Voice types

Every voice has its range, but voices are not all different from one another. They group into types, and the name of each type tells the composer, the conductor and the singer which notes that voice reaches and what colour it has.

Lacerda classifies human voices in two ways: by age, into children's and adult voices, and by sex, into female and male voices (Lacerda 1966, ch. XLI).

Children's voices

Girls' and boys' voices show no noticeable musical difference between them. So both are grouped under a single name, children's voices. Their range normally runs from middle C to the E in the fourth space of the treble staff (Lacerda 1966, ch. XLI):

Hear the passage

The difference comes with adolescence, when boys' voices change and drop.

Adult voices: three female and three male

Adult voices divide into three female and three male types, set apart by differences of timbre and of range (Lacerda 1966, ch. XLI). From highest to lowest:

Female voices	Male voices
soprano	tenor
mezzo-soprano	baritone
contralto	bass

Both things count. Range says how far the voice goes; timbre says how it sounds. A mezzo-soprano and a soprano reach many of the same notes, but the mezzo sounds darker and fuller in the low register, and that, as much as the extreme notes, defines the type.

The range of each voice

These are the ranges of the adult voices in Lacerda's chart. The female voices, in treble clef, from top to bottom, soprano, mezzo-soprano and contralto:

Hear the passage

The male voices, in bass clef, tenor, baritone and bass:

Hear the passage

Lacerda gives a rule for remembering the whole chart knowing only the soprano's range (Lacerda 1966, ch. XLI):

1. each voice's range spans an octave and a fifth;
2. the mezzo-soprano's range starts a third below the soprano's, and the contralto's a third below the mezzo's;
3. the male ranges repeat the female ones an octave lower.

With the rule, the soprano, from C to G, gives all the others: the mezzo-soprano, from A to E; the contralto, from F to C; and the three male voices, the same notes an octave lower.

The middle register

Not every note in the range comes out equally easily. There is a stretch, usually an octave, that the voice sings most comfortably, and that stretch is the middle register (Lacerda 1966, ch. XLI). The soprano's runs from E to the E an octave above:

Hear the passage

In Lacerda's chart each voice's middle register follows the same rule as the ranges: a third lower from one voice to the next, and an octave lower for the male voices. It is the stretch where a melody written for that voice should spend most of its time. And the range is not fixed: a singer who studies vocal technique can extend it (Lacerda 1966, ch. XLI).

The subdivisions of opera

Opera divides voices further, and that division concerns the character of the voice more than its range. A tenor whose voice suits lyrical passages is a lyric tenor; another, better suited to dramatic passages, is a dramatic tenor (Lacerda 1966, ch. XLI). The most frequent subdivisions are:

Voice	Subdivisions
soprano	light, lyric, dramatic
tenor	lyric, dramatic
bass	cantante, buffo (comic), profundo

A light or coloratura soprano has a nimble voice made for fast scales and very high notes; a dramatic soprano has a heavier voice, able to cut through a large orchestra. The two may have similar ranges and sing completely different roles.

Which clef each voice is written in

Once, each voice type had its own clef, chosen so its range fitted inside the five lines without ledger lines. Today only two are used (Lacerda 1966, ch. XLI):

• treble clef for the female voices;
• bass clef for the baritone and the bass;
• the tenor is also written in treble clef, but the notes sound an octave lower than written. That clef sometimes carries a small 8 underneath to make this plain.

Six voices or four?

Blatter counts voices another way. He divides them into four classes, by range and colour: soprano, the higher voices of women and children; alto (contralto), the lower voices of women and children; tenor, the higher men's voices; and bass, the lower men's voices. It is the distribution abbreviated SATB (Blatter 2007, part 4, art. 1).

The two counts do not contradict each other; they answer different questions.

• Lacerda's describes singers: what type of voice a person has, with mezzo-soprano and baritone as types of their own, and children as a separate group.
• Blatter's describes parts: the four lines of choral or four-part writing. A mezzo-soprano sings the soprano or the alto part, as the choir needs; a baritone, the tenor or the bass part; and children divide between soprano and alto.

Blatter adds a caveat that holds for both: many voices do not let themselves be classified so easily, because of their unique properties (Blatter 2007, part 4, art. 1). The classification is a map, and a real voice may fall between two squares.

What comes next

Voice types are the pieces a choir is built from. The mixed four-part choir is exactly where Lacerda's six voices become Blatter's four parts.