# Final Round: Abscheulicher. Flagstad, Ludwig, Leider, Nilsson



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)




----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The role of Leonore/Fidelio suits all of these sopranos well. They all can project the drama of the aria without strain, yet their voices, temperaments and styles are very different, making this match constantly interesting. 

The only thing lacking in Frida Leider's recording is the urgency it would certainly have had in live performance. We hear that urgency in Flagstad's, and I enjoyed the Norwegian's performance greatly, more than I did on hearing it the first time. Her legato style in "Komm, Hoffnung" is more relaxed, perhaps more sentimental, than the tautly sustained and phrased manner of Leider, who is the one singer among these four as noted for her work in Italian opera as she was famous for her Wagner. In her brief autobiography she mentions having sung Norma, a role which both Flagstad and Nilsson sensibly declined. 

Nilsson here is somewhat deprived of vocal presence by one of those early stereo Decca, presumably Culshaw-produced, recordings, and I'm always lamenting the way her voice is made to sound more metallic and less full than it did in the house. In any case it isn't really in her voice, despite her fine musical intentions, to equal the others here in the lyrical, "Italianate" aspects of Beethoven's writing. 

That leaves Ludwig, a superb Leonore whose musicianship, dramatic temperament, and tangy and wide-ranging mezzo-soprano are very much up to the part's demands. There's no lack of urgency in her performance, and I don't find picking a winner here easy. That said, I'm going to go with Leider, who demonstrates vocal skills able to fulfill every requirement of the music with ease and panache.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Actually Varnay came within one vote of tying the illustrious Flagstad, which is almost historic for this group. She was my favorite singer of this aria. Of this group I go with Nilsson.


----------



## Viardots (Oct 4, 2014)

My vote also goes to Leider in this contest and I can't say it better than what Woodduck has done for the reason of my choice.

However, my favourite version of the aria still remains that of *Lotte Lehmann *(1927, Parlophone). Understandably, the lack of the recitative puts it out of the running for the contest here. Vocally, Lehmann is not immaculate, but even in the recording studio she is right inside the role and she manages to bring out all Leonore's desperation, hope, love for her persecuted husband and determination to save him in the aria:






If one wants to gauge how Lehmann handled the recitative, one has to hear the off-the-air recording of portion of Act 1 of Fidelio from the 1936 Salzburg Festival conducted by Toscanini, albeit in poor sound and with Lehmann transposing the key of the aria downward:






Fast forward to 46:00 to hear Lehmann in the recitative and aria. It happens that the aircheck of the performance stopped with the aria and finished with radio announcement.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Viardots said:


> My vote also goes to Leider in this contest and I can't say it better than what Woodduck has done for the reason of my choice.
> 
> However, my favourite version of the aria still remains that of *Lotte Lehmann *(1927, Parlophone). Understandably, the lack of the recitative puts it out of the running for the contest here. Vocally, Lehmann is not immaculate, but even in the recording studio she is right inside the role and she manages to bring out all Leonore's desperation, hope and love for her persecuted husband in the aria:
> 
> ...


Yes, that was why I didn't include her. She is always very popular here.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Lehmann is fabulous. Her musicianship was immaculate, and she simply couldn't make an inexpressive sound. Thanks to Viardots.


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

I prefer Flagstad in this.


----------



## ALT (Mar 1, 2021)

Viardots said:


> If one wants to gauge how Lehmann handled the recitative, one has to hear the off-the-air recording of portion of Act 1 of Fidelio from the 1936 Salzburg Festival conducted by Toscanini, albeit in poor sound and with Lehmann transposing the key of the aria downward:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Here we go again. This time it’s not lip syncing but transposing down. In the year 1936, darling, untouchable, irreproachable Lotte Lehmann should have still been able to sing the aria in key. But no. This makes her a non-contender. Surely we are about to read plenty of justifications for her and Toscanini’s ghastly musicianship here.


----------



## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

ALT said:


> Here we go again. This time it’s not lip syncing but transposing down. In the year 1936, darling, untouchable, unreproachable Lotte Lehmann should have still been able to sing the aria in key. But no. This makes her a non-contender. Surely we are about to read plenty of justifications for her and Toscanini’s ghastly musicianship here.


Surely transposing an aria is common practise and, especially when considering an aria purely on its own, matters very little? It may not be perfect, but I'd certainly prefer to hear someone sing something well in a lower transposition than struggle with a higher tessitura.


