Is countertenor technique different from standard classical vocal technique? Should a countertenor train like a male or female voice, and what pedagogical approach and conceptual model best elicits a healthy countertenor sound? Is a countertenor merely the intersection of gender and tessitura, or is there something specific to the technical approach and musical context that limits the definition?

 

Dr. Peter Hennen’s article, Nature’s Way: Vocal Production in Social Context (which we published in February) raises the interesting idea that gender association with specific sung pitch ranges is both an historically recent construct and a pervasive normative lens through which we subconsciously find our place in the musical world. In other words, there are basic assumptions that we have inherited with respect to what an appropriate singing range for a man is. These assumptions are so entrenched that we could live our entire lives influenced by them without ever challenging their validity.

 

So widespread are these cultural norms that many of the best and brightest pedagogues and researchers of vocal science similarly do not question the basic assumption that men should sing lower and women higher tessiture. The manner in which a classically trained tenor, baritone, or bass phonates in the alto range is often presented as the only manner in which such pitches could be sung. Countertenors (especially the good ones) have been, for a long time, treated as abnormal, unique, and otherwise ‘outside’ mainstream thought on vocal pedagogy. It is easier to defend a system that ought to preclude the existence of countertenors by labeling them as somehow ‘special.’ I would strongly argue, however, that while certain men may be more or less genetically predisposed to succeed as a countertenor, the technique is fundamentally based on sound concepts that can be learned and adopted by most any male singer.

 

Let us broaden the question to “what is a soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone, or bass?” Or to put it another way, what defines someone as a “classical singer,” and how do they pick which part to sing? Certainly there is a physiological component. The inherent mass, dimensions, and flexibility of the vocal folds and their surrounding musculature do have a direct impact on a singer’s range and tessitura. However, a singer’s choice to train in a specific manner is perhaps paramount to their inherent physiology. The same human voice could be trained to sing in a variety of styles (Broadway belt, pop, thrash metal, choral, operatic, tuvan overtone throat singing, Bulgarian folk belt, etc…). We are not inherently made to sing in one way, but each style does require a slightly different physical approach. Excellence in one style often requires closing off other physiological possibilities. The fact that one woman may sing as a soprano and another as a mezzo is based primarily on genetics, but assumes that the singer has chosen to train for a style of singing that makes such distinctions.