Really High Tenor?

Guys who sing really high are called countertenors. When I sing at uni, I happen to be a countertenor. A couple of people have asked me whether countertenors exist in Russia. As if just because there’s a stereotype of Russian men having beards and being aggressive, they also somehow have different voices to men everywhere else in the world. In response, I tend to scoff and say something along the lines of ‘of course they have countertenors. It’s just Russia. I think you’ve been watching too much Cold War propaganda.’

They don’t have countertenors in Russia. Sorry to all the people who I called small-minded Russophobes. You were right. Well they certainly don’t have them in mixed choirs. Maybe they exist in men’s Orthodox choirs or something. 

I thought that being English made you a bit of a spectacle in Krasnoyarsk. Being a countertenor doubles the novelty.

I walked into the choir rehearsal at the Siberian Federal University fifteen minutes late. The first thing that struck me was that the lecture theatre was absolutely lush. I reckon it could easily seat five hundred students, it was clean, it was shiny, it had a grand piano, and it even had portraits of musicians and facts about them printed on the walls. My uni’s lecture block is a pile of poo, and that’s putting it nicely. It’s got more steps than the Eiffel Tower (fact), it’s in disrepair, the smaller rooms sometimes don’t have enough chairs for all the attendees, the technology never works, and the walls don’t have windows, never mind portraits. In comparison, Siberian Federal University’s lecture theatre looked space age.

The second thing that struck me was the scarcity of tenors and basses. There were four in total, compared to rows and rows of sopranos and altos. They were still warming up, so I went and stood with the baritones (that’s what I normally sing when I’m not singing alto). I tried introducing myself to the nearest bass as we were warming up. In Russian, my name is ‘Teo’. 

‘My name’s Teo’, I said.

‘Your name’s what?’

‘Teo.’

‘Tayo?’

‘Yeah, Teo.’

‘Teo’s not a name.’

‘Yeah I know. I’m English.’

‘Ah ok.’

After some more, equally confusing exchanges, he asked what I normally sing.

‘I’m normally an alto.’

‘You’re normally a what?’

‘An alto.’

‘A tenor?’

‘No, an alto.’

‘Like a really high tenor?’

‘No, an alto.’

‘Like, an alto?’

‘Exactly.’

‘How… how do you do that?’

‘I use falsetto.’

‘Oh. Cool.’

Then the director asked me my name.

‘My name’s Teo.’

The director smiled at me indulgently. ‘Ok, never mind.’

The music was really interesting. We started off with some Russian Orthodox music, which I find very evocative. It has a sort of mystical air to me for some reason. It also feels incredibly christmassy. Then we moved onto a Russian folk song. The typeface was definitely designed expressly to confuse unsuspecting Englishmen. I thought it looked more like Arabic than Russian. But I just about kept up, probably singing completely the wrong vowels the whole way through.

After the Orthodox music and the folk song, we sang In the Jungle. Nothing like a bit of variety…

A couple of minutes before the end of the rehearsal, the director looked up at me again.

‘What’s your name again? I’m not sure if you’ve already said.’

‘My name’s Teo.’

He laughed. Actually pretty much everyone laughed.

‘Teo isn’t a name.’ Said the guy behind me.

‘Yeah I know. I’m English.’

‘Is it short for something?’

‘Yeah it’s short for Theodore.’

‘Ok Fyodor, what voice part do you normally sing?’ asked the director.

‘I normally sing alto.’

‘You normally sing what?’

‘Alto.’

‘Tenor?’

‘No, alto.’

‘Like really high tenor?’

‘No, I sing alto.’

The director scratched his head. Everyone in the choir looked at me with very quizzical expressions.

‘So, you normally sing alto?’

‘Yep! That’s exactly it! I normally sing alto.’

‘Why?’

‘Err. Maybe it’s an English tradition? I like singing alto. But it looks like you have enough altos here, so I’m happy to sing bass.’

‘Are there no women to sing alto in your choir?’

‘Yeah, we have women altos too.’

‘So you sing alto… and women sing alto?’

‘Precisely!’

The director looked at me quizzically one more time, pinched himself to make sure that he wasn’t imagining me, and then chuckled to himself.

‘Could you sing tenor for us?’

‘Yeah ok, I’ll just use falsetto.’

The tenors seemed keen not to make eye contact. They weren’t using falsetto, just belting out their high notes.

It was a really fun rehearsal though. The director asked me some questions at the end and said he’d be really happy to see me again at the next rehearsals. They all seemed very friendly, just a bit baffled by my existence. It's just a cultural difference, I suppose. I particularly enjoyed falsettoing wimowehs straight after growling out the bottom line in Russian folk lullabies. In case anyone’s thinking that I’m wimping out by not insisting on singing alto here, I’m going to try to get a barbershop group together, and I’ll be on the top line. I’ll keep you posted…