The Rare Voice of Women in Music History: Females Singing Tenor and Bass Lines

Any history is burdened by the politics of its transcriber, and music history is not exempt from this bias. A chronology of Western music history consists of European males influenced by other European males, starting from the Medieval Age and continuing through the beginning of the twentieth century. This homogenous history is largely due to the fact that other voices of the time, specifically women, were silenced by politics and religion. The notable absence of women within music history motivates scholars today to represent the feminine influence as best they can. Due to the modern more favorable political and religious climates, women in early music are now receiving their chance for owed representation. One area where women musicians left their mark was in the Baroque-era ospedale of Italy. There women were reversing the gender discriminatory practice of males playing female roles in operas and in religious music.

It was not until the nineteenth century before women were regularly found performing in opera houses or in church music. From the early monasteries and convents in the Middle Ages, women and men were separated in a religious context. Women possessed no role in the mass setting, and this naturally extended to an exclusion from all church music as well. Politically they were inferior to their male counterparts, generally translating to women not owning property, voting, or holding leadership positions of any consequence within society. Although musicologists today argue that there must have existed a number of women composers throughout music history, there is little documentation of their work with the exception of women such as Hildegard von Bingen in the eleventh century and Barbara Strozzi in the early seventeenth century.

In the absence of women performers in the Baroque period, castrati were employed to sing in the soprano and alto registers of sacred music and opera. Castrati were highly trained and highly paid virtuosi, and it was their popularity that assisted the advancement of opera as a genre. In Monteverdi's earliest operas such as Orfeo and L'incoronazione di Poppea, castrati were given many of the leading roles, playing opposite to tenors or basses. Papal law ensured that women's roles in opera, with few exceptions, would be played by castrati. Musicologists today note the emergence of the desire for a soprano line in music by audiences beginning in the late Renaissance, most likely due to the less extreme vocal registers in polyphonic music of the earlier centuries.

There were, however, some rare occurrences where women were educated musically and also performed in a social setting. One such opportunity for women was found in the Ospedale della Pietà, one of four Italian state orphanages for children. There girls received a rich education in art, needlework, and music. Such renowned composers of the time as Porta, Hasse, Jommelli, Porpora, Galuppi, and Vivaldi wrote pieces commissioned specifically for the ospedale. Vivaldi in particular had a close relationship with the Pietà, lasting almost forty years. For these girls, he wrote numerous concerti and choral works, and concertgoers would flock to hear these young women play. As revolutionary as the concept of female performers in the early Baroque seemed, they were, however, still women, and society demanded certain etiquette be followed. Authorities worried that women performing onstage, especially in operatic roles, would create an immoral sexual atmosphere. Described by musicologist Ellen Rosand in her essay "Vivaldi's Stage" (The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 12, No. 1), the ospedale women "were not nuns, there were many rules prohibiting the girls from displaying themselves: rules of conduct and dress…the girls were prohibited from wearing jewelry or bright colors." Rosand continues, "But, of course, such rules were made to be broken, and such prohibitions only whetted the curiosity of visitors to the ospedale, stimulating a preoccupation with the girls' appearance…the bodies of the girls who produced these marvelous sounds had to be imagined, but the act of imagination was very much part of the theatrical effect." The absence of the girls' complete appearances only heightened their provocative sexual appeal for many audience members, directly counteracting the very principle for which they concealed themselves.

For musicologist Michael Talbot, women performing choral works commissioned for the ospedale presents a problem: who was singing the tenor and bass lines? He presents four possible explanations. The most obvious solution would be for men to sing in these registers in a mixed choir. Or, as in the case of the castrati in opera and sacred music, the women may have sung the tenor and bass lines as written with octave jumps into a higher register (especially in the bass line) when necessary. Talbot also suggests that the women may have sung the tenor line as written with the bass line completely transposed one octave higher. One last possibility would have the women singing the tenor line and the bass line being absent from the choir, as it was customary in the Baroque period and in Vivaldi's works to double the bass line with instrumentation. After thorough research consisting of primary accounts of the performances, archives from the ospedale, and musical scores, Talbot concludes that men never sang the lower parts, that the tenor line was always sung by women as written, and the bass was sung by women, sometimes as written and other times an octave higher, based upon the talent of the choir. Just as castrati replaced women in opera, so did the girls of the ospedale sing in a mixed choir without the presence of male voices.

Such a seemingly trivial musical investigation as Talbot's is essentially of great importance to musicologists. It captures the issue of the politics of representation, for the modern scholar must assume at first glance that Vivaldi's Gloria was originally performed with the traditional SATB arrangement, just as the thought of a tenor Nero and female soprano Poppea would be self-evident as the leads in Monteverdi's last opera. The very absence of women in music history has provoked scholars to research further and find traces of feminine influence as seen by Talbot's examination. Originally unrepresented in music history, rightful attention is finally being paid to women because of their importance and in part due to their very omission in history.