By Dr. Robert E. Plucker
There are certain mildly humorous jokes about choral
singers. All altos are said to be
disappointed sopranos, but they are sopranos who can read notes. And there is the conductor who always
addresses the men in the choir as "men and tenors". Some people claim that tenors are as haughty
and class-conscious as the sopranos, each of whom thinks she is the prima
diva. Basses are considered to be the
most solid and reliable, the least temperamental, and are the foundation of the
choir. Altos believe themselves to be
under-appreciated. The tenors, because
they are few in number, move to the top of the pecking order.
In the "Church Choir" essay, earlier in
this series, I told how I became a tenor, converting from comfortable bass, in
part because I got paid as a tenor.
After this "conversion" I sang tenor in the Winona Civic
Chorus and landed a leading tenor role in two Gilbert and Sullivan operas
presented there. It was nice to sing
opposite the pretty girls, and I hardly gave a thought to the rest of the men
in the opera chorus. Later still, in
Green Bay, I sang with the Chorale there, and was selected for solo parts now
and then in the major works performed there.
So I learned that it is great to be a tenor; one is always in demand,
and it is possible to build up an ego of noticeable size.
The composers of early Christian chant (plain-song,
Gregorian chant) were aware that the average man's voice is a medium-range
baritone. Not high enough to be a tenor,
and not low enough to be a genuine bass.
Since this early chant is sung by unison men's voices, there was no need
to have the men strain for a high note, nor growl for a low one; everyone could
sing in a relaxed pleasant voice, with the sound greatly enhanced by the size
and resonance of the building. My guess
is that from this pool of baritones there are many men who could, by using just
a bit more energy, sing in the choral tenor range. Operatic tenor is a different thing. The easy way to go, would be to relax and
sing bass, at least on the medium notes, and let the really low notes fade
out. Choral tenors do not usually have
to sing any note higher than G above middle C.
These baritones should be reminded that there are advantages to being a
tenor. In opera, at least, the tenor
nearly always gets the girl.
In my choral music teaching in the public schools I
never had much trouble finding tenors; among these young boys true basses are
scarce. I never taught in a small public
school, so there were plenty of young guys to work with. But ultimately, I got into directing
community choirs myself; and of course I had been directing church choirs since
I was a senior in college, and that meant a relentless search for tenors. Community choirs are not often found as a
completely formed and organized group.
Chances are that there will be a number of sopranos and altos on hand,
who truly enjoy singing major works that are not usually done by church
choirs. With luck, the
director/organizer of the choir will be able to snare some of the husbands of
these ladies, some of whom will be very good.
But chances are also, that they will be the usual baritone
not-quite-bass, and hardly anyone will be willing to admit to being a tenor. This may be because they think, "I might
be the only one." So every possible
means, including money if you have it, may have to be employed to balance the
choir. Of course you ask the ones who
are already in the fold for help. A
brother-in-law, a cousin, a friend, a friend of a friend, all of these personal
connections worked better for me than newspaper or radio advertisements. If the prospective tenor can actually read
notes and has a decent ear, what bliss!
A maneuver that I have used more than once is to sing
the Handel "Messiah" at Christmas time, starting rehearsals early
enough so that there is time to sneak in a short rehearsal of the major work
planned for the spring. Nearly everyone
wants to sing "Messiah", even tenors, and so you get hold of a few in
the fall. If your spring piece is an
absolute winner and you hook the choir on it, including the tenors, you are on
your way. The tenors themselves might
exert themselves to find others of similar voice range.
On one occasion, working with the Stanwood-Camano
Community Choir, we were rehearsing with a group of perhaps thirty-five or
forty people, sopranos, altos and basses.
Not one tenor. I believe the
piece we were working on was the D major Vivaldi "Gloria". The tenor part is extremely important,
especially in the "Et in terra pax" movement, and it was becoming
more and more painful to rehearse without tenors. We worked for a while, until I announced to
the group that we would work for ten more minutes, and if a tenor did not walk in the door by that
time, I would cancel the performance.
Unbelievably, in the next few seconds, a tenor walked in. This boost to the morale of all led to a few
more tenors being found (or drafted) and the performance was saved. This sort of happening can result in tenors
getting an "attitude".
All this
fussing and worrying about finding tenors for amateur choirs irked me. I could not imagine why more baritones such
as I had been all through college, did not convert to tenor, thus becoming the
darlings of all such choirs. I used to
think that one day I would walk into a community choir rehearsal, unannounced,
and reveal that I was a tenor who could read notes and had a decent ear. I would be gracious and modest, asking the
choristers not to genuflect or kiss the hem of my garments. In point of fact, it did not happen that way.
One day I had been whining to Margaret about a lost
opportunity back in 1953 when I had spent a year in Minneapolis as a grad
student. I had looked forward to singing
in the Westminster Presbyterian Church choir, one of the best in town. But my newly-acquired father-in-law pressured
me into taking on a church choir of my own, one that would pay me. Westminster would not have paid me, of
course, but the experience of singing with this superior group would have been
of considerable value to me. Any small
church choir that would hire me, a mere grad student and temporarily in town at
that, would have the usual tenor problems.
I wound up at a small Lutheran church with, yes, the usual tenor
shortage. Margaret listened to my
whining sympathetically, and suggested that I try out for the Seattle Chorale,
which was soon to become an arm of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. She had seen a notice of auditions in the
newspaper.
This struck me as a wonderful notion, and I went to
the auditions thinking it would be easy.
I joined a number of people waiting outside the studio of Dr. Scandrett,
the director, and when my turn came I was surprised that Scandrett remembered
me from years ago when I had been a grad student at the University of
Washington. This gave me more
confidence. But the audition went on,
and it was a tough one. There was simple
sight-reading, there were tests of identifying and singing various odd
intervals, but the hardest was to repeat, vocally, a strange, meandering,
a-tonal tune that Scandrett played on the piano. That was scary. But I passed the audition, and was relieved
when Scandrett said I was "in".
Walking into the first rehearsal, I was beginning to
get the feeling that I would not be anywhere near the hero I had anticipated
being. The first shock was in sheer
numbers. There were some 170 singers
there, and approximately a quarter of them were tenors. Mein Gott!
That would be nearly 40 tenors and probably all of them had the same
inflated feeling of self-importance that I had.
But they all turned out to be nice guys and I quickly became friends
with many of them. Presumably all of
them had passed the same audition I did, so that meant they were rather good
sight-readers and had good ears. Many
had great voices to go along with tat.
Then followed eight glorious years rehearsing and
performing with the Chorale, at least twice a year singing a major work with
the Seattle Symphony. Some of the
highlights of those performances, at least for me, were singing Ravel's
"Daphnis and Chloe" suite, Brahms' "A German Requiem",
Ernest Bloch's "Sacred Service", Howard Hanson's "Lament for
Beowulf", Penderecki's "Agnus Dei" and making a Christmas CD of
fine but unfamiliar music. The Chorale
was expected to be able to sing in English, French, German, Latin, and
Italian. We had special help singing a
short piece in Chinese, and much more help singing a long work in Russian.
So, come on, all you passive baritones, choose
tenor! It's an exciting life!
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