson writes:

One of the first challenges is muzak. Stores play treacly strings as background music for shoppers. Many people have been led to associate the soft bowing of Mozart symphonies with soporific browsing. This is the antithesis of the intended effect. Audience members famously burst into violence at the premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, as they did, in a more deadly way, at Altamont. Indeed, Stravinsky and Mozart are no more background noise than the Rolling Stones—or Django Reinhardt, Lauryn Hill, Animal Collective, or Kanye West. To enjoy any of them, you have to be engaged. 

That's why here at WTJU we often break the unwritten rules of classical programming for the radio. We'll play solo vocal works, complete multi-movement works, contemporary compositions, choral works, medieval and renaissance music, complete operas, and more -- because this is what classical music's all about.

No, some if it won't be appropriate for the dentist's waiting room, but that's not the point. There's more to ice cream than vanilla (or even chocolate). And there's more to classical music than Easy Listening.

Rock on, Mr. Carlson!