The range of pitch from lowest to highest possible note is finite in both an instrument and a voice, and music has provided terms like bass, tenor, and soprano to categorize the various ranges. The term “countertenor” refers to a male singing voice with a wide range, ranging from low tenor notes to the middle notes of the highest soprano voices. For an all-boy church choir or a castrato whose pubescent voice change had been arrested, musical compositions specific to this expansive range were not uncommon in pre-Classical eras. To reach the highest notes, most modern countertenors use falsetto voice, and to reach the lowest notes, they use chest voice.
The tenor voice is the most common for men to sustain a piece’s melody. The countertenor was created as a second voice to provide harmonic unison an octave above the lead tenor, as well as melodic counterpoint within the same tenor range. The term came to refer to the vocal part that overlaps the top end of a tenor’s range, also known as the alto voice, with the popular introduction of four-part music. When the Roman Catholic Church forbade women from singing in churches in the mid to late 1600s, the countertenor part became extremely popular.
The demand for men who could sing in the soprano range was one of the consequences of the era. Castrati — boys who were castrated before adolescence in order to keep their youthful voices clear and high in pitch — were castrated for this role. Music was still written with the countertenor’s vocal range in mind even after this drastic surgical intervention became morally and legally unacceptable. In such cases, a soprano woman dressed as a man could perform an operatic role, for example. Modern vocal compositions are occasionally encountered, in part because they have such a dramatic range that demonstrates a singer’s technical abilities.
A male countertenor is similar to a female mezzo-soprano, or possibly contralto. He may be able to play the A note two octaves higher than middle C on the standard musical scale. This is physically impossible in a normally developed human male’s normal, or modal, voice. To create a higher pitched, falsetto voice, he must constrict his vocal cords in his throat. It has a tonal quality that is less dynamic, almost electronic in nature.
Countertenors can usually reach lower notes than a female contralto, possibly as low as the E note below middle C. This makes a powerful statement that the performer is, in fact, a man. If a singer is unable to reach the lower notes, he can use a technique known as chest voice to relax his diaphragm muscles and instead simulate strong air flow with an exaggerated vibrato of his vocal cords. The most difficult technical challenge for a good countertenor is switching from modal voice to either falsetto or chest voice as the musical score requires.