6 ms·
A shortage of tenors
https://archive.ph/VwVpU https://archive.ph/VwVpU
- giardini 9mo ago[dead]
- crazygringo 9mo agoThere have never been enough tenors anywhere, as the article acknowledges. It's not clear what the evidence is that the problem is getting worse though? Or why it would be?
- klooney 9mo agoDeclining popularity among men
- klipt 9mo agoThen why no shortage of basses?
- mqus 9mo agoAs the article states, its usually 2:1 women to men so there is also a kind of shortage of basses, its just not as severe.
- moomin 9mo agoI can't really recommend joining a choir as a strategy for meeting women but... when I did choir I did alright.
- bluGill 9mo agoI know many women who admit they "fall in love" anytime they hear a low bass. They might marry a tenor and never cheat on them, but every time their hear a low bass their heart flutters. Men know/see this and so tenors become less interested since their higher voices don't get the women (there are plenty of other ways they have). I don't know how much this is a factor, but...
- lbeckman314 9mo agoThis is now my favorite benign conspiracy/cause of the lack of tenors! Damn those big-voiced basses — they're stealing all our love interests :p
- moomin 9mo ago"average bass steals all the love interests" factoid actually just statistical error. average bass steals 0 love interests per year. John Tomlinson, who steals 10,000 paramours per year, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
- nozzlegear 9mo agoAnecdotal I guess, but when I was in a high school choir, I loathed that my teacher assigned me to the tenor section. It did not fit with the image of myself that the high school version of me held in my head; "a man should be a baritone or bass after puberty!" I liked choir and stayed in it for all four years, but I was never particularly good at it so what the hell did I know anyway.
- pclmulqdq 9mo agoAs a professional-level baritone who has sung tenor parts quite a lot, there is a shortage of every low voice type (directors are often conflicted when I make the offer to sing tenor). People who can produce a chorally-acceptable A or Bb are in the shortest supply, though. It's getting worse as the amateur singing circuit gets smaller and the gender ratio gets more skewed. Amateur-level choirs tend to have a lot more basses than tenors because it is easier to sing bass without effort spent on vocal training.
- vintermann 9mo agoI am an amateur baritone, in school I was used for tenor parts because of course there was a shortage and I had good enough technique that I could sing tenor parts, if not well. Now, I sing second bass for a men's choir, because that was what they were missing. I think all not in-the-middle voices are scarce.
- delecti 9mo agoTenor parts are more difficult, technically speaking, and voices capable of the tenor range are rarer. So any given man joining a choir can more likely manage the bass range, and if they can, they can almost certainly manage the bass parts. FTA: > When men do join singing groups, they often avoid the tenor section. The tenor voice is “a cultivated sound”, says John Potter, author of a book on the subject. A man with no vocal training is more likely to have the range of a baritone (a high bass). It does not help that the tenor voice is associated with operatic stars such as Luciano Pavarotti, who could powerfully sing high notes that no amateur can easily reach. And the tenor line in classical choral music can be difficult, with many unexpected notes and alarming leaps.
- jasonfarnon 9mo ago" voices capable of the tenor range are rarer." surely a real bass is rarer? I just assume, as someone completely musically inept, based on listening to the vocal groups on the radio, that a bass contributes less, and can be omitted more easily?
- pclmulqdq 9mo agoPeople at the extreme ends of the spectrum of range are rarer and people in the middle of the range are more common. As it stands, choral bass parts fit better into untrained voices than choral tenor parts. A typical baritone (middle range male voice) can sing choral bass parts well enough, but will find tenor parts relatively strenuous.
- bluGill 9mo agoThere is only so much time in a day. Often singing in choir conflicts with playing sports because you have concerts and games on the same nights, so you have to make a choice. There are also schedule pressures - if you are going to get into college you nearly have to take math, English, science, and foreign language classes beyond what your school demands and that forces hard choices if there even is a class period free (don't forget you might be taking band to take up that space) Finally, there are a lot of bad teachers. They are so interested in winning competition and teaching perfection - but for most music will never be anything other than a fun hobby and so they are getting the wrong teaching which turns many students off. I've seen a lot of award winning school choirs, and the next town over with the same number of students has twice the students in choir despite not winning awards - communities need to pick and often don't realize this.
- Sharlin 9mo agoBut none of that is particular to tenors.
