Voice Type

A voice type is a singing voice identified as having certain qualities or characteristics of vocal range, vocal weight, tessitura, vocal timbre, and vocal transition points, such as breaks and lifts within the voice. Voice classification is a tool for singers, composers, venues, and listeners to categorize vocal properties and to associate roles with voices.

Women are typically divided into three groups: soprano, mezzo-soprano, and contralto. Men are usually divided into four groups: countertenor, tenor, baritone, and bass. Some women fall into the tenor or baritone groups, while men identified as countertenors can be grouped as contralto, mezzo-soprano, or soprano. The vocal range of classical performance covers about five octaves, from a low G1 (in scientific pitch notation) to a high G6. Any individual’s voice can perform over a range of one and a half to more than two octaves. Vocal ranges are grouped into overlapping types that each span about two octaves. Many singers fall between groups and can perform some parts in either type.

Vocal Ranges

A typical choral arrangement divides women into higher and lower voices and men into higher or lower voices. Most voices can be assigned one of these four ranges, and this gives the composer four vocal lines to work with, which is usually enough. The four main vocal ranges are listed below. This Module goes into much detail breaking down sub categories of these four categories below. Do not be overwhelmed by this. Mainly focus on these four categories. 

• Soprano – A high female (or boy’s) voice
• Alto – A low female (or boy’s) voice
• Tenor – A high (adult) male voice
• Bass – A low (adult) male voice

Arrangements for these four voices are labeled SATB (for Soprano Alto Tenor Bass). The ranges of the four voices overlap, but singers may find themselves straining or getting an unpleasant sound at the top or a weak sound at the bottom of their ranges. So although the full ranges of an alto and a soprano may look quite similar, the soprano produces a strong, clear sound on the higher notes, and the alto produces a strong, clear sound in the lower part of the range.

In addition,  there are vocalists whose strong, best-sounding range falls in a distinctly different place from any of these four voices. The names for some of these ranges are:

• Coloratura Soprano – This is not really a different range from the soprano, but a coloratura soprano has a voice that is unusually high, light, and agile, even for a soprano.
• Mezzo-soprano – In between soprano and alto
• Contralto – Contralto and alto originally referred to the same voice. But some people today use “contralto” to refer to a female voice that is even lower than a typical alto
• Countertenor – A male voice that is unusually high, light, and agile, even for a tenor
• Baritone – A male voice that falls in between tenor and bass

Voices are as individual as faces; some altos will have a narrower or wider range, or the sweetest and most powerful part of their range in a different place than other altos. These are approximate, average ranges for each voice category.

Note: Many sound files demonstrating examples of  individual voice ranges and styles follow. Again – YOu want to  know the four major vocal ranges but do not  be overwhelmed by the many examples presented here. You need not listen to the entire selections.

Soprano

The soprano has the highest vocal range of all voice types, with the highest tessitura, or vocal range. A soprano and a mezzo-soprano have a similar range, but their tessituras will lie in different parts of that range. The soprano’s vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C₄) = 261 Hz to “high A” (A₅) =880 Hz in choral music, or to “soprano C” (C₆, two octaves above middle C) =1046 Hz or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody. The soprano voice type is generally divided into the coloratura, soubrette, lyric, spinto, and dramatic soprano. The lyric soprano is the most common female singing voice.

• Coloratura Soprano – The coloratura soprano may be a lyric coloratura or a dramatic coloratura. The lyric coloratura soprano is a very agile light voice with a high upper extension capable of fast vocal coloratura. The dramatic coloratura soprano is a coloratura soprano with great flexibility in high-lying velocity passages, yet with great sustaining power comparable to that of a full spinto or dramatic soprano.
• Lyric Soprano – The lyric soprano is a warm voice with a bright, full timbre, which can be heard over a big orchestra. It generally has a higher tessitura than a soubrette and usually plays endearingly wholesome young girl or woman or other sympathetic characters in opera.
• Dramatic Soprano – A dramatic soprano (or soprano robusto) has a powerful, rich, emotive voice that can sing over a full orchestra. Usually (but not always) this voice has a lower tessitura than other sopranos, and a darker timbre.

Listen to the aria “Bella mia fiamma—Resta, o cara” by Mozart

Mezzo Soprano

The vocal range of the mezzo-sopranos lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. Mezzo-sopranos generally have a heavier, darker tone than sopranos. The mezzo-soprano voice resonates in a higher range than that of a contralto. The terms Dugazon and Galli-Marié are sometimes used to refer to light mezzo-sopranos, after the names of famous singers. A castrato with a vocal range equivalent to a mezzo-soprano’s range is referred to as a mezzo-soprano castrato or mezzista. Today, however, only women should be referred to as mezzo-sopranos; men singing within the female range are called countertenors.

