A quarter of a million notes, 22 identical old arias, no questions except one:Screech Or No Screech?
Alice update not in the form of a diary - things are going slowly better, organising lessons has been a pain but I'll be able to practice myself more now exams are over.

Southampton University has a music department. So far, this department has given me one voice teacher, too many feelings of cliquiness, just one practice room for the rest of the students to use across campus, and not a lot else.

Today, it's provided me with eight (!) vocal recitals at the on-campus concert hall, a 270-seat venue with brick walls, an organ at its centre and a semi-transparent roof with white lights upon it. In honesty, it resembles the set for Noel's Gambling Party, hence the witty title for this post (which isn't quite accurate, but it suits for comedy). I've heard six so far with two to come tonight:

1. JW (soprano or mezzo-soprano, neither the programme nor her performance made it clear which); a voice most notable for its volume or lack thereof, though it was by no means an unattractive voice. This is the kind of singer I'd probably have desperately attempted to write for two years ago, and wouldn't object to writing for now; the main benefit of her performance today for me, though, was to set a benchmark by which others would be compared against in my mind, and to provide a pleasingly soft start, only slowly building up with a Gershwin number at the end. A Wagnerian at 10am would be bad enough for most people, let alone me.

2. NI (soprano); ooh, this programme's very glossy and shiny and it's not in Times New Roman like the last one but in what looks like Garamond. Oh good grief there's only three secular pieces out of eight. And somehow she gets away with it. I want to like her less than JW, but have to concede she is probably better.

3. KB (soprano); she's singing from notes and not memory, so instantly she is worse than the first two. Especially as the Handel piece she's singing seems to go on forever. Oh wait - she gets much better. Good thing I couldn't leave the concert hall, for I'd have missed all the highlights. Speaking of high, we get a genuinely high note in one piece, the first one that's actually come close to scaring me.

4. EJ (soprano); OK, this is now getting ridiculous. Are they actually trying to disprove your suggestion that there are only a 'handful of soprano singers'? Are they playing to stereotyping? (A soprano I met at Fitzpatrick-era LJ suggests 'there are more sopranos than any other voice type', interestingly adding in response to my suggestion that styles other than classical lean more towards lower voices 'a fairly large majority of the voices in other styles would be sopranos if they were studying in the classical style'. Could that be evidence that in fact, classical training places an inordinate emphasis on the upper part of one's range?)
Anyway, EJ's actually also a musical theatre singer, she fits two rather different Sondheim pieces into her programme, and she sings the same Handel piece as KB ten times better, and only part of that is down to having a harpsichord instead of a piano accompanying her. The crowd has now quadrupled, as if knowing this is going to be the first standout of the day.

5. WH (baritone); good grief! Just when I was resigning myself to the prospect of a day of sopranos, we get not only a NotSoprano, but a male! A completely different Handel piece to start this, not least because it's in English. Indeed, while the sopranos sung more pieces than not in foreign languages, WH has just two German pieces at the end to meet what is presumably a requirement of the recital. The programme advertises the recital as being on English song, and in fact he walks off stage and on again before singing the German pieces. A pleasant shock to the system, and part of me rates him higher than anyone so far. But he's not singing from memory, which tips the balance.

6. MB (tenor); And again we start with Handel, different piece again. In fact the only person not to start with Handel was JW (who started with three Mozart pieces, two too many for the reader of this blog?), though this five-in-a-row streak escaped my attention until I typed this. The programme notes imply the pieces are challenging in range, but it doesn't show, and that's mildly interesting from a composer's perspective. The progammes, incidentally, bear a remarkable visual resemblance to each other, and both make far too much use of Times New Roman. I should offer my services as a programme designer next year...

7. KK (mezzo-soprano). Not working from memory. Wasn't convinced by her first piece. Got better, but I somehow expected something more impressive than it was. Having said that, had I come in with lower expectations I'd have been very impressed indeed.

8. EM (soprano). Probably my favourite of the night. Nothing wrong, plenty right, she showed off the right amount, and basically I couldn't see much wrong with it and wasn't in much of a state for analysis. And I got to speak to her afterwards, which is why this update was delayed; she said a few interesting things, notably one that relates to 2.

Few things I have on my mind about this:
1. Are there really that many sopranos? If there were in the general population, popular music would surely sit higher than it does.

2. We may have missed one thing - the nature of the distribution. Perhaps there's an asymmetrical distribution, with a long tail of higher voices (a very few extremely high voices, a greater but still modest number of moderately high voices), the greatest concentration sitting moderately low, but then a rapid tailing off? And is this distribution affected by training being skewed towards one end of one's range, which I would imagine is more likely to be the higher part? Edit: EM, and one of ther friends, says it's easier to expand one's range upward than it is downward. Worth pointing out in this context: in November 2006 my lowest note was F2. In June 2007, my lowest note... F2. In the intervening period, I did little but sing low in my voice lessons...

3. Is the typical gender difference actually one octave? The same person who suggested the typical female voice is soprano also said the typical male voice is baritone...

4. All of these are classical singers, though EJ (and NI, according to her programme notes) are primarily involved in musical theatre. (I'd have enjoyed NI's programme much more if she'd had more musical theatre pieces. Or just more secular pieces would be a start.)

5. I note, with interest, that each of the different accompanists (there were four: WH, JW and MB all had the same one) was using the sheet music, and had a page-turner. How surprising is it that not one was playing from memory, given that four of the singers were and the other two arguably should have been? Answered.