Date sent: Fri, 7 Jan 00 22:16:37 -0000
From: "Nicola E."
To: "VOCALIST" <vocalist>
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

Hi List,

The Brahms Serious Songs thread has inspired some questions and thoughts,
below. However, I'm not referring to Brahms or the Serious Songs in the
following; these are thoughts about music in general....

I would be interested to hear of any music where the composer has
explicitly said they don't mind which type of voice(s) it is sung by.

I'm also interested in the idea that when composers have had particular
performers in mind, perhaps we can't rule out the possibility that
sometimes they might have preferred (or at least been happy with) other
types of voice for the same piece had they been available? I'd love to
go back in time and ask composers whether they really minded who sang
their music, or whether they would have thought "Four times the number of
voice types - that quadruples the performance opportunities for my music!
I'll go for it!" I wonder what the survey statistics would be and how
they would reflect the different historical musical eras.

Personally I don't think we'll be hit by a bolt of lightning if we decide
to use new arrangements/transpositions/other voice-types in composers'
music; in order that more people will be able to perform it; nor do I
think we should feel at all guilty about singing pieces which were
originally written in other keys or for other voice types. These pieces
will still get plenty of performances in their original formats, and
there's no reason why we shouldn't maintain an awareness of what the
composer's original material was, as well as performing it in new ways.

Nicola