While mezzo-sopranos typically sing secondary roles in operas, notable exceptions include the title role in Bizet’s Carmen, Angelina (Cinderella) in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, and Rosina in Rossini’s Barber of Seville (all of which are also sung by sopranos). Many nineteenth-century French-language operas give the leading female role to mezzos, including Béatrice et Bénédict, La damnation de Faust, Don Quichotte, La favorite, Mignon, Samson et Dalila, Les Troyens, and Werther, as well as Carmen.

Within the mezzo-soprano voice type category are three generally recognized subcategories: coloratura mezzo-soprano, lyric mezzo-soprano, and dramatic mezzo-soprano.

• Coloratura—A coloratura mezzo-soprano has a warm lower register and an agile high register. The roles they sing often demand not only the use of the lower register but also leaps into the upper tessitura with highly ornamented, rapid passages.
• Lyric—Lyric mezzo-sopranos do not have the vocal agility of the coloratura mezzo-soprano or the size of the dramatic mezzo-soprano. The lyric mezzo-soprano is ideal for most trouser roles, wherein a female actor dresses as a male. This voice has a very smooth, sensitive and at times lachrymose quality.
• Dramatic—A dramatic mezzo-soprano has a strong medium register, a warm high register and a voice that is broader and more powerful than the lyric and coloratura mezzo-sopranos. This voice has less vocal facility than the coloratura mezzo-soprano.

A contralto is a type of classical female singing voice whose vocal range is the lowest female voice type. The contralto’s vocal range is fairly rare; similar to, but different from the alto, and almost identical to that of a countertenor. The contralto voice type is generally divided into the coloratura, lyric, and dramatic contralto.

• Coloratura—The coloratura contralto has a light, agile voice ranging very high for the classification and atypically maintains extensive coloratura and high sustaining notes, specializing in florid passages and leaps. Given its deviations from the classification’s norms, this voice type is quite rare.
• Lyric—The lyric contralto voice is lighter than a dramatic contralto but not capable of the ornamentation and leaps of a coloratura contralto. This class of contralto, lighter in timbre than the others, is the most common today.
• Dramatic—The dramatic contralto is the deepest, darkest, and heaviest contralto voice, usually having a heavier tone and more power than the others. Singers in this class are rare.

Contralto

Countertenor

The vocal range of a countertenor is equivalent to that of the female contralto or mezzo-soprano voice types. A trained countertenor will typically have a vocal center similar in placement to that of a contralto or mezzo-soprano. Particularly in the British choral tradition, the terms male soprano and male alto serve to identify men who rely on falsetto vocal production, rather than the modal voice, to sing in the soprano or alto vocal range. Elsewhere, the terms have less universal currency.

Listen: Countertenor
The following video shows countertenor Phillipe Jaropussaky  singing “Clarae stellae, scintillate, in F major” by Vivaldi.  There is some discussion for the first minute of this selection   Selection begins at 60 seconds

Countertenors often are natural baritones or tenors, but rarely use this vocal range in performance.

The term first came into use in England during the mid-seventeenth century, and was in wide use by the late seventeenth century. However, the use of adult male falsettos in polyphony, commonly in the alto range, was common in all-male sacred choirs for some decades previous, as early as the mid-sixteenth century. Modern-day ensembles such as the Tallis Scholars and the Sixteen maintain the use of male altos in period works. During the romantic period, the popularity of the countertenor voice waned and few compositions were written with that voice type in mind.

Within the countertenor voice type category are three generally recognized subcategories: the sopranist or “male soprano,” the haute-contre, and the castrato.

Tenor

A tenor is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range is one of the highest of the male voice types. The tessitura of the tenor voice lies above the baritone voice and below the countertenor voice. The leggero tenor has the highest tessitura of all the tenor subtypes.

Tenors are often divided into different subcategories based on range, vocal color or timbre, the weight of the voice, and dexterity of the voice. Famous tenors include Enrico Caruso, Juan Diego Flórez, Alfredo Kraus, and Luciano Pavarotti.
Listen to this excerpt below.There is some dialogue overlay with parts of numerous tenor arias. with discussion.Within the tenor voice-type category are seven generally recognized subcategories: leggero tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, Mozart tenor, and tenor buffo or spieltenor. There is considerable overlap between the various categories of role and of voice type; some tenor singers have begun with lyric voices but have transformed with time into spinto or even dramatic tenors. Explanation of the various  styles follows  below

