> i am under the impression that mark was refering to the nature
> of the discussion, not countertenors.
I hope that is true. It wouldn't be the first time I was overly
sensitive.
> i am sure that someone who bothers to quote drew minter, as well
> as give the reference for further reading, is not someone who is
> hostile to counter-tenors.
I'd love to believe that, but the last few messages from Mark felt to
me like they were designed to wear down my credibility rather than at
building dialogue and understanding. Let me break it down from my
perspective:
He challenged my assertion that castrati did not often sing choral
alto parts. Actually, what I found problematic was that he inferred
from my post that I was saying there was no such thing as an alto
castrato. Later in that same post I specifically mentioned that some
were altos, but that they weren't the majority source of choral
altos. It felt like he wasn't reading my messages for content, rather
that he was looking for points he could discredit.
Next he called the idea of a 'medium lyric countertenor' ridiculous
and that it smacked of 'ego'. He also said a sub-categorization of
CTs was silly, since there is no such thing as a dramatic or soprano
CT. First off, I myself had already said there weren't enough
dramatic CTs out there to warrant that particular label...again the
sense he didn't read past the first paragraph. Second, there *are*
soprano CTs - it's fine that he didn't know that, but his challenge
seemed more an assertion than an honest question.
The 'fach' talk about CTs was simply exploratory and did not deserve
to be shot down so quickly. Someone had asked me how *would* I
categorize Daniels. As Graham mentioned, CTs aren't currently
included in fach system. But don't we deserve to be categorized to
protect our voices/careers from overly ambitious houses? This topic
was prematurely cut off. What I'd love is to start categorizing
common operatic CT rep that suit various types of CTs. We have "help
me find good rep for a lyric mezzo audition" type threads all the
time. This would be no different.
Finally, there's the "blather" message itself. The Drew Minter quote
was that countertenors were probably nothing like castrati, which is
a statement that would seem in direct contradiction to my recent
theorizing that some CT who kept their childhood head voice might be
using the same mechanism castrati did, at least in the upper range.
It didn't seem to me Mark's message was posted for discussion - there
were so many interesting questions that could have arisen from this
message, such as "Why is Minter saying this after a career
specializing in Senesino and Guadagni arias?" or "How curious that he
would say this when he himself so strongly encouraged Daniels to
pursue a career in opera?" Instead, Mark associated countertenors
with blather in his subject line and posted the quote without any
explanation. Maybe he meant nothing by it, but it felt mean-spirited.
Again, I could be just crazy and hyper-sensitive. If so, I'd be glad
1) to know it and 2) to apologize profusely for wasting everyone's
time with my emotional blather :-)
Tako Oda, counter*tenor (how do you like the asterisk, mike?)
|
|  |