----------



## ALT (Mar 1, 2021)

Op.123 said:


> Surely transposing an aria is common practise and, especially when considering an aria purely on its own, matters very little? It may not be perfect, but I'd certainly prefer to hear someone sing something well in a lower transposition than struggle with a higher tessitura.


Well, no. If a singer can’t cope with what is assigned her, as written, she shouldn’t get within a mile of the piece or work. In other words, the proverbial “can’t take the heat?; then get out of the kitchen.”


----------



## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

ALT said:


> Well, no. If a singer can’t cope with what is assigned her, as written, she shouldn’t get within a mile of the piece or work. In other words, the proverbial “can’t take the heat?; then get out of the kitchen.”


And yet I seem to remember you being quite fond of a singer who should have stayed well away from some things. Oh well. And I'd much rather hear Lehmann sing this aria in a lower key than anyone today 'singing' it in the correct key.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

ALT said:


> Here we go again. This time it’s not lip syncing but transposing down. In the year 1936, darling, untouchable, unreproachable Lotte Lehmann should have still been able to sing the aria in key. But no.


😵you remind me of this guy-


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

ALT said:


> Here we go again. This time it’s not lip syncing but transposing down. In the year 1936, darling, untouchable, unreproachable Lotte Lehmann should have still been able to sing the aria in key. But no. This makes her a non-contender. Surely we are about to read plenty of justifications for her and Toscanini’s ghastly musicianship here.


Except that Lehmann is not one of the four contestants so wtf does it matter.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ALT said:


> Here we go again.


"We" aren't going anywhere, but thanks for the offer of transportation.



> This time it’s not lip syncing but transposing down. In the year 1936, darling, untouchable, unreproachable Lotte Lehmann should have still been able to sing the aria in key. But no. This makes her a non-contender. Surely we are about to read plenty of justifications for her and Toscanini’s ghastly musicianship here.


Transposition is a time-honored practice in the music of many styles. In classical music, it's standard practice in song literature, where it's expected that singers of different vocal ranges will choose keys in which their voices can make the best effect and do the most justice to musical values. In some cases composers themselves offer options, changing the key of a piece when its arranged for different performing forces, or offering alternative vocal lines. In opera, some of the greatest singers on record have transposed arias. Transposed versions have even become the norm: "Casta diva" comes to mind, and I would rather hear the superb phrasing and articulation of Callas singing it in F than the mushy mooning of someone else doing it in the original key of G. I'll also take Caruso articulating all the notes of "Di quella pira" in B over [insert name of favorite contemporary tenor] making the usual mess of it in C. In older styles of opera, with traditional, distinct recitative-aria structure, little or no harm to the music is done by such transpositions. There is also the fact that pitch itself has varied greatly over time and from place to place, by much more than a half-step.

We don't know why Lehmann transposed in this instance. Most listeners wouldn't even notice it, but in any case it makes no appreciable musical difference. The music-making remains, as usual with her, superb. Some of us think that that's what matters.


----------



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Not one of my familiar arias but frankly, I don't really need to know it. The voice that stands above the rest for me is clearly Christa Ludwig. (am I keeping my reputation in tact yet again?)


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Transposition is a time-honored practice in the music of many styles. In classical music, it's standard practice in song literature, where it's expected that singers of different vocal ranges will choose keys in which their voices can make the best effect and do the most justice to musical values. In some cases composers themselves offer options, changing the key of a piece when its arranged for different performing forces, or offering alternative vocal lines. In opera, some of the greatest singers on record have transposed arias. Transposed versions have even become the norm: "Casta diva" comes to mind, and I would rather hear the superb phrasing and articulation of Callas singing it in F than the mushy mooning of someone else doing it in the original key of G. I'll also take Caruso articulating all the notes of "Di quella pira" in B over [insert name of favorite contemporary tenor] making the usual mess of it in C. In older styles of opera, with traditional, distinct recitative-aria structure, little or no harm to the music is done by such transpositions. There is also the fact that pitch itself has varied greatly over time and from place to place, by much more than a half-step.
> 
> We don't know why Lehmann transposed in this instance. Most listeners wouldn't even notice it, but in any case it makes no appreciable musical difference. The music-making remains, as usual with her, superb. Some of us think that that's what matters.



