Talk:Countertenor

Welcome to the Countertenor discussion page
Constructive suggestions and discussion welcome! The contents of this page are for ongoing discussions. For past discussions please see the archives.

Question
Shouldn't there be some other examples from popular music? I immediately think of Claudio Sanchez (Coheed and Cambria), and especially Anthony Green from Circa Survive, who I believe can sing entirely in the contralto range without use of falsetto. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.184.26.180 (talk) 03:35, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No188.238.15.147 (talk) 03:27, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Only in classical?
I am skeptical about the unsourced opinion expressed in the list section of this article that the term "countertenor" is only applied within the context of classical music. In fact, this assertion is simply false. Klaus Nomi, for example, is generally considered a countertenor, and while he has recorded quirky interpretations of some opera music, he is generally known for recording popular music. Similarly, I don't know how you'd classify the voice of Antony Hegarty except as a countertenor.

While I suspect a sort of genre bigotry applies to this unsourced opinion statement, which appears to have been used to chop out singers of popular music from this article, I might simply be ignorant as to some particular quirk of definition that makes this interpretation correct. Therefore, I am posting this to the discussion page before making an edit.

In any case, if this assertion, which amounts to nothing more than an unsupported opinion at the moment, is to remain, it should be sourced in some way. Even if sourced, it still leaves the question of what term is to be used for people with the vocal range of Klaus Nomi, Antony Hegarty, and similar singers. Further, one wonders whether the definition of "countertenor" is a particular vocal range, or a genre identification.

muldrake (talk) 20:57, 20 January 2009 (EST)


 * To answer your question, a countertenor is neither a vocal range or genre identification but a voice type. The term countertenor is a classical music term and really shouldn't be used elsewhere as there are certain assumptions inherent in the terms use and definition that would make it falsely translated to other genres. For confirmation see, F. Hodgson: ‘The Countertenor’ (1965), P. Giles: The History and Technique of the Counter-Tenor (1995), and J.B. Steane's "Countertenor" article in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992). As for people like Klaus Nomi, I would assume that music reviewers in newspapers may have used the term in a somewhat non-standard way as their really is no equivalent term in popular music for men who sing primarily in falsetto. Such artists, however, have not been included in scholarly discussions and major publications on the term countertenor. Their inclusion is certainly not found among musicologists and other academic writers to my knowledge.Nrswanson (talk) 02:13, 21 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I have just removed Michael Jackson from the list, using the "classical" criterion. I imagine therefore that Raine Maida and Greg Pritchard should "go" as well. Opinions, please.voxclamans (talk) 09:40, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * How a countertenor can be a voice type and not a role? I know for sure many countertenors are Low baritones, even basses, ), using light head voice (or reinforced falsetto) or vocal fold dampening, to reach their highest notes, some are "Male Altos" (contraltino) just men with thinner folds than the high tenors, singing in light mixed voice (full voice with no dampened vibrating tract in folds) in the alto range, but not soprano-mezzo range, usually. I read, though, about the term sopranist, that it actually refers to a men having natural soprano range so a castrati or one with endocrinal problems (no offence intended), thus it would be correct to say a countertenor or "falsettist" sings as sopranist, not "is" a sopranist. If this distinction doesn't apply to the term countertenor, then we can say countertenor is not a a voice type, but many voice type, as "voice type" describes the calibre and length/thickness of vocal folds, not your range.

Antome — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.15.225.191 (talk) 23:32, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry, you're wrong. Roles are written with a prefered type in mind, but you won't find "Countertenor, King of Naples" anywhere! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.9.39.250 (talk) 09:22, 17 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I've sung CT with Clint vander Linden, who only denies his sopranist title because there's no demand for it. He trained when young. The physiological guff is just pure ignorance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.9.39.250 (talk) 22:46, 16 October 2021 (UTC)


 * I think this "countertenors are only classical singers" is absurd, snobbish nonsense. Jimmy Somerville is a perfect example of a counter-tenor, a man known for singing in a falsetto range. The definition is about the vocal range, not the style of music being sung. Tenors can sing pop, jazz or classical - why can't counter-tenors?Gymnophoria (talk) 12:03, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * What about Philip Bailey (Earth, Wind, & Fire)? LizFL (talk) 05:36, 10 January 2012 (UTC)


