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- Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
- Path: sparky!uunet!noc.near.net!news.cs.brandeis.edu!max!jacob
- From: jacob@max.cc.brandeis.edu ( )
- Subject: male alti, counter-tenors, castrati, and so on
- Message-ID: <1992Dec23.012124.25043@news.cs.brandeis.edu>
- Sender: news@news.cs.brandeis.edu (USENET News System)
- Organization: Brandeis University Math Department
- Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 01:21:24 GMT
- Lines: 27
-
- 1. is a so called "male alto" the same thing as a "countertenor"?
- if not, what is the difference?
- (there was a post from russia about 3 months ago mentioning
- an exceptional "male alto" from over there -- i was wondering,
- a bit late maybe,if it's the same thing as a counter-tenor)
-
- 2. is falsetto always used to some extent by countertenors?
- (as opposed to only using full head voice, which if i'm not
- mistaken rarelly goes as high)
-
- 3. how (to what purpose?) did castrati start to become "available"
- in italy around 1600? clearly the answer cannot be "to sing opera"
- as opera was just begining. for example the role of nero in monteverdi's
- "incoronazione," one of the first operas, was to be sung by a castrato
- (unless it was sung by a woman which i believe was not the case,) so
- for monteverdi to write such a part, singers able to sing that part must
- have been *already* available. on the other hand neither madrigals nor
- masses require castrati, so?
-
- (note that the "production" of castrati was *always* a fairly illegal
- affair in all of italy -- read the excerpt from burney in strunk's book --
- in other words opera 1600-1800 rested on a very illegal activity,
- punishable by death in some cases, a bit like if the major popular
- music stars of this era were, say, all children who'd been kidnapped and
- sold in slavely)
-
-
-