Klarinet Archive - Posting 000996.txt from 2000/05

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Special kind of a tone
Date: Mon, 22 May 2000 07:02:35 -0400

On Sun, 21 May 2000 19:36:39 -0400, agalper@-----.com said:
> I just heard the Appalachian Spring by Copland.
> At the beginning there is a short clarinet solo.
> In the part it says "White tone".
> Anyone know how to get that tone?

"White tone" is a term of art among classical singers. It means a voice
without vibrato. For practical purposes, among adult singers, it means a
voice that sounds like a clarinet, instead of a violin.

My aunt, Mary Wrany VanEss, is a retired coloratura soprano. My mother who
as a very young woman had a brief career as a contralto (in a radio trio with
her sister and her brother), used to teach choir. The three of them studied
with different teachers, but all were taught the same definition, which I
also learned from my choir conductor, Byron Jones, when I was a teenager in
the 1960s. (I didn't have a white voice. I had a bad voice.) The extreme
example of a white voice is a young child's untrained voice, which also lacks
resonance, in part because the vibrato is one of the means of creating
resonance (a greater variety of overtones).

No adult voice is completely "white", but an adult singing a child's role
(for the soundtrack of a cartoon, for instance), would try to imitate a white
voice. The voice used for Gregorian chant comes about as close as adults
with trained (good) voices usually get to white tone without actually
imitating children. When a conductor tells an opera singer to use a white
voice for a particular passage, the conductor doesn't literally want a white
(childish) voice -- it's just a vivid way of saying that the singer should
use as little vibrato as possible, although it *doesn't* mean to use the
unfocussed tone that a child would produce. What the conductor usually
means by white voice, when dealing with an adult, is that the singer should
use a head tone, rather than a chest tone. Often a singer will start a
sustained note white, then let the vibrato develop, to make the end of the
note more dramatic (not necessarily with a crescendo -- it's a good way of
giving the note drama without a crescendo). It's interesting to watch a
singer do this, because an arm gesture almost always comes naturally with the
development of the vibrato -- the hands will turn palms up and the arms will
spread.

Lelia

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