Essay: Why is it so hard for my choir to find and keep good tenors?

Choir directors are always short on tenors, and a lot of the time they're short on sopranos too. Finding and keeping people who can handle the high notes is often an issue, both in high schools and adult amateur choirs. This essay will discuss the reasons why there's a problem, and propose some solutions.

From a composer's or arranger's perspective, the problem boils down to statistics, physics, and harmony. I'm going to present the concepts in plain English as much as I can. Most directors of amateur choirs don't have a strong background in all three of those concepts, and among those who do, sometimes it's been a while.

Range, tessitura, and comfort zone

In the context of a singer, the range is the set of notes between and including the lowest note a person can hit, and the highest. The range of a vocal part is measured the same way as a singer's range: from the lowest note to the highest, inclusive. This comfort zone is sometimes called a singer's tessitura. I'm not going to use the German term "fach" to describe the comfort zone because "fach" actually refers to tone quality and flexibility in addition to range. Fach is almost completely irrelevant in choral music.

I'm reluctant to use the term "tessitura" in the context of a singer's comfort zone for the purpose of this article. In the context of a vocal part in a piece of music, the tessitura is the range within which most of the notes fall. That depends on the way the vocal part is written, and it has little or nothing to do with the person singing the role except to serve as a guideline for who should or shouldn't attempt it. So as to not confuse the two concepts by using the same term, in this article I'm going to refer to the singer's tessitura as a comfort zone.

We can classify singers based on their vocal range and comfort zones. The most common divisions for women are soprano (highest) and alto (lowest). In between is the mezzo-soprano. The most common divisions for men are tenor (highest) and bass (lowest). In between is the baritone. Below is a diargam showing reasonable ranges and comfort zones for amateur and professional singers.

At the professional level, there's room for specialization. Solo parts exist for people at both the high and low extremes: countertenors and whistle-register sopranos on the high end; basso-profondos and contraltos on the low end. Operatic parts are sometimes written for bass-baritones and coloratura mezzo-sopranos. These are people who have unusually large ranges but whose comfort zone is in the middle. Generally there's not much specialization at the amateur level.

At the amateur level, especially in choir, there's not much classification and everyone gets lumped into one of the four major groups. The mezzo-soprano and baritone classifications are seldom used except in three-part SAB arrangements where all the male singers sing the baritone line and the range of their part corresponds to the comfort zone of a professional baritone. When more than four parts are needed, the arranger splits one of the parts (generally the soprano) into "first" and "second" parts, with the "first" section singing the higher note and the "second" singing the lower note.

You will notice that amateur soprano and alto parts fall more or less within the range and comfort zone of a professional mezzo-soprano. Similarly, amateur tenor and bass parts correspond to the range and comfort zone of a professional baritone. This is intentional. During the training process, a professional singer's range range and comfort zone expand as a result of training and practice. There's also a selection process: singers with ranges and comfort zones too small for professional work who aren't soloists will be denied professional opportunities and are less likely to continue.

Now that we know what the different categories mean in terms of a singer's range and comfort zone and the part that will be assigned to a choral singer based on the pitch of his or her voice, we can look at other issues. Specifically: why are tenors an endangered species? The answer comes in two parts. The first has to do with the distribution of "high" versus "low" voices in the human population. The second has to do with physics. I'll start with the statistics.

Bell curve distribution of ranges

Many measurable human attributes that vary from person to person, such as height, weight, and IQ, have a characteristic distribution across the population. This means that if you measure a bunch of randomly selected people and graph the rate at which each value occurs, you'll get a characteristic graph shape or "curve". No matter how many times you repeat the experiment, if your sample set is large enough you'll get results that resemble the same characteristic pattern. The technical name for this pattern is "statistical distribution" or "distribution". A number of these distributions are common enough to have special names. One of these is the standard-normal or bell curve distribution.

