Blessing and honour glory and power be unto him, be unto him

[annafugazzi]

There's a book I read a long, long time ago, possibly called Bach, Beethoven and the Boys, that states, in its entry on sopranos, that sopranos tend to be the ditziest voices in a choir because the high frequencies they sing addle their brain waves.

I believe this to be true.

Or maybe it's just my choir. OMFG they are dumb. Lovely voices, lovely smiles, nothing between the ears.

OK, that's not really fair. But it is a fact that sopranos tend to look kinda bubble-headed compared to the rest of the choir. I think it's a combination of two things: (1) we're usually the largest section and sing the most noticeable parts, so when we don't know what we're doing, everybody gets to hear it and (2) we usually get the melody - the easiest, loudest part. We don't tend to need to sightread very well; just listen to the piano bang out your notes a few times and you've got it. I, in fact, can hardly sight-read at all, and I've been singing in choirs for omg 27 years. This year I asked to go into second soprano, even though I love singing first, in part because I wanted to hone up my sight-reading skills. Didn't work out - somehow this year we have a severe lack of first sopranos - but I'm hopeful about next year.

Anyway why am I talking about this oh yeah! So my choir is singing The Messiah in a few weeks. It's high. It's challenging. It's tiring. It's also sung by most choir singers every few years, and there are about a billion and one recordings of it out there. So our director thought (foolishly, apparently) that we would be able to concentrate on dynamics and expression and all that instead of note-learning.

Well, the rest of the choir may be able to, but the sopranos apparently require somebody to spoon-feed them every. single. note. We've been at it for five weeks, the director has put midi files with the individual parts on them online, I've been passing around my own recording, and the freaking sopranos are still unable to sing anything but Hallelujah with confidence - and even bloody Hallelujah, one of the most universally recognizable choral pieces in the history of universally recognizable choral pieces, is a little iffy for some of them.

I'm starting to think the high notes theory may have something to it after all.

I'm hosting a sectional practice at my house tomorrow. I may tear my hair out before then. Just getting them together has been an exercise in teeth-gritting patience.

I may have to visualize Volunteers/Ember to Ember Draco in order to get through this at all.

Comments

[scarlet-malfoy.livejournal.com]

I love being a 2nd for those exact reasons, hehe. <3 We tend to get all the pretty, complicated harmonies. I would highly recommend switching for the experience!

[nonajf.livejournal.com]

This made me laugh so much! I hope both your hair and the other sopranos survive the experience.

[sugar-fey.livejournal.com]

That's a very illuminating theory... Back in highschool I sang in the choir and the choirmaster put me and my friend in the first soprano section even though I'm technically a second, because the first sopranos were mainly made up of airheads from the younger grades. Because we were just a small standard school choir the pieces we did were mostly not particularly challenging for us sopranos, except for Christmas time. Suddenly there hymns and carols upon insanely high hymns and carols and suddenly being a soprano wasn't such a breeze anymore.

And yes, my fellow sopranos demonstrated that theory very well indeed.

[jennfic.livejournal.com]

The only time I sang Messiah, I sang alto, for all that I usually sang second in that choir -- the director shuffled parts for that one. There were enough "real" sopranos (as in, actual trained singers!) in the choir that the bubbleheads were able to follow them.

It's not just sopranos who can't find parts, though. I once joined a choir as an alto and the soprano section got better -- I was able to lead the altos well enough that the lyric sop who'd been singing alto so they could find the part could move up to soprano, thus adding a trained voice to that section.

The choir I currently sing with doesn't really deserve the name -- when everyone's there, there are seven of us. :) I swap all around in that one, depending on the ranges. The director prefers my voice in the alto range, but I often get moved up to second as I'm the only alto who can do it. One Christmas Cantata I sang first!

[leochi.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahaha! This made me LOL so much - must be different in the US than in Europe, though. At our choir the tenors are those who have to be spoon fed every note. (To be fair, they're not so many compared to the other groups. ;DDD)

[tree00faery.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Our sopranos are ditzy too. But like you said, they usually get the melody, so it's not a problem most of the time. In my case it's the altos who seem to not have brains (this year, at least). I really don't understand - it's an audition-only choir, and one of the requirements to get in is decent sight-singing. And yet, we can't seem to read music at all. Every time our accompanist stops playing the parts, everyone except for maybe 2 or 3 of us forgets everything we just did. Even more pathetic is that we just started working on The Heavens Are Telling (from The Creation), which we sing every single year - and only about 3 of the altos are new - and we're still screwing up.

Good luck with your section practice. Even if I had enough room, which I don't, I would never have all of the altos over. I think I would kill them.

[anehan]

Heh, just yesterday I went to see/listen The Messiah with my mother. Three hours sitting in wooden church benches. Ouch. It was worth it, though, because the choir was really good (no trouble at all with the high notes). The soloists, not so much, but then again, I don't listen to The Messiah for the soloists.

[rotaryphones.livejournal.com]

And this is why I'm an alto. Lol! Actually, this reminds me of something my high school choir director read to us way back when, which, in my experience, I've found to be mostly true. Heh.

[silentauror.livejournal.com]

See, here's the thing: the vast, vast majority of women are sopranos, and the vast majority of men are baritones. It is my fairly devout belief that most singers (that is to say: people who spend most of the life/career as singers, not people who sing for fun, per se) are rather stupid. I don't know how many times I've been told that I'm "too smart" to be a singer, lol. But it does seem to be a universal truth that sopranos are generally dumb. In my opinion (and experience), tenors are just as stupid; they just speak louder and disguise it better? Lol. The sad irony of this situation (i.e., lots of sopranos and baritones) is that the highest paid singers in the classical world are sopranos and tenors (in that order, unless the tenor is so famous that he actually warrants getting the higher billing). Which is sad because the tenors, being naturally more rare, have a lot less competition. So by time you get to the pro level, any soprano who really makes it as a working singer has got to not only be pretty smart, but extremely polished in every sense to keep up with the vast numbers of her competition. This is a statistic that I once heard rolled out in a masterclass: in Canada, at least, the average professional tenor gets one (job) out of every six auditions he does. The average soprano gets one out of every twenty-four auditions she does. Somehow there are still dumb sopranos working, but there are a lot more dumb tenors. And low basses, who are actually the most in demand right now.

I firmly believe that all sopranos should be forced to sing alto or any inside part for at least two years. As my voice was getting bigger and confusing people more and more, I spent four years trying to be a mezzo, and thus went straight from having sung only first soprano all my life to singing first alto. Total shock. Every time I turned a page I was lost. I couldn't hear my part within the music. It was awful and bad and I hated it... for the first month. And then I loved it and never wanted to go back! I moved down to second alto the next year (replacing the section leader, who had graduated from my college then), changed schools/started a new (music) degree and continued singing second alto. Then my teachers realized that I was nae mezzo and I moved back up to first alto the next year, then second soprano (for the first time, lol), and eventually back to first soprano. I have literally rollerskated my way down and back up through the female sections of a choir! :P And what's more, spent lots of time singing all of them! These days, I don't do much choral singing because my voice is so big now that I really have to compromise it to sing chorally well (and while I love singing chorally... it hurts after awhile!), but when I do, my choice is second soprano for sure. You still get the high notes on occasion, but you get to sing inside parts, too. It's really quite great. :)

That was really long. Hehe, my rambly time of night, sorry! :D

[piratesmile331.livejournal.com]

The Messiah is TOUGH, but oh so very worth it. Good luck with your sopranos! I have faith that you can whip them into shape. And Ember to Ember Draco is a very good role model to follow right now.