- RupertSalt 9mo agoIn my secular chorus, we may have two main performances per season, but we rehearsed together for 2 hours every single week for months. We purchased polo shirts, and there was a dress code. Our dues covered operating costs and sheet music. Being a civic group for casual singers, our costs were kept low, but many choirs travel, double down on the costumes, and many people find it requires a high level of dedication, free time, and independent wealth. It is no coincidence that many members are retirees! In church, a lector could prepare for 30 minutes and have a 5 minute speaking part at the Mass. The ushers and EMHCs also have part-time gigs. While altar servers are on duty for the entire service, they do not need to rehearse every single week. A church choir may serve for one or more weekend services, plus the 90-120 minute weekly rehearsals, and that's not counting holy days, Easter, Christmas. If you take a role as cantor, director, or piano/organ, expect to become indispensable! Some families just found it easier to join en masse so they could stay together. Some chorus members are also secretly voice coaches, so if you protest "but I can't sing tenor" they may lovingly tackle you and sell you a package of private lessons. I found it difficult to serve in any other ministry alongside choir, and you may find it difficult to hold down a job and/or family alongside a secular chorus role. As I said, high demand/great rewards.
- IsTom 9mo agoN=1 and not singing in a choir, I could probably sing tenor parts if I trained, but to me bass feels more satisfying, doubly so going low with throat singing.
- moomin 9mo agoI suspect it's become a problem the moment it became a primarily amateur endeavor. There's enough tenors when you can pay.
- vintermann 9mo agoChoirs have always been primarily unpaid. Not very many people or institutions can afford to pay a 50-man choir.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoOn the point of there always being a shortage of tenors, these charts are interesting: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Frequency-distribution-of-the-fundamental-frequency-F-0-for-male-and-female-talkers-over_fig2_260543129 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Frequency-distribution-o... The shape of the distribution has a much longer tail for women than men, on the high pitch side.
- bsder 9mo agoIt looks weird because the frequency is plotted linearly instead of logarithmically like our ears are sensitive to. When plotted in a log scale for the X axis, the distributions look correct.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoHmm good point
- thousand_nights 9mo agoi think it's very hard to sing all the way up to the high C5 as a male, this doesn't surprise me at all
- jasonfarnon 9mo ago"Or why it would be?" In my part of the world, it's definitely declining church attendance. If you don't have a huge population of young boys and girls trained in those choirs, and instead the population were self-selecting into voice training, I would definitely expect a serious sex imbalance.
- vintermann 9mo agoWhat part of the world, may I ask? I've found some excellent vocal groups from parts of Asia not known for being especially Christian, but it seems that choral/a cappella music is very connected to Christianity there too. I believe church attendance is getting more gendered too, with a shortage of men.
- jasonfarnon 9mo agoI'm in Houston. I have seen nice a cappella from the Philippines but that must not be what you have in mind, large Christian population there. Where were yours from? From what I've seen of African church singing, they were always mostly female.
- throw0101a 9mo agoCan't wait for Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast have a supply chain episode on this topic. :)
- jawns 9mo agoThe choral world has survived despite a longtime shortage of castrati. I'm sure they'll figure something out. In all seriousness, SATB is mostly a constraint because of how choral composers write their music, not because good music demands it. You can produce beautiful music without all four voice parts being equally represented.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoCastrati never mattered for choruses - you just use a large choir of boys. They were important for opera/theater, where you need a single voice with enough power.
- pclmulqdq 9mo agoI compose music once in a while. I'm now trying to write more in a texture like SSAATB if I want amateurs to sing the music, but it's not as easy to write as SATB or SSAATTBB music.
- isaacimagine 9mo agoI read this as "a shortage of tensors" and was curious as to the latest chicanery. But yeah tenors right -- matches my experience.
- moomin 9mo agoGiven that it's the economist, it could have been about illiquidity in the bond markets.
- arduanika 9mo agoWorrying!
- olliepro 9mo agoTensors are in no shortage nowadays. I did read this a tensors though and got a good laugh.
- ziml77 9mo agoThe site is called The Economist so I thought this was going to be about not having enough choices for tenor on loans and similar contracts.
- CGMthrowaway 9mo agoAnd here I read the word correctly, yet thought it was going to be about bonds, and the rise of 50- and 100-year maturities. I am a singer btw
- twic 9mo agoI assumed it meant interest rate swap tenors. We need liquidity at the six year point!
- softwaredoug 9mo agoThe tenor of the conversation is different than you expected?
- projektfu 9mo agoMight explain the strange weather.
