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with one particularly convenient for the baritone (the commonest male voice in nature) but also manageable by others: somewhere about d-d' or e-e'. Another group of melodies, perhaps set for a tenor soloist, avoids the lowest note of this common octave but goes a tone or two higher. The highest low note that a tenor might have difficulty with is perhaps d. |
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Let us now add the evidence of the five pieces that have a wider compass, spanning an eleventh or twelfth (Fig. 9.5). Again the main |
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singing zone is located between *e and *g'. Some of the pieces go a little lower, though *d occurs (so far as present evidence goes) only in momentary dives from a higher register, and indeed the same is largely true of *e except in 30 POsl. 1413. 1-15. So it looks as if these notes were felt to be too deep for a melodic track, and more suitable for occasional dramatic effect. At the upper end some singers at least are quite happy to maintain a melodic line centred on *g', rising sometimes to *a' and sporadically higher. The highest certainly attested note is *c'' in 34(b) and 49, evidently pieces for tenor.59 If this is the top tenor note, it should be close to a'. |
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Support for these conclusions may be drawn from definitions of the regions of the voice given by the Anonymus Bellermanni: |
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*c-* |
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Hyperboloeides (overshoot) |
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The fourth region must be that of boys' and women's voices, included for the sake of completeness but not deemed worthy of closer specification. The three regions of the man's voice cover the two octaves *c-*c", corresponding closely to the range attested in our fragments.60 This is best equated with A-a', the range from the |
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5914, not included in the diagrams because uncertainties of reading and the very fragmentary nature of the text preclude conclusions about its tonal range, went up at least to  and possibly to  . I leave aside 42 with its exceptional register  , clearly for a female voice. |
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60 Anon. Bellerm. 63-4. For two octaves as the range of the voice cf. Nicom. p. 255. 25, Aristid. Quint. p. 21. 14, Gaud. p. 359.5. |
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