Straddling the Line Between Baritone and Tenor

[BeingAlive44Ever]

Posted: 12/18/23 at 10:20pm

It's funny to me how there's so many baritone and tenor songs, roles, and actors that overlap compared to most other parts 

The actors are almost always high baritones with great quality on their highest notes, but you can always tell a difference in tessitura between, say, Christian Borle and Jeremy Jordan. Jeremy Jordan is like textbook tenor. Christian Borle can sing almost as high as him, but his voice lies noticeably lower and he's more capable of using very low falsetto and such

There's plenty of baritone songs with a few high notes that are great for tenors to sing (Empty Chairs, Being Alive) and tenor songs that don't lie too high and therefore are still great for baritones (Who Am I, Finishing The Hat) 

But the roles are the most interesting to me

These fall into three main categories: 

1: Baritone roles that have a handful of songs, usually duets, that lie very very high for most baritones and sometimes wind up being played by tenors (The Phantom, Marius, Bobby from Company, Billy from Carousel, Leo Frank) 

2: Tenor roles that may be high quite often but not any higher than how high a really solid baritone can go (Elder Price, Jekyll and Hyde, Valjean, Whizzer)

3: Roles that have multiple versions for different voice parts (Albin/Zaza, Snoopy) 

Obviously the most common is high baritone roles

Sometimes people insist that Leo Frank specifically is a tenor role

There's a lot more about this topic that I think is sufficiently discuss-able to warrant a subject, so discuss please to validate my somewhat deranged thoughts

[KevinKlawitter]

Posted: 12/19/23 at 9:57am

My voice naturally gravitates towards the lower end of the Bass spectrum, but I have enough range to make it to Tenor notes if the part comes to it.

Maybe it's because I'm a community theatre guy and not professional, but it seems like there are only a handful of parts that fit my vocal range - which makes me a little frustrated when I see parts like The Wolf in Into the Woods (a part I have played) refitted to Tenor voices in lots of modern productions.

[The Distinctive Baritone]

Posted: 12/19/23 at 11:55am

I am a bass-baritone and top out at around an F#4, and can go as low as a D2 or E2 depending on how my voice is doing that day. The most common male voice is a "regular" baritone, which, with training, should be able to comfortably go up to around a G4 and down to about A2. The majority of both traditionally baritone and tenor roles in musical theatre are written in this range, except for obvious outliers like high tenor roles a la Jesus and Judas in JCS, and low baritone/bass roles like Sweeney Todd. Over the past thirty years however, the tessa tura of male roles in musicals has generally gotten higher (this is probably true for females as well). Ultimately, categorizing voices by SATB can be helpful for casting directors, assigning choral parts, etc., but it can be pretty arbitrary. Timber, darkness/brightness, and things like that are probably more important.

I'm rather fascinated by Nicholas Christopher in Sweeney Todd, in that he is playing a high tenor role (PIrelli)  but understudying a low baritone role (Sweeney). He's really more of a baritone with really solid high notes, and he goes into falsetto on the highest Pirelli notes. His "Epiphany" (based on bootlegs I've heard) actually sits more comfortably in his voice than "The Contest," making him, oddly, more suitable for the role he is understudying than the one he regularly plays.

 

[baritonewithtenortendencies]

Posted: 12/19/23 at 4:02pm

The Distinctive Baritone said: "I am a bass-baritone and top out at around an F#4, and can go as low as a D2 or E2 depending on how my voice is doing that day. The most common male voice is a "regular" baritone, which, with training, should be able to comfortably go up to around a G4 and down to about A2. The majority of both traditionally baritone and tenor roles in musical theatre are written in this range, except for obvious outliers like high tenor roles a la Jesus and Judas in JCS, and low baritone/bass roles like Sweeney Todd. Over the past thirty years however, the tessa tura of male roles in musicals has generally gotten higher (this is probably true for females as well).Ultimately, categorizing voices by SATB can be helpful for casting directors, assigning choral parts, etc., but it can be pretty arbitrary. Timber, darkness/brightness, and things like that are probably more important.

I'm rather fascinated by Nicholas Christopher in Sweeney Todd,in that he is playing a high tenor role (PIrelli) but understudying a low baritone role (Sweeney). He's really more of a baritone with really solid high notes, and he goes into falsetto on the highest Pirelli notes. His "Epiphany" (based on bootlegs I've heard) actually sits more comfortably in his voice than "The Contest," making him, oddly, more suitable for the role he is understudying than the one he regularly plays.

"

I find that to be very common for swings and understudies to have a very wide range and therefore be able to sing many different kinds of roles

Despite my username, I'm actually a tenor who sings from G2 to C5 with a handful of notes above C5 but I usually render those in falsetto as to avoid damaging my voice but y'know I have used a handful of D#'s and E's in performance 

In my experience, it's not that important to have much above a G

Like there's a handful of extended A's in some shows

But like you said

Judas and Beadle Bamford and roles like that which are really proper high lying tenor roles are very very uncommon 

And oddly what they all have in common is that they lie a lot higher than even opera tenor parts

Like Judas regularly hits D5's in full voice, which is very rare in opera

It's like musical theatre tenor parts are either not really tenors or really really tenors 

Of course lucky for me I have some low notes too so I can play like y'know actual roles 

[FranklinDickson2018]

Posted: 12/20/23 at 12:04am

Great question. I like to go back a number of years to singers such as John Raitt (a true BariTenor - from baritone to dramatic tenor), Alfred Drake (true baritone), Howard Keel (more a bass-baritone) and others.   It is interesting that to me, in the 1940s and 50s, I think men's voices were lower for the Broadway stage. Larry Kert of who started in the 1950s, sang higher than a lot of the men who came before him.    I do like the singing style of the earlier singers and today's singers that really impress me are Cheyenne Jackson (another Baritenor),  Ben Davis, and Nathanial Hackman. They have an "old school" sound to their singing.   It is interesting that the first singers I mentioned all have Oklahoma! and Carousel in their resume.  Although I think it could have been possible that Keel transposed some of the music for Carousel.  I can't imagine him singing the highest notes of that part. Again, what a great topic for discussion. 

[Boq101]

Posted: 12/20/23 at 10:34am

this is super interesting to read as someone who's always been trained to sort of ignore the nomenclature and sort of approach each role or audition in whatever way my voice finds it best. I found whenever I called myself a Baritone or a Tenor people's opinion of what I sang or what they thought was right would always change, anyway. I've done seasons where I did the lower solo lines in the ensemble in Les Mis and then was the one on the top line for Who's Tommy. 

I think people like Nicholas Christopher probably also do away with that kind of labeling when representing themselves, which sort of leaves the audition room and the rehearsals to show people what you can and cannot do outside of a box that might come with preconceived notions.