When drawn on a graph, the standard-normal distribution is a curved line shaped a lot like a bell. We therefore call it a "bell curve". The top of the bell corresponds to the arithmetic mean or average across the entire population. Half the values are below the mean, and half are above. The majority are close to the mean, and the further away you get from the middle, the fewer results there are. Height distributions in adult men or women, for example, are distributed this way. Most people are of fairly average height, several are an inch or two taller or shorter than average, a very few are a foot taller or shorter than others, and one in a million will be a giant.

Vocal ranges in adults happen to follow a standard-normal distribution. There are a very few extremely low basses (basso profondo) and contraltos. At the other extreme there are a very few natural counter-tenors and whistle-register sopranos. The vast majority of adults are right in the middle. Most men are baritones, and most women sing mezzo-soprano. This is why nearly all amateur choral music avoids range extremes. Composers and arrangers who expect their work to be performed by amateur choirs know that, for the most part, they aren't composing and arranging for a hand-picked team of professionals but for whatever group of people have come out to sing because they enjoy it.

There are a few facts of life in an amateur choir. You will always have more female applicants than male applicants. In an adult choir, senior citizens will be over-represented, which is great for tone color but sometimes age limits or lowers people's ranges. Most of the people you end up putting in the soprano and alto sections will be mezzo-sopranos, and most of your "tenors" and "basses" will actually be baritones. Unless you use an audition system of some kind, there's going to be people from all different skill levels. Some may not even be able to read music.

But... you want to perform more challenging repertoire! You need some way to keep the most skilled people in the group, and everyone likes being able to pull off the tough stuff. If you've got a lot of older singers, many of them have a lot of experience, such that they can handle complicated rhythms, unusual harmonies, or polyphonic music in which everyone gets the melody at least some of the time. So you start moving toward the "harder" classical or modern repertoire, and suddenly you realize that tenors are an endangered species.

So why are the tenors dropping off the map? Why tenors specifically, and not, say, a few of those surplus mezzo-sopranos? Part of the answer has to do with the fact the tenor role moved away from the middle of the bell curve which is where all the baritones have their comfort zone. The rest of the answer has to do with the fact that tenors are pushed proportionately harder than any other section in the choir because of how four-part harmony works.

Biology, physics and harmony

A lot of composition and arrangement is simply an acknowledgement of reality. Because of how our bodies are set up, and how our brains operate, humans process sound differently at different frequencies. We aren't elephants or bats, so we can't hear the lowest and highest frequencies. In fact, once you get outside the frequency range we use for normal speech, our ability to hear and identify pitch decreases gradually. As a note gets higher and higher, or lower and lower, it seems quieter to us until we can't hear it at all, even though in reality it's at the same volume it was at before, and the sound can be electronically measured and shown to be at the same volume. This isn't due to socialization or individual preference. It's in the biology of the human ear.

If you graph the change in electrical current in a microphone when a person is singing into it, you will see that each person has his or her own particular waveform, and a different waveform for each vowel shape. The primary wave is the frequency that corresponds to the note the singer is making. The rest of the detail in the waveform is from harmonic or overtone frequencies that ride on top of the primary wave. The lower a singer goes range-wise, the more of these harmonics or overtones exist and the "darker" the sound becomes. The higher a singer goes, the "lighter" or "cleaner" the sound becomes because the overtones gradually disappear. If you look at the corresponding graph, the note becomes smoother and the wave starts to approach a pure sine wave.

This is one of the reasons why close intervals in the bass clef sound "muddy" when played together but the same interval or tone cluster played high up on the treble clef sounds fine. The primary notes may be compatible, but the overtones are not. Two octaves higher, there are fewer competing overtones so the close harmony sounds nice. Good arrangers know this and instinctively make harmonic selections so as to maintain at least a fourth to a fifth between parts in the bass clef, while preferring intervals of less than a sixth in the treble clef. This is not a rule that's carved in stone, and there are sometimes good reasons to break it, although if you do it in a harmony class you'll be penalized.

When singing (or trying to sing) a low note, if we're below our individual comfort zones we can't put a lot of volume behind the note and the note will be quiet and weak. It's just impossible to make the larynx vibrate slowly enough while pushing enough air. Speed up the air to make more volume, and we lose the note. To make matters worse, the lower we go, the more of our energy gets used up making all those beautiful, dark overtones and it leaves less available for the primary note. We don't magically get more air, more power, or more surface area to work with.

