High register
The high tonal space of an instrument.
What it means
The high register (German hohe Lage) designates the upper area of the range of an instrument or a voice. The term is relative: what is high for a double bass lies in the middle for a flute. With string instruments, “position” (Lage) additionally has a technical meaning — it designates the placement of the fingering hand on the fingerboard, counted from first position upward.
In the notation
High registers demand ledger lines or special ways of writing. To keep both tolerable, instruments with a wide range change clef: cello and bassoon go from the bass clef into the tenor clef and on into the treble clef. Alternatively an octave sign is placed over the passage, which applies until the marking loco. With strings, Roman numerals or fingering indications show the position, with brass players occasionally notes on the choice of fingering.
Musical use
With the register more changes than the pitch. The tone colour becomes brighter and slimmer, the carrying power increases, the response becomes more sensitive, and the intonation demands more attention, because the distances on the fingerboard become smaller and with wind players the overtones lie closer together. Composers therefore use high registers deliberately: for climaxes, for delicacy, for tension. In the balance of an ensemble, high notes carry farther, so that the same dynamic marking seems louder in a high register.
The high register is limited differently for each instrument and each voice and has tonal features of its own: with strings the sound becomes brighter and thinner, with brass more radiant and more strenuous, with singers vowel colour and intelligibility of the text change. In orchestration the high register is used for lustre and tension.
Performance practice
Prepare the way into the height instead of forcing it: with strings, the change of position involves the movement of the whole arm and an ear ready in time for the goal note; with winds and singers, support decides, not pressure. Practise high passages slowly and quietly before you take them at tempo and in the required dynamics. Check the intonation against a lower reference note, not in isolation. And take the dynamics in a high register rather back — it carries anyway.