# Do You Prefer Lieder Sung In Your Own Vocal Range?



## brotagonist (Jul 11, 2013)

Do you prefer listening to Lieder and art songs that you could sing? What I mean is, do you like to hear them sung in your own vocal range, so that you can sing along with them?

I do. That is not to say that I don't enjoy artists that sing in a range not my own.


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## Figleaf (Jun 10, 2014)

Believe me, nobody wants to hear _me_ sing along with anything! I do occasionally suffer from voice envy- 'I wish I was _her_, with that exact voice'- and some songs really do have such an easy-sounding tessitura, and some singers have such a natural, effortless production that the singer's voice and art almost _seem_, to the mind's ear at least, to be imitable by an untrained amateur with no discernible talent, like myself. It's an illusion, of course: it was said of Bing Crosby that he was so successful because he actually sounded the way men imagine they sound when they sing in the bathtub, and some trained singers also have that sort of effortlessness and immediacy of communication, as if they were singing just for you, or maybe just to themselves, maybe even in the bath! 

Here are two examples of songs whose range seems not too demanding, and which are sung by incredibly winsome, approachable-sounding ladies whose _fach_ (if that word was in use yet) would also be mine, if I had one.  The first song is Gounod's 'Au Rossignol', which I have fantasies of singing, and which I believe is actually singable for an amateur: as indeed it is, in a sense, on this record by Marie de Reszke, a trained singer who never sang professionally, as the wives of aristocratic men of the time generally didn't. I wonder if the intimate quality of the performance is the happy result of singing only in small, private settings.The other song is the famously difficult 'Pur Dicesti' which at least contains no extreme high notes, even though it makes up in trills and roulades what it lacks in the vocal stratosphere- and doesn't Eugenia Mantelli make it sound easy and achievable?! (And only in part by such 'cheats' as singing short phrases, and florid parts on the vowel 'ah'.)


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I make Lemmy from Motorhead sound like Thomas Hampson, so 'nuff said. 

To be honest, I didn't have a bad low-range tenor-ish kinda voice when I was younger which enabled me - within reason - to sing along to some of my rock albums without sending the cat scurrying for cover, but what range and timbre I had back then is now totally shot to the point where I find I can only sing with a slightly raspy and not-particularly tuneful baritone. 

Yes - I really wish I could adequately sing along to even a few classical songs, but in ANY range!


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