December 30, 2004

Human vocal ranges

An interesting article about the range of the human voice and the pieces written at the extreme edges.

The lowest note Mozart wrote however is low D for Osmin in Seraglio (Ha, wie will ich triumphieren). Monteverdi wrote also twice a low D, the first is at the death of Seneca in L'Incoronazione di Poppea. The second in the fragmentary opera Il Ritorno di Ulisse in Patria. ... More than these low notes and the high g3 - from the already mentioned KV316 - is 'normally' not possible, there's little room to manoeuvre for the human voice. ... Here you can hear Viktor Wichniakov, one of the famous Russian Basso Profundo, with a double low G (from the Contra-octave range, C1-B1, European notation) at the end.

And, here's another little detail:

Pop-diva Mariah Carey hits during two different live renditions of the song "Emotions" a G7#-note, the highest note in the history of recorded music.

At least all those ridiculous acrobatics have some purpose.

Thanks to Lynn for the tip.

Posted by Casper at December 30, 2004 01:02 PM
Comments

I listened to the samples. The high note "sung" by Mariah Carey was, to my ears, not so much a note as a squeak or a screech.

By the way, your background is not loading completely so I get yellow text on white and the only way I can read it is to highlight it. Probably my fault. I'm one of those rebels who use Mozilla. :-)

Posted by: Lynn S at January 3, 2005 07:34 PM

Lynn...

I use the Moz myself. I don't have the same problem you do. The style sheet is set to load the background image last. Maybe there some latency that's preventing the image from completely loading?

Posted by: Casper at January 4, 2005 12:37 AM

i love mozilla. maybe just in case it would be better to have a different plain ol html bg color there incase the style sheets don't kick in for whatever reason?

btw interesting article

Posted by: r c at February 15, 2005 09:01 PM