This week’s theme is…Falsetto Bros! It’s good to be a man 🙂 Male singers possess a major difference in comparison to females: a falsetto range. It’s like a magical third zone of vocal timbre that allows men to soar like chirpy birds above their more commonly used tenor and baritone registers. I love to sing in my falsetto register. I often experience an enchanting and lyrical freedom up there that I don’t experience in the lower tessituras. Across the years, and in different musical cultures, many male singers have discovered the same thing, and have worked to cultivate performing voices through their falsetto ranges, often grappling in some way to reconcile their masculinity with the feminine associations of their chosen (or determined) voice. This week we look at some such gentlemen.
Falsetto Bros, Day 5 – “Hymn” from Akhnaten by Philip Glass
The superstar castrati ruled the leading roles of Italian operas produced throughout Europe in the 1600s and 1700s. They made their mark on opera from its very birth, which was around 1600 in Florence (with significant contributions from the astronomer Galileo’s father, Vincenzo). The new art form caught on like wildfire and within a century had swept through every major city in Italy, assuming distinctive forms in each one, and then beyond its borders into other lands where creative musicians sought to imitate the Italian models. It is more or less certain that every Italian opera penned during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was written with a castrato in mind for the lead male role. This is true of Handel’s 40 some, Vivaldi’s 80 or so, Scarlatti’s 50, and even a couple of Mozart’s, along with those of countless other lesser-known Baroque composers. They were everywhere in Italy, and also heard frequently in the German lands. Only the French showed a marked distaste for the castrati, electing instead to give their prime roles to haute-contres, a kind of high tenor singer.
As much as operatic audiences and ecclesiastical choirs loved their castrati, it was a conflicted industry, fraught with shady business practices, ongoing controversy, and a collective shame on the part of the Italians for regularly carrying out the painful and psychologically injurious mutilations necessary to produce these bizarre and wonderful creatures who brought to life such stunning vocal performances. Between 1589, when Pope Sixtus V first permitted castrati to sing in Vatican choirs, and 1903, when Pope Pius X finally banned them from the papal chapel, the debate assumed theological dimensions within the Church as bishops pondered whether it was worse to castrate boys or have women violate biblical mandate and sing in church, ultimately ruling against the, by then, three centuries-old custom that struck so many along the way as a barbaric violation of nature.
But by then the castrati had made their mark on the nature of European dramatic music. While it may seem counterintuitive to portray heroic leading men with a high singer, the range is more rugged and masculine than is often acknowledged (see this post for an exploration of that idea in a different style of music) and it’s actually easier to get used to male characters with female voices than you might think. Anyone who studies the history of opera to a serious extent may develop a taste for it and find it easier and easier to imagine a heroic and reflective male lead with the voice of an alto or soprano. One such opera enthusiast is Philip Glass, a titanic figure of the modern minimalist style of music. For more on another minimalist master, see this post. Between 1975 and 1983 he composed three operas, each about a man who changed the world: Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi and Pharaoh Amenhotep IV. The operas are called Einstein on the Beach, Satyagraha, and Akhnaten respectively. Taken together they have come to be known as the “Portrait Trilogy”, as in portraits of the three men, and they came from a time in Glass’ career during which he was softening the austere sensibility of his early experimental music into a broader, more eclectic, and more audience-friendly style which he came to comfortably inhabit during the 1980s and beyond. If you listen to those three operas in the chronological order of their composition you can hear that process play out over a decade’s worth of creative work (there were also other works in addition to the 3 portrait operas composed over the course of this decade).
Of the three operatic subjects my bet is you have heard of all except for pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who eventually changed his name to “Akhnaten”, hence the title of the opera. Murky though the history is, Akhnaten is notable in that during his 17-year reign of the 1300s BC he attempted to steer Egyptian religion toward a form that resembles, or perhaps became, the monotheism of Judaism. It is not quite like the Abrahamic monotheism we know today, but seems to anticipate it in many ways; Akhnaten shifted the focus of worship from the pantheon of ancient Egyptian gods to Aten, which refers to the disk of the sun, not exactly in line with the contemporary understanding of the deity who is apart from his creation, but it can be seen to represent progress along a continuum from paganism to monotheism. Different theories circulate regarding the exact nature of his reforms and their historical relationship with ancient Judaism. Pharaoh Akhnaten was ultimately unsuccessful in his effort as Egypt reverted to the worship of their traditional deities after his death.
Studying the story of Akhnaten clearly made a significant impression on Philip Glass to include him alongside Einstein and Gandhi in the trilogy of operas about great and influential men . The music of Akhnaten is solemn and meditative, with a deep and inspiring gravitas. And the title character of Akhnaten is sung by a countertenor, that is a male who trains his falsetto register and performs with clear and strong tone in the alto or mezzo-soprano tessitura. After hearing Akhnaten’s Hymn to Aten right in the middle of the opera I completely understand why Glass made this choice. The high, clear, watery timbre of the countertenor is ethereal and otherworldly. It is somehow able to sing clearly into our souls from across millennia about a primordial holiness in a way that a tenor or baritone is not. Akhnaten as a countertenor is a serene and timeless icon, unravaged by the hustle and bustle of daily existence. Listen to this magnificent hymn and see if you don’t agree:
This long-breathed dramatization of religious devotion and awe is best consumed in a state of stillness and repose, so I recommend that you make the time to do so. After Akhnaten’s stunning song of devotion climaxes at about 9 minutes, a celestial choir sings Psalm 104 in hushed Hebrew. The countertenor of the lead is a sublime fit for the texture of entire episode, an unexpectedly imaginative application of the treble-range operatic male lead 400 years after the castrati began to guide the very first operas in that direction.
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