At the high end, a singer's tendency is to become louder. The sound seems to cut through the rest of the harmonic texture a bit, because there are fewer overtones and more of the force behind the sound is going into making the primary note. So when a bass singer hits a note at the bottom of his range, and a tenor hits a note at the top of his, the bass will be able to bring far less volume to the note. Even if the tenor backs off and sings as quietly as possible so that both he and the bass are measurably singing at the same volume, the tenor will still sound louder. Why? Because even though he and the bass are making the same amount of noise, more of the tenor's energy is going into the primary note.

So, given a group of ten male singers, a choir director might have one or two men who are basses, one or two who are natural tenors, and six baritones. Given that part of the director's goal is to produce a balanced sound across the choir, where will the director put the majority of those baritones? If you said "in the bass section", go to the front or the class! It takes two to three amateur bass singers to balance out one average amateur tenor. Not only are most of the amateur "bass" singers actually baritones, but the amateur singers who are true basses don't have the kind of training or skill to bring the volume on the low notes the way a professional can.

Up in the treble clef where the ladies hang out, there's far less of a problem because the altos and sopranos are generally singing close intervals. This means they're generally within their comfort zones. The roles really aren't as physically challenging range-wise especially for amateur repertoire, and they seldom if ever visit the extremes of their ranges except as soloists.

Next we must consider the way the human mind process music and sound. Not all notes have the same effect on us, especially when other notes are played at the same time.

First, the human brain tends to interpret any given chord in the context of the lowest note, unless there's a good physical, mathematical, or contextual reason to do otherwise. If you want to dig into the math and physics behind this, read "Fundamentals Of Composition" by Paul Hindemith. In a nutshell, a root played or sung in the bass will anchor a chord. It sounds particularly good to anchor the chord that way when the last chord is the resolution of a cadence. So, for resolutions, composers who write four-part harmony generally put the root of the chord in the bass, unless for variety they want to use the fifth. The third (or seventh, or ninth, or any other color note) is seldom harmonically useful in the bass unless the basses are singing a walking line or counterpoint, which doesn't happen much in amateur repertoire.

The human brain also emphasizes the highest note in a chord. This is one reason sopranos are so often given the melody line. Even if a note is not part of the melody, the higher it is in the chord voicing the more emphasis it receives. Whereas the root and fifth can be repeated by multiple voices, the third, seventh, ninth, or added second or fourth are "color notes" which need only be repeated once in each chord. The higher the color note is placed in the chord voicing, the more emphasis it gets. In fact, when the color note is in the bass, it's overpowered by the higher notes. This is why first inversions of major chords are so seldom used, and root and second inversions dominate.

Given these two basic facts of life, bass singers get a lot of roots and fifths, primarily roots. Sopranos get the melody line. This leaves two parts unaccounted for: the tenor and the alto. The arranger must fit the remaining notes in to the alto and tenor parts. There are a variety of other factors to consider: not making the melodic lines cross each other, putting the next note as close to the previous note as possible, avoiding weird, non-intuitive jumps wherever possible, and generally making it easy on the singers.

Once all these other factors are taken into account, the arranger's solution for most 4-part harmony is to pick a key that avoids or minimizes the time spent on an amateur soprano's bridge or passagio. The bass then gets the roots and some of the fifths, the alto gets the color notes if they're not part of the soprano's melody, and the fifths otherwise. The tenor gets whatever's left over, provided that it's at least a fifth above whatever the basses are singing, and usually it's up more than an octave. In fact, if you pick up a piece of music written for a 4-part amateur choir, you'll see that nearly all the tenor parts are written a full third above the soprano parts.

Just because men don't have bridges doesn't mean high notes are less physically strenuous. Yet in optimizing the music to best fit reality, the composer and arranger often saddle the tenor with the most difficult parts to sing. This will make a middle to high baritone even less likely to try a tenor part in a choir, and it makes the tenor section even harder to fill.