- ummonk 9mo agoOne of my annoyances is that most male pop singing is at too high a range for normal baritone men without vocal training to sing along. I actually find it easier to sing along to female pop songs (by singing an octave lower) than to male pop songs.
- wintermutestwin 9mo agoOn the Song Exploder podcast, Take on Me episode, the artist talks about the producer saying that a male falsetto was a “make this song a hit” button…
- jasonfarnon 9mo agodoesn't he go really low in that song too? i thought what made that song special was the range in that little chorus.
- rjh29 9mo agoYes. Ironically the non-falsetto portion (low and high notes, particularly belted in the last chorus) is much harder than the falsetto note. Most singers can do the falsetto note. But for whatever reason that impresses people more.
- RupertSalt 9mo agoWhat does "easy" and "hard" mean? Approaching the range? Matching the pitch? Sustaining it for a time? There are not many tasks that can be cut-and-dried as universally "easy"/"hard". "The Star Spangled Banner" is a more challenging melody because of its wide range. Also, because it's often sung solo, with minimal accompaniment, to huge crowds. If I were singing falsetto notes, I could probably launch into the range, but could I match pitch and harmonize without AutoTune?
- rjh29 9mo agoThe Take On Me chorus has a two octave range in full voice (A2 to A4) and a falsetto at E5. I think it's harder to find people who can sing that chorus A2-A4 consistently than to find people who can squeak out a falsetto at E5. Yet the falsetto is more "impressive". I guess I could be biased because I find it easy and not everyone finds reinforced falsetto easy. But for example Bohemian's Rhapsody famous falsetto high note is Bb5, a full half-octave higher.
- FarmerPotato 9mo agoThere’s been an alto shortage for many, many years. Maybe for similar reasons.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- RupertSalt 9mo agoOur SATB chorus was about 75 strong, with about 2 women who could sing tenor. They were highly valued, especially in the limited membership of a women’s barbershop ensemble. If you’re male and you can sing anything or play a pipe organ, you are worth your weight in gold to the right church. Some of my favorite vocalists are female contraltos, because I can sing in their range. Choral work is the most demanding volunteer job I ever had. It’s also exhilarating, highly social, and rewarding. No regrets!
- j_bum 9mo agoI’d love to play organ with a choir group. But I am not religious, so it feels wrong.
- RupertSalt 9mo agoI understand completely — doctrinal disagreement keeps me out of men’s choirs, musical theatre, and men‘s gyms, too!
- colanderman 9mo agoYou may find a good fit at a UU church.
- projektfu 9mo agoMy french horn teacher was a new-age "recovering Catholic"[1] and a paid singer for a couple Protestant churches. A job is a job. Personally, I am an atheist but I find a lot of devotional music to be well written and fun to sing, and I enjoy singing it in choir, even if I don't literally believe the words I'm singing. In any event, you can play organ with a community choir, especially if you can also play piano. We pay our accompanists. 1. i.e. no longer Christian
- cafard 9mo agoAn acquaintance made some money as cantor to a synagogue around here. He was not Jewish, but I gather that the combination of singing and getting paid felt just fine.
- 9mo ago
- loire280 9mo agoI sing tenor in a university choir as an older male community member and we encourage anyone to sing tenor whose voice is low enough. Over 1/3 of our tenors are women and our voices blend very well IMO.
- andrewclunn 9mo agoI can state that (anecdotally) this is true. My range allows me to be placed in various sections as needed, but the vast majority of the time I am asked to sing tenor, for lack of numbers / strong voices to do so.
- hn_acc1 9mo agoIn a former life I was part of a church choir (smallish church, ~140 members, everyone knew everyone). Same guy was running the orchestral band I had been a part of for a long time (trumpet, also had piano background), and they needed members.. A quick tryout and he told me to join the bass section - without taking into account I had a cold that day. I struggled to hit a lot of the notes, but then moved to tenor and easily hit most of the notes, almost being lead tenor for a while. Sure, it was a falsetto, but I could hit high A or C pretty reliably, IIRC. Moved to the west coast (this was great lakes area) and something about the air is different, and while I stayed in choir for a few years, eventually lost the top octave entirely and am now a horrible singer (I used to be ok and could, for example, easily sing Livin' on a Prayer - I can't come close to it now). If I go back to the great lakes area, after a week, my singing voice has improved tremendously, only to lose it when I return. I do miss being able to sing better, but not enough to move back..