In principal I agree with you, and of course transpositions are indeed common in the song repertoire. That said, I think I prefer song cycles like _Winterreise_ and _Dichterliebe _when sung in the original tenor keys. I also find it jarring when the soprano singing Violetta, whether it be Tebaldi or even Ponselle, makes a downward transposition during the recitative preceding _Sempre libera_ in order to avoid the written top Cs. It doesn't bother me if they don't sing the unwritten top Eb. By and large I also prefer Manrico to sing _Di quella pira_ in the original key and omit the uwritten top Cs, rather than dupe the audience into thinking he's singing them by lowering the key. I remember when Domingo sang the role at Covent Garden in 1989, there was quite a hooha about the fact that he had decided to stick to the origanal key and omit them, with people being both for and against his decision. I have to say I didn't mind at all. It wasn't the best part of his performance anyway.

I have a sneaking feeling Beethoven would not have been happy with changes in his carefully considered key structure in order to accomodate a singer, so my feelings about the Lehman transposition are somewhat equivocal I guess. The case of _Casta diva _is slightly different because Bellini approved it and the change was made before the first performance because the lower key was more comfortable for Giuditta Pasta, for whom he wrote the role of Norma.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

When it comes to the four ladies above, for me it comes down to a choice between Leider and Ludwig. I don't think it was the right role for either Flagstad or Nilsson so they were out of the running very quickly.

Ludwig is marvellous, but, ultimately I prefer Leider, if only by a whisker. What a magnificent singer she must have been.

I'd just add that, unlike Nina, I do love this scena, which is almost a recitative, cavatina and cabaletta and I still have a great deal of admiration for Helga Dernesch's radiant performance on the Karajan recording. I think it te best thing she ever did for the gramophone.


----------



## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Tsaraslondon said:


> When it comes to the four ladies above, for me it comes down to a choice between Leider and Ludwig. I don't think it was the right role for either Flagstad or Nilsson so they were out of the running very quickly.
> 
> Ludwig is marvellous, but, ultimately I prefer Leider, if only by a whisker. What a magnificent singer she must have been.
> 
> I'd just add that, unlike Nina, I do love this scena, which is almost a recitative, cavatina and cabaletta and I still have a great deal of admiration for Helga Dernesch's radiant performance on the Karajan recording. I think it te best thing she ever did for the gramophone.


Actually I didn't mean to infer that I didn't like it -- it's just that I am unfamiliar with it and after hearing the voices didn't find it necessary to try to become more deeply familiar with it because, for me, Ludwig's voice stood out above them all (although I also agree that Leider would have been my second choice.)


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> "We" aren't going anywhere, but thanks for the offer of transportation.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


A mini Ted talk. Bless you!!! Sutherland's version of Casta Diva in the original key is the only one that I personally am aware of. As fabulous as it was, I think most people prefer Callas who always sang it transposed down. Even the great Flagstad transposed songs occasionally.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Callas who always sang it transposed down.


Actually not true. She sang it in G in Rome and at Covent Garden in 1953, but apparently returned to F because nobody seemed to notice. She also sang the duets with Simionato at Covent Garden in the original keys, and became incensed on Simionato's behalf that again nobody noticed.

Incidentally the key was lowered to F before the opening night of the first production, because Pasta, the creator of the role, found it more comfortable in that key. This is no doubt the reason most sopranos sing it in F.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Tsaraslondon said:


> Actually not true. She sang it in G in Rome and at Covent Garden in 1953, but apparently returned to F because nobody seemed to notice. She also sang the duets with Simionato at Covent Garden in the original keys, and became incensed on Simionato's behalf that again nobody noticed.
> 
> Incidentally the key was lowered to F before the opening night of the first production, because Pasta, the creator of the role, found it more comfortable in that key. This is no doubt the reason most sopranos sing it in F.


I've always had friends who were so much smarter than me  I never heard a recording by her in G.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> I've always had friends who were so much smarter than me  I never heard a recording by her in G.


Well that's because there isn't one, but I've read about Covent Garden 1953 in more than one source.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tsaraslondon said:


> Actually not true. She sang it in G in Rome and at Covent Garden in 1953, but apparently returned to F because nobody seemed to notice. She also sang the duets with Simionato at Covent Garden in the original keys, and became incensed on Simionato's behalf that again nobody noticed.
> 
> Incidentally the key was lowered to F before the opening night of the first production, because Pasta, the creator of the role, found it more comfortable in that key. This is no doubt the reason most sopranos sing it in F.


It must be difficult enough in F. Your evening has just begun and you're not thoroughly warmed up. Why work harder if audiences don't notice or care? 

On reflection, I'd say that both Callas and Sutherland settled on the keys that brought out the best in their voices.


