Vocal range

What it means

Vocal range is the span between the lowest and the highest note a voice can produce. To be distinguished from this is the tessitura: the range in which a voice sounds comfortable and sustaining and in which it can sing for a longer time. For classifying a voice, the tessitura matters more than the range, for extreme notes say little about which repertoire is actually suitable.

Musical use

Composers write for particular voice types and their usual ranges, and singers choose parts accordingly. A part can be unsuitable despite reachable top notes if it stays for long stretches in a tiring register. For this reason, songs are often published in several versions, and transposition is a matter of course in art song, while unusual in opera. Choral parts are set so that they can be managed by averagely trained voices; overstepping the boundaries there immediately stands out as strain. For the soprano it usually reaches roughly from C4 to C6.

Performance practice

Determine your range and your comfortable register calmly and not at the end of a long rehearsal, and record both in writing. Before taking on a part, check how much time it spends in which register, instead of looking only at the highest notes. Extend limits carefully and with guidance; forced extreme notes do more harm than good. Warm up the voice over the whole range, beginning in the middle. With songs, choose the version that fits your register, without seeing this as a deficiency.

Bear in mind that the range depends on the day's condition and shifts over the course of a life: what succeeds effortlessly today can be tight tomorrow, and the limits shift with the years. Determine both regularly anew and record them. Vocal range is to be distinguished from the tessitura, the register in which a part predominantly lies. Extend limits carefully and with guidance. Instrument ranges are recorded in treatises on instrumentation.