dear The Third Member of the Alto Section

[fox]

i appreciate that you want to take the top part, when the altos divide, because you came down to the alto section from your previous life as a mezzo-soprano.  thing is, so did the second member of the alto section; and i, the first member of the alto section, am actually a first soprano doing the director a favor.  you know the one song where the sopranos go up to the A above the staff?  i sing that note with them, because i'm the only person in the room who has both that note and the confidence to sing it clearly.

in short:  sorry, but please sing second alto kthnx.  :-)

Comments

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

WTF? Why such a shortage of actual altos??

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

no idea.

in fact probably one or more of the sopranos are altos, or at least more alto-ish than i am, but they don't read music that well, bless them, so taking them off the melody wouldn't be very nice. le sigh.

[mearagrrl.livejournal.com]

Ah. What a pain, and how stupid. Perhaps playing flute and piccolo for so long (and thus getting to play all the high parts and the melodies, usually) allowed me to prefer to NOT sing the melody?

[thalia]

In my experience, there just aren't all that many true altos around. I've been singing alto for years, but my voice is really mezzo-soprano. In fact, in our entire nine-person section, I think there are two people with legitimate alto voices. (We also have one woman in the choir with a gorgeous alto voice who insists on singing tenor--don't get me started.)

And, as Fox points out, some people just aren't capable of switching from soprano to alto, even if their voices are lower. We have sopranos who whine if they have to sing *descant*, FCOL.

[darthfox.livejournal.com]

yeah -- the director of another choir i sing in is of the opinion that most altos are really mezzos (and most men, tenors or basses, are really baritones). not sure why that should be, but there it is.

in that choir we've got a guy with a lovely high baritone voice, who could be very useful at tenor, who insists on singing alto as a counter-tenor. we just won't get each other started, shall we? :-)

[fafou.livejournal.com]

Reading this post and the comments to it is wierd for me. I can read the language in which it is written, yet I have no idea what is being said.

I hope I get to hear you sing sometime, it sounds like you love it. And I like that part the best, watching someone have fun doing something they like.