CJ Replay: Adolescent Female Voices

       In comparing the adolescent female voice with the adolescent male voice, several characteristics become apparent.  After age ten, due to obvious physical changes in the vocal anatomy, there is a marked contrast in quality and color between the two voice types. Clarity of tone and brilliance in certain ranges seem effortless in the young boy’s voice. The girl’s voice tends not to carry this brilliance and “edge” of tone.  Rather, when well-placed, the resulting sound of the girlchoir has a warm resonance unlike the boychoir, the women’s  choir, or even the children’s choir. It is truly an entity unto itself. The changes in the boy’s voice are obvious to the ear, whereas the changes in the girl’s voice, though not as dramatic, exist, none the less.

       I have identified three main stages of development for the purpose of classifying these young voices. In discussion of classification, the term is not being used in the traditional manner to designate soprano or alto categories. The term is being used to determine the development of the individual voice at any particular stage or level. All girl’s voices at this age should be classified as soprano. I can recall only one girl who, perhaps, could have been classified as an alto. This voice was exceptional because it had no obvious passaggio, i.e.; the voice was “natural” in that the named vocal weaknesses were accommodated for without true knowledge of the need to make adjustments.

 

(From the Choral Journal article “The Young Adolescent Female Voice [Ages 11-15]: Classification, Placement, and Development of Tone,” by Lynn Gackle.)