More on the Pharyngeal Voice

I thought I'd throw in a couple of historical connections regarding the pharyngeal voice. The first person to coin the actual word in print was Edgar Herbert-Caesari, but he also acknowledged in May 1950 in the Musical Times that there was no such thing as a pharyngeal voice. (Semantics, semantics!) Herbert-Caesari asserted the idea came from the Italian [...]

Herbert-Caesari on Chest Voice

But first, an aural example:   The "rumble" in the region immediately below the larynx detected in every voice by the investigators [the Old Masters], and of course in their own voices too, they promptly called voce di petto, chest voice. (This is readily noticed when holding a low note, produced naturally without overloading, and lightly [...]

Hello, Mr. Herbert-Caesari!

Today I received from Surrey, England, a two-disc collection of the teaching of Edgar Herbert-Caesari. Caesari, like so many other pedagogues throughout vocal history was a singer whose voice was ruined by errant teaching methods. He became important through his writings on singing and his attempts to recapture the Old Italian school of singing at [...]