Female baritone?

Angilion · 12 Aug 2007 at 03:08

I've come across references to women singing baritone.

I don't mean a deep pitch for pop, blues, soul or stuff like that. I mean a bona fide classical baritone.

I didn't think it was possible, but I've seen a few references and I've heard four women singing as a barbershop quartet and it certainly sounded like one of them was singing baritone. Singing it properly, not forcing her voice well below its natural pitch.

Tenor, I can see that, just. After all, some tenors can push their voice into the contralto range (countertenor), so why not a contralto who can push her voice into the tenor range? The few countertenors I've heard sound like they're pushing their voice out of its true range, though. They're really tenors.

But a genuine baritone?

As an example, this man is a baritone:

Meridian · 12 Aug 2007 at 08:25

It's within the normal range of a mezzo isn't it? I've sure heard a couple of women sing that range in opera.

M

Angilion · 12 Aug 2007 at 11:21

If you find any examples, please let me know. Not knowing for certain is niggling at me.

I don't think it's in the normal range of a mezzo. That would make mezzo almost the entire range of human voice. It's generally seen as being between soprano and contralto, leaning towards soprano. It's short for 'mezzosoprano', after all.

e.g. http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/vocalrg.htm

matthew_o50 · 12 Aug 2007 at 11:31

There is no such thing as a female baritone. The lowest classified female voice is a contralto. The singers you are referring to may sound like baritones due to the tambre (type of sound) they produce when they sing and I dare say they are forcing their voices to sing at that level. In the classical world of music they would be seen as singing falsetto and not be able to project their voice as they would when singing properly and although they may appear to sing in the baritone range technically they wouldn't be classed as such because they aren't singing properly. Similarly there are male tenors that can extend their range to sing like a female alto but again they are not classed as such because this sound is usually forced.

Meridian · 12 Aug 2007 at 12:30

Angilion said:
If you find any examples, please let me know. Not knowing for certain is niggling at me.

I don't think it's in the normal range of a mezzo.

You are right, I was having a moment - it's contraltos I was thinking of. But I can't off-hand remember any serious contralto roles. I would imagine Mozart would have tried a low register for one though - he liked pushing the human voice to the limit.

M

Angilion · 12 Aug 2007 at 23:14

Good call - it was an article on a piece by Mozart that started me off on this. He wrote it for a choir of women, but it contains a baritone part. I can't find the page again, though. There were other plausible interpretations. The baritone might have been sung by a man who wasn't part of the choir, or it might have been transposed up a bit and sung by a contralto. It led me to a page about an orphanage for girls in Italy that was famous (a long time ago) for its choir. Several composers wrote pieces for it, some of which contained baritone parts. The same interpretations apply as for the Mozart piece, of course.

As far as I know, contralto roles are rare at least in part because contraltos are rare. Contralto parts are usually sung by mezzosopranos who can sing into the contralto range.