The Voice

We quote below from the excellent resource Physics in Speech:

One important categorization that can be applied to the sounds singers make relates to the register or the "voice" that is used. Singers refer to these registers according to the part of the body in which the sound most generally resonates, and which have correspondingly different tonal qualities. There are widely differing opinions and theories about what a register is, how they are produced and how many there are.

References:

• Voice registers from which some information has been taken
• Of vocal registers from which some information has been taken

Voice may also be characterised in terms of range and quality, particularly as regards power, timbre, suitability for different roles in opera or operetta, etc.

References:

• 'The high C' from which the table above has been taken. An excellent survey of unusual voices with recordings
• Vocal ranges
• Voice Definitions and Ranges in Early Music

Additional References:

• Anatomy for Singers
• Anatomy and Physiology of Voice Production: Highlights
• Voice Project
• Overview of Voice Disorders

Words & Meaning

Spoken language has features that, through the quality or character of the voice, can convey emotional or intentional cues distinct from the lexical and grammatical aspects of language. Prosodic elements are usually considered to include variations in the pitch, amplitude, and tempo of the speech. Prosodic features include raising the pitch of the voice to express surprise, signal uncertainty, or designate a question; lowering the pitch of the voice to stress significant words or convey seriousness of purpose; increasing the amplitude to signal anger; decreasing the amplitude to suggest intimacy; increasing the tempo to convey excitement; or decreasing the tempo to imply lethargy or depression, etc. Indeed prosody is often called the 'music' of speech.

Between 1915 and 1920 the American poet Conrad Aitken (1889-1973) composed a unified sequence of poems that is regarded as the major work of his early career. These long pieces, which he called "symphonies," strive to achieve the contrapuntal effects of music by juxtaposing patterns of narrative repetition and variation. In the 1930s Aiken published another major sequence of music-based poems which he called "preludes".

Reference:

• Conrad Aitken - Introduction

Music too has ways of representing mood and the successful matching of text to musical line relies to some degree on a matching of cues. One important detail is matching the rhythm of the music to the meter of the text. We have already seen how some terms have found their way from poetry into music theory - anacrusis and syncopation, for example.

The stresses in the musical line, identified by the placement of barlines, might be expected to match the stresses in the text, called verbal accents. So the phrase "We must speak" might be spoken in three different ways, with the stress on 'We', on 'must' or on 'speak'. By placing the stressed word on the first beat of the bar, that is after a barline '|', the different stress patterns can be made clear. So

Ex. 1: | We must speak
Ex. 2: We | must speak
Ex. 3: We must | speak

Poetry, when set to song, is particularly sensitive to how the music incorporates the metre of the words although it would be wrong to assume that the metre of the poem has to impose itself on the rhythm of the melodic line. Indeed, as the article A mangled chime: the accidental death of the opera libretto in Civil War England by Andrew Pinnock and Bruce Wood illustrates, it was likely to have been the introduction of a French taste for triple-time dance music into the English musical consciousness that saw a move away from settings wedded to an English poetic preference for duple metre. Consider, for example, the duple metre of "When I | am laid | in earth" and the wonderful three-in-a-bar setting by Henry Purcell in Dido and Aeneas - known as Dido's Lament. Those seeking to set poetry to music are well advised to look at some of the finest composers of English song including Henry Lawes, Henry Purcell or more recently, Benjamin Britten or, in the field of popular music, the American song-writers Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Ira and George Gershwin. The musical line should point to, even accentuate, the meaning behind the words and should not obscure it.

The problem with the meaning of words and the structure of the music associated with them, comes to the fore when translating opera, oratorio or song libretti from one language to another. Invariably, the musical line cannot be changed, particularly in a work as complicated as a large opera. The translator has to find new language that 'both' fits the meaning and, to a large extent, the rhythmic structure of the original text and therefore of the unchangeable musical line. For this reason, translations of opera libretti are rarely 'literal'.

References:

Tonal Languages and Music

The article entitled Tone (linguistics) has some interesting things to say about the relationship between pitch in language and pitch in music.

Words & Syncopation

Verbal accent can also be 'mirrored' in a musical line by placing important words over extended notes which may or may not lie on the strong beats in a bar. If these notes start on beats that, because of the barline structure, are 'weak', the rhythmic effect is called a 'syncopation'. Syncopation can be found in non-vocal music too, where the accents in one line do not correspond to the pattern that in another line matches that identified by the placement of the bar lines. For more detail go to lesson 20

Words & Phrasing

We met earlier, in lesson 21, the concept of 'phrase' and 'phrasing' in music, where the music line is broken up into shorter sections that encompass a single idea. Text too, can be structured in the same way - maybe through the individual lines of a poem, or by using commas or other punctuation signs. The way the tension in a musical line relaxes at cadences, or the way the musical flow is stopped or paused at the end of a section - these are both examples of how music can complement the text it accompanies. The effect can be be explicit, in the vocal line itself, or may be implicit in the way the composer alternates accompanied vocal line with purely instrumental passages. Sometimes, one has to draw back from the detail of individual notes on a single vocal line to see how the architecture of the whole score projects the 'meaning' within the text.

Scoring for Voices

The aim of any composer of vocal music should be to make the music as easy for the singers to read as possible. For example, each vocal line in a vocal score should be written on a separate line and if voices divide they should also be printed on separate lines for greater clarity. It is difficult enough to have to read both music and words at the same time without having extraneous notes from another musical line on the same stave.

During the twentieth century, a 'convention' was adopted to make vocal music much clearer than it had been only a hundred years or so earlier. For example, the breaking up of the musical line so that single unbeamed notes lie above each syllable in the text made the music much more difficult to read. Today, the musical line follows the standard 'conventions' we discussed earlier. Polysyllabic words will be hyphenated and spread out below the musical line to show how each syllable matches the note or notes above. Where two or more notes are sung during a single syllable, known a melisma, the notes may be marked with a 'slur' and a matching horizontal line shown extending from the right of the text lying below the group. A melismatic text setting has several (sometimes many) notes per syllable of text.

Wordless Singing

Wordless singing is a term that covers various song forms from a wide range of cultures. The simplest form of 'wordless singing' is that associated with those who sing a song but don't know the words. Where the singer's mouth is closed and the tone is small, it is called 'humming'. The effect is used in the Humming Chorus from Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly. Forms where the mouth is open, and that use various syllables, vowels or consonants, include 'vocalise' (or 'vocalize'), vocable, niggun (or nigun) (Hasidic or Chassidic chant), vuelie (Sami story-telling songs that can include passages of wordless singing), and similar wordless-chanting of the North American Indian and certain African cultures, often associated with 'shamanism'. Finally there is a long tradition of singing that uses 'nonsense' words, among which 'scat singing' and 'mouth music' are the best known.

A Canadian filmmaker, John Bertram, has enquired whether there is a generic term for singing that does not use words, as such.

Of course, the general term 'singing' means 'to use the voice for musical purposes'. Since singing without words is still singing, words like 'avocal', 'nonvocal' or 'unvocal', seem to be inappropriate. 'Speechless', which generally implies silence, seems no better. One could create a word that describes onomatopoeically the sound being used, for example, la-la-ing or ooo-ing, but these would not meet the need for a general term covering all possibilities. John Bertram had enquired of other musical collegues whether they could make any suggestions and we summarise and comment upon those below. We have also added other 'used terms' for the many forms of wordless singing.

References: