...what a range!

From my very first words I spoke in a very low voice. My parents didn't know where I'd got it from, but it seemed to be natural to me. It frightened strangers a lot, I think:

"Aw, hello!" they'd say, "How old are you, then?"

And I'd croak back at them, "Five!"

"Ah! Is it possessed?" they'd cry.

And I wanted to sing down there, too. By that I mean in a bass register, the kind of range that children don't sing in. As Marilyn Horne said in an interview titled 'How to sing Bel Canto', "I think I began as a soprano because I began so damn young! Who's got any chest voice at five years of age?" At which Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge all laughed heartily.

I had, Marilyn. I had a chest voice at five years of age. And this worried my piano teacher, who liked to hear me sing a lot, she thought I'd do some damage to my voice. So she made me sing songs that were very high, which I found a real struggle, but after years of doing it, it started to feel natural to me and I found it more comfortable singing high than singing low.

Now, there are two kinds of female voices. Common belief today is that there are three: soprano, mezzo soprano and contralto. But, less than a hundred years ago, mezzo soprano and contralto were basically different words for the same voice type. There were sopranos, who could sing very high, and contraltos, who could sing very low. There is occasionally, however, a third type, when a woman can sing the whole range.

It is possible to extend your range, if you do it very carefully and slowly and always stop if it hurts or feels uncomfortable. I've been trying to do this for a long time because, for me, the high notes have always been really hard to reach. Yet I felt like a soprano, and Rae thought I was a soprano. She took a long time to decide it, but after I had been having lessons with her for a few months she turned to me one day and said, "You know, dear, I think you're a soprano." And after that she would get very annoyed if anyone suggested I wasn't!

Now, my whistle voice still hasn't come back, but it has helped to extend my range up to a D, which was out of my range before.

And it so happens I'm one of those very unusual voices: although I feel like a soprano, I have a very strong baritone as well, which I'm not really sure I have much musical use for, but it means I now have a range of over three octaves. Which is nice.