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> It must be difficult enough in F. Your evening has just begun and you're not thoroughly warmed up. Why work harder if audiences don't notice or care?
> 
> On reflection, I'd say that both Callas and Sutherland settled on the keys that brought out the best in their voices.


Sutherland, too, transposed later in her career, I believe.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

MAS said:


> Sutherland, too, transposed later in her career, I believe.


She did. Her Db6 and D6 were always her best notes and she had them till the end of her career at 64. Starting in her late 50's she transposed things down a half tone to show her at her best for the huge crowds still coming to see her. That meant on Bel Raggio she was vocalizing down to low G, something few coloratura sopranos other than Callas could ever do well. I think her high notes around 60 were actually among the very best of her career, both absolutely enormous and much steelier than before 50 and with glorious vibrato, more defined than when it was so fast when she was young. Usually the high notes are the first to go as we have seen in others. The transposition also worked well with the huge, rich lower middle and middle voice she developed in her mature years. Her voice was never small but got much bigger after 40. This was the time she recorded Turandot. We will never see another coloratura with such a combination of size and agility in our lifetimes most likely. Of course for most of you you couldn't care less ;-)


----------



## ALT (Mar 1, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> Transposition is a time-honored practice in the music of many styles. In classical music, it's standard practice in song literature, where it's expected that singers of different vocal ranges will choose keys in which their voices can make the best effect and do the most justice to musical values. In some cases composers themselves offer options, changing the key of a piece when its arranged for different performing forces, or offering alternative vocal lines. In opera, some of the greatest singers on record have transposed arias. Transposed versions have even become the norm: "Casta diva" comes to mind, and I would rather hear the superb phrasing and articulation of Callas singing it in F than the mushy mooning of someone else doing it in the original key of G. I'll also take Caruso articulating all the notes of "Di quella pira" in B over [insert name of favorite contemporary tenor] making the usual mess of it in C. In older styles of opera, with traditional, distinct recitative-aria structure, little or no harm to the music is done by such transpositions. There is also the fact that pitch itself has varied greatly over time and from place to place, by much more than a half-step.
> 
> We don't know why Lehmann transposed in this instance. Most listeners wouldn't even notice it, but in any case it makes no appreciable musical difference. The music-making remains, as usual with her, superb. Some of us think that that's what matters.


Going nowhere, still. Transposing a piece in advance of performing it, with the proper care so that the alteration feels organic with the whole, is one thing. To modulate smack in the middle of a piece, as darling, irreproachable Lotte Lehman and Arturo Toscanini did in their ”Abscheulicher” is a jarring mess that zaps the continuity and momentum out of the listener’s experience. But you know this.


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

ALT said:


> Going nowhere, still. Transposing a piece in advance of performing it, with the proper care so that the alteration feels organic with the whole, is one thing. To modulate smack in the middle of a piece, as darling, irreproachable Lotte Lehman and Arturo Toscanini did in their ”Abscheulicher” is a jarring mess that zaps the continuity and momentum out of the listener’s experience. But you know this.


New York Time music critics on the subject:MUSIC; Tailoring Arias to Suit the Vagaries of the Voices (Published 1999) See excerpt in reply below.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> New York Time music critics on the subject:MUSIC; Tailoring Arias to Suit the Vagaries of the Voices (Published 1999)


Behind a pay wall, I'm afraid. I'd be interested to read it but don't really want to subscribe to the NYTimes. What's the gist of it?


----------



## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Tsaraslondon said:


> Behind a pay wall, I'm afraid. I'd be interested to read it but don't really want to subscribe to the NYTimes. What's the gist of it?
> A few examples. We think of the conductor Arturo Toscanini as a purist, but even at the end of his operatic career, and even in the shrinelike environment of the Salzburg Festival, he made transpositions to accommodate his singers in both ''Fidelio'' and ''The Magic Flute.''
> 
> THE latter opera illustrates one frequent cause for transposition: the Queen of the Night is written for an extraordinarily high soprano voice, and the voices that are both sufficiently high and appropriately dramatic are rare. The Queen's ''vengeance'' aria is composed in D minor. Dame Joan was criticized for singing it in C minor the one time she performed the role, in the early 1960's. Toscanini was not criticized, as far as I know, for letting his Queen do the same in the 1930's. At the Met in 1901, Marcella Sembrich lowered it farther (to B minor), apparently without raising eyebrows. Nowadays we tend to prefer slighter voices and the original key; different compromises for different times.