 * Could the interpretation have changed with time? If so,this should be documented in the history section. ie I have access to a Will Oakland 78 from about 1910, and it clearly states that he is a countertenner. I am prepared to photograph/link this as verification that the producers of that record clearly felt he was a countertenner. 82.47.136.229 (talk) 12:25, 24 November 2011 (UTC)


 * It's developed, because church CT was adopted by gospel, and is now quite widely used in acappella, the singers being highly developed to work without support. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.9.39.250 (talk) 09:22, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Here's the obvious question: was Michael Jackson a countertenor, or not? He hits a D5 six times in Beat It (30 million+ copies sold). That is technically above the normal tenor range. Hard to call that "falsetto". It's a pretty heavy mix. One internet post suggests he's not a countertenor but a "first tenor", meaning he hits a lot of high notes in full voice:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100121235629AAtyDg0


 * So I would say countertenor implies a dark opera sound,

while first tenor is bright pop. Otherwise Michael Jackson would be THE countertenor.


 * Hitting a top note is not a true test of the voice: you have to sing a line in full voice to qualify. However, examining his Munich performance on Youtube, Michael's belting has opened his upper esophagus sufficiently to hit a true CT high note, so it would be incorrect to deny him the tone. However, that's a country mile from performance CT, he doesn't qualify as the world's top. A good example in comparison is the third verse of Pentatonics' version of Halleluyah, where their top tenor moves into acappella CT in harmony with their soprano, in a very similar tonal colour, as well.

In 2016, I was called in by London's Southbank (the Royal Festival Hall) to act as stagecraft mentor in the Beyond the Bassline project, intended to reinforce the mens sections of its Voicelab Community Choir. It allowed them to do big vocal pieces cheaply. The project was led by Dom Sitchbury, with Shlomo writing a new compoaition for them. He's a worldchampion beatboxer, close to the Swingles. During the composition, his inspiration died, so I drew on my experience to givehim acounter-image, and investigated some irregularities in one of the tenors: asking him to sing as he did in the bathroom, a glorious countertenor rang out! He'd never heard of it, so guess who got the lead? This is first-hand testimony that CT is NOT limited to baroque. Please get rid of the pretentiousness, the acappella world has moved on from the Renaissance. Yes, Renaissance is a major domain, but things have moved on, and citing books from 1965 as authorities is just ridiculous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.9.39.250 (talk) 22:08, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Listen and compare / Broken link
I removed the section Listen and compare because it referred to the broken link http://harmony.oakweb.ca/sampler/waschinski_vologeso5.mp3. Without this link the paragraph had nothing to add. Bennor (talk) 10:10, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Notable twentieth/twenty-first century countertenors removed
I removed the section Notable twentieth/twenty-first century countertenors per discussion at WikiProject Opera. These lists add nothing to the reader's understanding of the term, and it fact, are confusing and misleading e.g. the continuous addition of Michael Jackson. I replaced it it with a See also section with a link to Category:Countertenors Voceditenore (talk) 19:14, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Contratenor redirects here?
If a Contralto is a range below Alto, then shouldn't a Contratenor be a range below Tenor? If that is so, it should not redirect here, as Countertenor is a range ABOVE tenor, not below. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Darktangent (talk • contribs) 01:58, 2 October 2010 (UTC)