• Leggero—Also known as the tenore di grazia, the leggero tenor is essentially the male equivalent of a lyric coloratura. This voice is light, agile, and capable of executing difficult passages of fioritura.
• Lyric—The lyric tenor is a warm graceful voice with a bright, full timbre that is strong but not heavy and can be heard over an orchestra.
• Spinto—The spinto tenor has the brightness and height of a lyric tenor, but with a heavier vocal weight enabling the voice to be “pushed” to dramatic climaxes with less strain than the lighter-voice counterparts. Spinto tenors have a darker timbre than a lyric tenor, without having a vocal color as dark as many (not all) dramatic tenors.
• Dramatic—Also “tenore di forza” or “robusto,” the dramatic tenor has an emotive, ringing and very powerful, clarion, heroic tenor sound.
• Heldentenor—The heldentenor (English: heroic tenor) has a rich, dark, powerful and dramatic voice. As its name implies, the heldentenor vocal fach features in the German romantic operatic repertoire.
• Mozart—A Mozart tenor is yet another distinct tenor type. In Mozart singing, the most important element is the instrumental approach of the vocal sound, which conveys flawless and slender emission of sound, perfect intonation, legato, diction and phrasing, capability to cope with the dynamic requirements of the score, beauty of timbre, secure line of singing through perfect support and absolute breath control, musical intelligence, body discipline, elegance, nobility, agility and, most important, ability for dramatic expressiveness within the narrow boundaries imposed by the strict Mozartian style.
• Tenor buffo or spieltenor—A tenor buffo or spieltenor is a tenor with good acting ability and the ability to create distinct voices for his characters. This voice specializes in smaller comic roles.

The Tenor in Choral Music

In a SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) four-part mixed chorus, the tenor is the second-lowest vocal range, above the bass and below the soprano and alto. A men’s chorus usually denotes an ensemble of TTBB in which the first tenor is the highest voice.

The requirements of the tenor voice in choral music are also tied to the style of music most often performed by a given choir. Orchestra choruses require tenors with fully resonant voices, but chamber or a cappella choral music (sung with no instrumental accompaniment) can sometimes rely on light baritones singing in falsetto.

Even so, one nearly ubiquitous facet of choral singing is the shortage of tenor voices.Most men tend to have baritone voices and for this reason the majority of men tend to prefer singing in the bass section of a choir (however, true basses are even rarer than tenors). Some men are asked to sing tenor even if they lack the full range, and sometimes low altos are asked to sing the tenor part.

Baritone

A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice types, overlapping both of them. It is the most common male voice. The typical baritone range is from A2 (the second A below middle C) to A4 (the A above middle C). A baritone’s range might extend down to F2 or up to C5. The baritone is the most common type of male voice.\

Listen: Baritone This video shows Dimitri Hvorostovsky singing a piece from Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlos.

Bass
The bass is the lowest male voice and has the lowest tessitura of all the voices. Cultural influence and individual variation create a wide variation in range and quality of bass singers. Parts for basses have included notes as low as the B-flat two octaves and a tone below middle C (B♭₁), for example in Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and the Rachmaninov Vespers. Many basso profondos have trouble reaching those notes, and the use of them in works by Slavic composers has led to the colloquial term “Russian bass” for an exceptionally deep-ranged basso profondo who can easily sing those notes. Many British composers such as Benjamin Britten have written parts for bass (such as the first movement of his choral work Rejoice in the Lamb) that center far higher than the bass tessitura implied by the clef.

Basses are often divided into different subcategories based on range, vocal color or timbre, the weight of the voice, and dexterity of the voice. Basses are often broken down into six subcategories: basso profondo, basso buffo, bel canto bass, basso cantante, dramatic bass, and bass-baritone.

• Basso profondo—Basso profondo (lyric low bass) is the lowest bass voice type. According to J. B. Steane in Voices, Singers & Critics, the basso profondo voice “derives from a method of tone-production that eliminates the more Italian quick vibrato. In its place is a kind of tonal solidity, a wall-like front, which may nevertheless prove susceptible to the other kind of vibrato, the slow beat or dreaded wobble.” Dramatic basso profondo – English equivalent: dramatic low bass. Dramatic basso profondo is a powerful basso profondo voice.

• https://youtu.be/IyIB3yPTivM?t=1s
• Basso buffo/bel canto/lyric buffo—Buffo, literally “funny”, basses are lyrical roles that demand from their practitioners a solid coloratura technique, a capacity for patter singing and ripe tonal qualities if they are to be brought off to maximum effect. They are usually the blustering antagonist of the hero/heroine or the comic-relief fool in bel canto operas. Equivalent terms are Schwerer Spielbass (German) and dramatic buffo (English).
• Basso cantante/lyric high bass/lyric bass-baritone—Basso cantante means “singing bass.” Basso cantante is a higher, more lyrical voice. It is produced using a more Italianate vocal production, and possesses a faster vibrato, than its closest Germanic/Anglo-Saxon equivalent, the bass-baritone.

In a SATB four-part mixed chorus, the bass is the lowest vocal range, below the soprano, alto, and tenor. Voices are subdivided into first bass and second bass, no distinction being made between bass and baritone voices, in contrast to the three-fold (tenor–baritone–bass) categorization of solo voices. The exception is in arrangements for male choir (TTBB) and barbershop quartets (TLBB), which sometimes label the lowest two parts baritone and bass.

Consider this Powerpoint a review of this topic:
Not all sound links are good in this Pp. However, there are numerous  links in the text for this module illustrating examples.