As for the keys: since the Lucia arias have traditionally been sung in lower keys and very high notes have been added at their conclusions, it has been easy for many to assume that the high notes are the reason for the transpositions. But history does not bear this out; the Lucia arias were being sung (and published) in the familiar transpositions within a decade of the opera's premiere, long before the ultrahigh added notes became standard.
The evidentiary record, for those who enjoy poring through it, is clear that as late as the turn of the expiring century, more Lucias sang the role without high E flats than with. And yet they were singing in the lower keys. It is much more a matter of the usual reason for transposition: general vocal ''fit'' between singer and music. The gradual fossilization of certain ''standard'' interpolations -- in this opera and in many others -- was a phenomenon of the post-World War I period, as the few surviving operas from the age of improvisation were equipped for life in an operatic environment no longer hospitable to improvisation.

So everybody should lighten up. Wagner was the most continuous and least transposable of opera composers (and he sensibly avoided unusual high notes, probably in part for that reason); yet even Wagner accepted transpositions for the abandoned first production of ''Tristan,'' and certain transpositions have functioned well enough in his scores. Helen Traubel always sang Brunnhilde's Battle Cry in B flat, not B. At Bayreuth itself, Senta's Ballade was transposed upward for the young voice of Anja Silja (just as the little aria of Mozart's Masetto is usually transposed up for the youngish baritones who sing the part).

It's all a matter of practicality, not principle. If the transition can be made with some harmonic elegance, and if the musical loss is either negligible or, at worst, small enough to be outweighed by the performance it makes possible, then -- no big deal. If it can't be, then one decides, O.K., that singer can't do that role. The ''overall harmonic conception'' is important to the composer's inspiration if it is -- and sometimes it is. But as the composers themselves knew, that takes its place among many other priorities when it comes down to what happens on the individual night, and sometimes it can yield.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ALT said:


> Going nowhere, still. Transposing a piece in advance of performing it, with the proper care so that the alteration feels organic with the whole, is one thing. To modulate smack in the middle of a piece, as darling, irreproachable Lotte Lehman and Arturo Toscanini did in their ”Abscheulicher” is a jarring mess that zaps the continuity and momentum out of the listener’s experience. But you know this.


Yeah, going nowhere, except into the shallow depths of tit-for-tat. 

A little perspective is in order. The music that begins "Abscheulicher" is inherently and intentionally jarring in relation to what precedes it. I doubt that many people perceive the key change involved in this transposition, even though it's unexpected by one who knows the opera well, as a "jarring mess that zaps the continuity and momentum out of the listener’s experience." Some transpositions - as well as other alterations such as cuts - would be exactly that, but not this one. You're engaging in hyperbole for argument's sake. No one thinks that transposing entails no musical loss whatever, but over a split-second key change between separate and contrasting numbers rational people won't get bent out of shape and feel the need for interminable justifications and insults aimed at the musicians. 

In the end - in fact, well before the end - "darling, irreproachable Lotte Lehman [_sic_] and Arturo Toscanini" will retain their reputations despite the efforts to cut them down by a bitter person who can't deal with the fact that his own darling soprano doesn't inspire quite the unqualified veneration he thinks she deserves. Never fear! The magnificent Cheryl will survive all her critics, and - more impressively - her most worshipful partisans.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> It's all a matter of practicality, not principle. If the transition can be made with some harmonic elegance, and if the musical loss is either negligible or, at worst, small enough to be outweighed by the performance it makes possible, then -- no big deal. If it can't be, then one decides, O.K., that singer can't do that role. The ''overall harmonic conception'' is important to the composer's inspiration if it is -- and sometimes it is. But as the composers themselves knew, that takes its place among many other priorities when it comes down to what happens on the individual night, and sometimes it can yield.


A sensible summation. Thanks.