The leader's perspective

Ideally, a singer will get parts with a range that matches or falls within his or her own, and a tessitura that falls within his or her comfort zone. Yet a singer with a broad enough range often has a broader comfort zone as well, so he or she can sometimes sing more than one role. A contralto can easily sing most choral tenor parts, and when a director has too many altos already the pressure to use some of them as tenors is overwhelming. In fact, many university choirs and music competitions forbid women to sing tenor parts, not out of sexism, but because the risk of injury is so much higher when a singer, particularly a young singer, sings consistently outside his or her comfort zone.

So what's a choir director to do? Many options exist. Try some of these out.

• Select only the easiest amateur music, so that all the parts will be accessible and people can be moved between soprano and alto or tenor and bass easily. Of course, that won't win you any competitions. Nor will it keep your best singers interested in the challenge.
• If you've got a classical choir, open your music history book and find some composers who worked directly for wealthy patrons who were also amateur musicians. One of the best such examples is Mozart. Even his operatic work (except for some of his showpiece arias such as the Queen Of The Night's arias) is written to be performed by normal people. Mozart was a realist. He knew he wouldn't be employed long, or often, if he didn't showcase the boss, or the boss's niece, or the boss's best friend, in the best possible way. So unlike Beethoven, who at the end of his career was known for making unreasonable technical demands on musicians so as to stretch their skills to do full justice to his musical vision, Mozart mostly wrote for the people he had. Dig up some obscure work by Mozart, or by composers like him, and have fun.
• Find music that is more challenging for reasons that don't involve range. If you have a classical choir, select some Baroque contrapuntal music that forces each section to carry the melody. If you have a gospel choir, pick simple arrangements but challenge your best singers with solos that let them show off whatever aspects of their voices are appropriate. If you have a small group, try some madrigals or unaccompanied pieces and make each section work on its tuning and blending. Try jazz or modern works that have unusual harmonies or rhythms. Explore some world music from traditions that use different time signatures.

If there's a piece that you absolutely must perform for one reason or other, and if that piece is torturing the tenors, you have the option of rearranging it. Here are things to consider.

• When the tenor and soprano parts are too high, try transposing the whole piece down a third. If that makes the bass line too low, odds are there was a lot of space between tenor and bass to start with, so bring the bass line up an octave and you might have something viable.
• Transpose the piece down by a third, or even more than a third, drop the bass part completely and have all the men sing what used to be the tenor line. This is a quick and dirty SAB rearrangement that will work if the music has piano or other accompaniment. Make sure the accompanist emphasizes the root in the bass, because the bass players won't be doing it any more.
• Consider a SAB arrangement instead of a SATB arrangement when you buy the music. Many pieces are available in more than one arrangement, and if someone else has already invested the effort to make a good SAB arrangement, why not buy that one instead?
• If you have reason to keep the SATB arrangement and only a few notes are offensive, cut them out. Change each offending note to another one in the same chord. Duplicate notes are harmonically expendable. You can nearly always afford to lose the fifth out of the chord, and you can shuffle the other parts around to cover all the notes in the chord at least once. Even if you're making the bass player sing something besides a root or a fifth, if you've already established the key of the song you can afford to leave the root alone and stop reinforcing it once in a while. Try not to do it at the end of a cadence, particularly not the last one in the song. But otherwise it'll sound all right.
• Don't worry about shuffling notes around. Do it as much as you need to. Don't worry about following THE RULES you were probably taught in harmony or counterpoint class, such as the one about avoiding parallel perfect fifths. Most of those arguments are based on the physics of different instruments than what you have now. Avoiding perfect fifths "because they sound bad" is an argument that makes sense on the pipe organ. Yet, as any electric guitarist knows, parallel perfect fifths (otherwise known as power chords) are mandatory. Even if the so-called rules were valid for all vocal arrangements, if someone criticizes you for doing it, who do they think they are? Bach? Because Bach broke the rules sometimes too, even his own rules, when the needs of the music demanded that he do so. What's good enough for Bach ought to be good enough for anyone tempted to criticize your arrangement. As long as it works and sounds good in performance, you've done your job.