 * You're confusing Countertenor and Contratenor. Can whoever's running the page start getting rid of these nonsenses, please? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.9.39.250 (talk) 21:56, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Some remarks about repertoire and famous arias
The section “Repertoire” appears meaningless: a proper operatic repertoire for countertenor has existed but for the last sixty years. As far as the previous period is concerned, countertenors may perform any kinds of parts originally written for women and castrati, but one cannot properly describe them as a countertenor repertoire. After saying that “most of the repertoire that is sung by a countertenor are those written for castrati. Some of the most notable include:”, the section lists, without any apparent criterion (why Eustazio and not Ariodante, for instance?), a series of roles some of which were not actually written for castrati, such as, for instance: Dido and Aeneas’ones, Cherubino, Prince Orlofsky, Nicklausse, besides Oberon, which is undoubtedly a real countertenor role. The list of famous arias reported at the foot of the article seems to be even more senseless: why exactly those arias and not any other ones of the huge number that might as well be cited? I suggest therefore that both sections referred to above should be effaced.--Jeanambr (talk) 23:04, 27 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Having tried to do an edit on this section, I am very glad to find your remarks, since I think you're absolutely right. To be anything like exhaustive, this section would need to be pages long, and there would be endless disagreements between contributors as what should be included. In my opinion, these sections should be deleted. voxclamans (talk) 16:42, 22 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I have also stumbled across the list of "Operatic Roles", especially because i have been missing Apollo/Death in Venice, which had been mentioned earlier on the page. I would agree to delete the "famous arias" section, because i cannot see the added value of that list.
 * However, i do not agree that the list of "operatic roles" should also be removed. Instead, i would like to propose referring to the reception of these roles/works in music literature, and taking the existence/abundance of such references as a criterion to include (or not) any roles/works in the list.
 * --Wolfbjoe (talk) 11:23, 8 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Since I found it too hard for me to define the criterion proposed by Wolfbjoe, I have removed the section "Famous arias" and selected a proper countertenor repertoire (that is a list of parts originally created by or conceived for countertenors).--Jeanambr (talk) 14:56, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

What clef is normally used today for countertenor parts?
Purcell normally used the alto clef for this (which would make the range figure look like ), but that's historical. The same octave-down treble clef as used for tenors would make sense (, as used for the tenor-falsettist policeman in Shostakovich's The Nose), as would standard treble clef for sopranists, but annoyingly I cannot find a source saying this. Regardless, the bass clef in the present picture seems quite unlikely. Double sharp (talk) 07:40, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 * It depends. Many countertenor parts are just mezzosoprano/alto parts therefore the standard treble clef is used (example J. S. Bach, Agnus Dei, Mass in B minor (BWV 232) . However if the part is in it´s main parts just a tenor part with some extra high notes, the octave-down treble clef is used (example Olim lacus colueram, Orff, Carmina Burana). As you can think it is also a matter of readability.--Giftzwerg 88 (talk) 16:09, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