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Seattleoperafan said:


> As for the keys: since the Lucia arias have traditionally been sung in lower keys and very high notes have been added at their conclusions, it has been easy for many to assume that the high notes are the reason for the transpositions. But history does not bear this out; the Lucia arias were being sung (and published) in the familiar transpositions within a decade of the opera's premiere, long before the ultrahigh added notes became standard.
> The evidentiary record, for those who enjoy poring through it, is clear that as late as the turn of the expiring century, more Lucias sang the role without high E flats than with. And yet they were singing in the lower keys. It is much more a matter of the usual reason for transposition: general vocal ''fit'' between singer and music. The gradual fossilization of certain ''standard'' interpolations -- in this opera and in many others -- was a phenomenon of the post-World War I period, as the few surviving operas from the age of improvisation were equipped for life in an operatic environment no longer hospitable to improvisation.
> 
> So everybody should lighten up. Wagner was the most continuous and least transposable of opera composers (and he sensibly avoided unusual high notes, probably in part for that reason); yet even Wagner accepted transpositions for the abandoned first production of ''Tristan,'' and certain transpositions have functioned well enough in his scores. Helen Traubel always sang Brunnhilde's Battle Cry in B flat, not B. At Bayreuth itself, Senta's Ballade was transposed upward for the young voice of Anja Silja (just as the little aria of Mozart's Masetto is usually transposed up for the youngish baritones who sing the part).
> ...



This all makes sense and I can't really say why some transpositions bother me more than others. I once worked with a wonderfully talented pianist and musical director, who hated transposition and more than once he would say, "Darling, I change performers rather than keys," though no doubt if that performer happened to be quite famous he would of course make whatever transposition they required.

I don't like the downward transposition in the recitative before _Sempre libera_, but I'll accept it for Ponselle, who still executes the coloratura brilliantly more than for Tebaldi, who doesn't. Nor do I like it when the tenor singing Manrico makes a downward transposition so he can sing a top note that Verdi didn't even write. 

I went to a performance of Madama Butterfy recently at Covent Garden, with a soprano who not only ducked the top D at her entrance (it's optional after all and many great Butteflies don't sing it) but, more seriously didn't even sing the top C at the end of the love duet, which was a more serious omission. Should they have made a downward transposition somewhere? Maybe, but then maybe the tenor objected.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Tsaraslondon said:


> Nor do I like it when the tenor singing Manrico makes a downward transposition so he can sing a top note that Verdi didn't even write.


Of course many people virtually live for those high notes, written or not. Personally, the only thing about "Di quella pira" that interests me is the difficulty most tenors have in executing the little notes. High notes, key of B or key of C ... I don't care. I want my semiquavers.


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> ... I don't care. I want my semiquavers.


The soprano Valerie Masterson once quipped that conductor Sir Charles Mackerras complained about his singers missing a hemi-demis-semi quaver here and there in a *Julius Caesar* they had just sung together.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MAS said:


> The soprano Valerie Masterson once quipped that conductor Sir Charles Mackerras complained about his singers missing a hemi-demis-semi quaver here and there in a *Julius Caesar* they had just sung together.


I can never remember which notes are hemis, demis, semis and so on. We don't generally use those terms on this side of the Atlantic, but I find them amusing.


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I can never remember which notes are hemis, demis, semis and so on. We don't generally use those terms on this side of the Atlantic, but I find them amusing.


I’m not sure I’d recognize eighth, sixteenth and 32nd notes by just hearing them, either!


----------



## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

It's easy, just remember that:
1/16th = semiquaver
1/32nd = demisemiquaver
1/64th = either a hemidemisemiquaver or semidemisemiquaver
1/128th = semihemidemisemiquaver.

Got it?


----------



## MAS (Apr 15, 2015)

Becca said:


> It's easy, just remember that:
> 1/16th = semiquaver
> 1/32nd = demisemiquaver
> 1/64th = either a hemidemisemiquaver or semidemisemiquaver
> ...


I done did (I think!) 😂


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Becca said:


> It's easy, just remember that:
> 1/16th = semiquaver
> 1/32nd = demisemiquaver
> 1/64th = either a hemidemisemiquaver or semidemisemiquaver
> ...


Easy peasy. Now why don't we distinguish vocal wobbles in a similar way? Wobble, semiwobble, demisemiwobble, etc.? There are plenty of singers at all levels of deterioration.


----------



## ColdGenius (9 mo ago)

What are you talking about? I feel as if I'm in nuclear physics congress.


----------



## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Easy peasy. Now why don't we distinguish vocal wobbles in a similar way? Wobble, semiwobble, demisemiwobble, etc.? There are plenty of singers at all levels of deterioration.


How would you rate this on the Richter Scale?


----------



## Op.123 (Mar 25, 2013)

hammeredklavier said:


> How would you rate this on the Richter Scale?


Sounds like a wobble-breve to me


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

hammeredklavier said:


> How would you rate this on the Richter Scale?


My instruments aren't up to measuring that precisely, but it's the sort of lateral shaking activity typical of the Andreas Schager fault.


----------

