Talk:Tenor

Does every composer get their own voice type?

The Gilbert & Sullivan operetta section, while a nice list of roles from those authors for the tenor voice, is not appropriate on this page, it is simply not a voice type. As a bare minimum, more citations are needed to justify inclusion of "Mozart tenor," as a voice type. It is telling that these two sections are not included in the lead paragraph of this article. Perhaps a published and respected source listing these voice types should serve as the guideline for which voice types to include, for example, Richard Miller's The Structure of Singing or Training Tenor Voices.

The article already makes a healthy distinction here, eschewing the common term "Wagnerian tenor," opting instead for, "Heldentenor," as, understandably, singers who are generally considered to be of this voice type often sing composers other than just simply Wagner - Strauss and Korngold are also included here, we could go further, Peter Grimes etc. The article also makes the same distinction between the common term "Rossini tenor," and the included "leggero tenor," again, because these voices sing more than just Rossini - Bellini, Donizetti, and in fact, often also Mozart. These terms, "Wagnerian tenor," and "Rossini tenor," are arguably in more common parlance than the term, "Mozart tenor." And despite Mozart's writing for tenor being somewhat specific, we don't invent a new voice type for every composer who writes specifically for one kind of voice, for example, there is no such thing as a "Bach tenor." Another point, Mozart's writing is not uniform across all of these tenor roles, and different kinds of tenors sing different Mozart tenor roles - few, in fact, are the tenors who would sing all of these roles, either simultaneously or even within the same career. Case in point, the voices that commonly sing Tito, Lucio Silla or Idomeneo are completely different to the voices that commonly sing Don Curzio, Monostatos or Pedrillo, which are again different from those that commonly sing Don Ottavio, or Ferrando. Tamino has been famously sung by lyric tenors (e.g. Fritz Wunderlich), leggero tenors (e.g. Lawrence Brownlee), and Heldentenors (e.g. Helge Rosvaenge.) Finally, many tenors who have historic or current careers as noted Mozartians are also successful and frequent interpretors of a great deal of concert repertoire, of song literature, and for example the works of Bach.

Voice type classifications are innately inexact, but to meet verifiability standards on Wikipedia, this article should be approached judiciously and, as a bare minimum, quite thoroughly referenced. This Wikipedian considers it a stretch including "Mozart tenor," as an individual voice-type. Perhaps another section could be added to include reference to common, composer-specific vocal types, "Wagnerian tenor," "Rossini tenor," and "Mozart tenor," at the same time clarifying that these are not canon voice types, and that singers who might be called these often sing other repertoire. CharlieTunt (talk) 21:49, 23 September 2024 (UTC)