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The Glory of the Human Voice - We hear voices.
The human voice in every form, song, speach, screaming, whispering, purring, overtones, tones from the larynx, traditional, experimental, popular, unknown, undiscovered ... a subjective selection.
The ancient Greeks heard voices. The Homeric epics are full of instances of people guided in their thoughts and actions by an internal voice which they respond to automatically. This suggests a people... not fully exercising what we would consider free will of rational judgement. As with most of us, there is a conversation going on in their heads, but it is not with themselves. Jaynes calls this distant mental landscape the "bicameral mind", and claims that, prior to the transition period of the Greeks, all ancient cultures were not fully conscious as we know it. In other words they possessed many Gods. Today we are suspicious of persons exhibiting such behaviors, forgetting that the term 'hearing' refers to a kind of 'obedience' (the Latin roots of the word are ob and audrie, of 'to hear facing someone’)... (Bill Viola, The Sound of One Line Scanning)
Alessandro Moreschi
The only castrato ever recorded was Alessandro Moreschi. He was a menber of the Papal Choir of the Sistine Chapel which played a major role in forming the tradition of castration. In the 16th century Pope Sixtus V. banned women from the stage. This not only applied to the Vatican but also effected the operas that were developed in the first part of the 17th century. Monteverdi, Mozart, Gluck, Handel - they all composed for these singers. For many years it was the highest goal to be admitted into the Papal Choir. Although castration was officially forbidden, it was accepted by the church, and many families saw it as a way out of poverty. In the 18th century the famous eunuchs on the opera stages were worshiped to an almost hysterical degree. In the following century they became almost nonexistent and in 1870 were finally forbidden. At this time Moreschi was 12 years old and was probably the last of his kind. His 17 recordings from between 1902 and 1904 were for the Gramophone Company and copies are extremely rare. Moreschi who was later director of the choir died forgotten in 1922.
Florence Foster Jenkins
On Oktober 25th 1944 one of the most bizarre personalities of the musical world gave a concert in New York's Carnegie Hall: Florence Foster Jenkins. She had rented the hall herself and it was soon sold. Florence was a legend in her own time but to call her a singer would be misleading. An enthusiast that had to bring her love for music to public expression, but whose joy of song went beyond her ability. Very excentric in her performances, she was also well-known for her clothing which she designed herself (often with feathers and wings). Very self-confident Florence was determined to perform annually for the public in New York, most of the time in smaller clubs that she had founded herself. Characeristic is the anecdote that she presented the guilty party of an automobile accident with a box of cigars since she could sing a higher F than ever before after the incident. One month and one day after her performance at Carnegie Hall Florence Foster Jenkins died at the age of 72.
Overtones
In the last years overtone singing has been one of the favorite topics of the esoteric boom. Overtones are created when one or more tones resonate in combination with one base tone. Here though we are not referring to murmering esoterics but rather to the earthrooted tradition of Central Asian Peoples, more specifically those of the Mongolians or the people from Tuva. The Tuva are a Southern Siberian Turk group whose region lies between the former USSR and Outer Mongolia. Here overtone song is alive like nowhere else. Unlike the Mongolians who generally work the overtones into their tunes, one finds songs by the Tuva evokink archaic forms in which pure tones and sounds are in direct contact with nature. Even today there is the technique of standing at a certain angle to the wind in order to mix ones own sound homogeneously with the wind (an effect similar to blowing over the opening of a bottle). The music that results is indescribeable and no one can escape its beauty.
The Mongolians know six different techniques for creating overtones. Even in the Tibetan Buddist song this tradition exists in a simple form. Almost unheard of is the only European tradition of overtone song on Sardinia, the solo plus trio su tenore form of song.
Inuit
The Inuit that live in the Northeastern part of Canada have a game called katajjaq (the Inuit are eskimos but they regard this term as insulting). For this game two women sit across from one another and sing. Singing is actually not the correct expression - rhythmic motifs are built from vocal and silent inhilation and exhilation, text does not appear. In this game the object is to see who can last longer. Whoever is out of breath first or breaks out in laughter, which is often the case, looses. This type of throat-singing is only found among the Inuit.
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