BTW the range of a countertenor in alto clef would be  and in ordinary treble clef
 * Well I suppose standard treble clef would make more sense then, since most of the standard repertoire would indeed be those historical mezzo/alto parts. So I suppose we could use that in the range picture, and note that octave-down treble clef could also be used in cases that are basically tenor parts that go so high as to force the use of falsetto. (BTW, I had the alto-clef image right the first time: the middle line is middle C.) Double sharp (talk) 03:03, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Voice change and comparison to female voice
nothing is mentioned about voice change in puberty. it's obvious that kids have similar voice whether they are boys or girls, but in puberty male voice drops. it's also obvious that males that end up having a high countertenor voice have had just a slight voice change in puberty. For example Justin Bieber sounded like a girl when he was 14 (in songs such as "Baby" and "One Time") but not anymore because of puberty. Chris Colfer somehow avoided voice change and equals mezzosoprano. this should be explained in the article and having this explanation does not paint countertenors as such freaks after all although countertenor voice is rare. in the article it should be mentioned that the most common or typical countertenor voice is actually slightly lower than contralto (a half step lower). For example Ronnie James Dio had a slightly lower voice than Cher (contralto). Cher has a slightly brighter and lighter voice and she can make A4 and higher notes ring better whereas Dio doesn't have as much of the bright ringing quality that females such as Cher typically have. The voices are eerily similar nevermind Dio's rasp, but Cher's is a half step higher. --93.106.179.195 (talk) 10:19, 28 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually countertenors often have a baritone chest register, which is hardly a slight voice change. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 14:58, 21 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I was guided in puberty by Brenda, Sir Geraint Evans' lady wife, and passed teaching on to two colleagues in the wreckage of Alleyn's School Choir: one, David Roblou, went on to become "the world's top baroque voice coach of his generation", per Catherine Bott. It had enjoyed a thriving relationship with Benjamin Britten until 1955, when a safeguarding issue arose regarding the 11 year old David Hemmings in the première run of The Turn of the Screw. As a result, the music teacher was under a cloud, not helped by his traditionalist approach making him refuse to countenance early rock: to this I'd add some transvestite influences trying to blend the School's Shakespearean traditions (female roles being played by boys, part of the School's origins) with Gilbert and Sullivan... The School had a tradition of one one-week run a term, with the School taking one on, the Pupils' Company The Bear Pit one, and the Music Department one. The Bear Pit was a sizeable crossover with the National Youth Theatre at that time, as the School had started the movement in 1955. However, as I say, with only the wreckage of a Choir, the annual operetta became impossible.
 * Brenda's guidance to me was that register is mostly dependant on resonance, and that my voice would be my choice. After experimenting, I not only took the lot, but learned how to move between registers, making me instantly recognisable because I shift. My tessitura is bass baritone, but my tenor's been picked by Ben Parry in a crowd of Europe's best acappella singers, and I've sung with Clint van der Linden in CT: I only have the lower half, he has the lot.
 * There is huge confusion between whistle tones, falsetto, head voice, and harmonic tones, and all of these are different. Let me start with the latter: any plucked string has several harmonics in it, which sound if the string is stopped at certain points: the halfway point is used for an octave, the one-third for a fifth, a fact used by harp players to get an enharmonic tune. The voice does the same, and that's most clearly seen in Ari Kaplan's Youtube teaching on bottom bass training. Whistle tones are the same, in female voices, but are not applicable to men. The true sung tones run from projected head voice, through head, neck, upper chest, lower chest, torso, legs and projected legs. These are the resonant areas I use for each, corresponding to top soprano, low soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, bottom bass, although there is overlap. If I'm singing tenor, I won't warm up my thorax or legs. Falsetto is a forced head voice, using overpressure in the same way a penny-whistle player gets his upper register. Let me repeat: none of these are the same. I know what theoreticians say, let a performers say.
 * Although Alfred Deller was the first of the modern CTs, he had very little influence on the modern school, because he was too recherché performing: iirc, the most he did were one or two masterclasses. David Munrow inspired my generation of Early Music performers in the early 1970s, we were left to fend for ourselves, self-taught: there was a very influential pub session in Southwark Market. If I'd give any credit, it's to Joel Cohen's Boston Camerata. What was significant was the HIP movement, which rejected the modern composers, in favour of true research. We were fortunate to have recordings of the last Vatican castrato, Mustafa, and one or two of his peers, indicating that the first wave of early instruments originating in Germany in the 1930s were at best an approximation based on modern practice, and extensive analysis of surviving originals gave us better copies. This then informed voice (and information about the vocal villainies of the 18th Century), often moving us away from Cathedral Choral towards a more humane sound. A major instance of this was the input of Dame Emma Kirkby and Catherine Bott in the upper voice, eliminating the previously insistent colloratura wobble: this equally informed the men. If you look at copies of Early Music from the day, you'll see a copious crossover from vernacular styles, too, which started with Jeremy Barlow's reprint of Playford's Dancing Master, and was then pursued in the same dynamic in work around Gay's The Beggar's Opera and West Gallery hymnody: I'm one of Maddy Prior's backing singers working in this in her Carnival Band format. Mozart's accessible precisely because he only had basic singers available to him.
 * Technically, to access the very peak of my head resonance, I open my gullet very wide indeed, to stop any temptation to drop into head voice tenor, and maximize the acoustic straight from my vocal cords. This is partly conditioned by attempting to keep as much of my treble as possible. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.9.39.250 (talk) 22:23, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

high head voice
What's that? There certainly isn't an entry in Wikipedia for it. Would that be somewhere in the citation?
 * I sent it to Head_voice
 * Kortoso (talk) 11:51, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Potential edit warring on the voice types articles
See Talk:Bass_(voice_type). Kuulopuhe (talk) 13:34, 30 January 2024 (UTC)