- hinkley 9mo agoEvery rocker with a hit song with high notes has to change the song in order to still sing it in concert. Layla, Take on Me, Dream On, Don’t Stop Believin’, etc. If you watch reaction videos from vocal coaches hearing singers for the first time, you will find that they get nervous about the ways singers are tackling parts of their songs, because there are ways to sing that you can do for twenty years, and ways that you can do it that are good for six. Less if you start doing full concerts instead of bar sets or opening act work.
- rjh29 9mo agoI don't think Steve Perry ever pitched down his vocals. IMO there are two types of singer, ones with good technique (due to practice or genetics) who can sing easily, and those who have to really force notes out in the studio (relying on perfect conditions) then pitch down live.
- jasonfarnon 9mo agoI agree he always seemed to me comfortable in that range, on talk shows, etc. The guy from Aerosmith on the other hand I would be surprised if he could match the radio version regularly in concert. As for Layla, I guess I only know the live/mtv unplugged and the original had higher notes?
- acheron 9mo agoI go to local performances of baroque-era and somewhat earlier music regularly. I have noticed on occasion in a small vocal performance that has 2 people per part, occasionally a female contralto is paired with a male tenor. (I don’t know enough to know how that works as far as needing to modify the original parts or not.) Though conversely I’ve also seen a male countertenor paired with a female alto, so maybe it’s just generally “who’s available for this performance” rather than an issue with a general shortage.
- yellowapple 9mo agoI'm no professional choir composer/arranger by any means, but my impression from listening to and reading my fair share of choir music is that there's enough overlap between alto and tenor ranges for them to be able to cross over into one anothers' parts in a pinch. It's pretty rare for a composer to write a song with simultaneous use of the altos' upper range and the tenors' lower range, so there probably wouldn't be much need to rewrite anything to make that work.
- softwaredoug 9mo agoSomeone should make a musician training tool called tenorsflow
- Tangurena2 9mo agoAfter taking university music courses, and then private singing lessons, my observation is that most men learn to pitch their voices into a lower register - in order to sound more manly. Gay men tend to stop pitching their voices downwards and this leads to the perception that gay men use high pitches. Likewise, girls are taught to pitch their voices upwards and lesbian voices seem "mannish" due to stopping to pitch their voices to a higher register. It is my theory that men's natural voice/register is a lot higher and that if boys didn't try to sound macho, there would be a lot more tenors and counter-tenors (which is where my natural singing voice goes - not baritone like I thought it was supposed to be).
- pclmulqdq 9mo agoI doubt this is correct. Women tend to be mezzos and men tend to be baritones entirely based on the structure of their vocal apparatus, not because they are trying to force a sound (with the possible exception of gay men). In most cases, men who are good singers tend to sing high because that is where the demand is (tenors in classical music and also very high pop music), but as they learn to relax their larynx their comfortable range often drops.
- rmunn 9mo agoThe problem is not new, though. The article opens by mentioning a 1926 concert in which the choir asked the audience "If you sing tenor, please join us." The tenor range is relatively rare among men's voices. I'm a high tenor myself; I can routinely sing a G, and I can get up to an A if my voice is in good form. I think I managed a B♭ (Bb if HN strips out the ♭ (flat) Unicode character) once, but it was decades ago so I'm not sure if I'm remembering the arrangement correctly; and choral arrangers rarely ask tenors to sing a B flat since they know so few people can handle it. Pretty sure I've never been able to hit a C, though. (C5, that is; of course I can hit a middle C). But tenors have been in short supply for decades and decades. Every single time I've tried out for a choir, when the choral director hears how high I can sing, I can see some sort of "tell" on his or her face. A smile, a widening of the eyes... I can sightread, too, so I know I'm a shoo-in for any choir (well, any amateur choir at least: I'm not a music professional and wouldn't be able to devote 20+ hours a week to a choir). But I suspect that even if I couldn't sightread at all and had to have my hand held for any new piece, choir directors would grab me anyway, just because of how high my voice can reach if I haven't been abusing it.
- pclmulqdq 9mo agoThe general guidance if you are writing for amateurs is to stop the tenor and soprano sections at their respective "high G" and if you are writing for professionals to avoid going above their B. Amateur choirs will often sing music written for professionals (eg all the masterworks), and you will end up getting A's or Bb's but without expectations that it will sound good.
- snthpy 9mo agoI misread this as "A shortage of tensors" ... disappointed.