A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Contralto

CONTRALTO. The lowest of the three principal varieties of the female voice (the two others being soprano and mezzo soprano), and that to which in choral music the part next above (contra, or counter to) the alto is assigned. [Alto.] The culture and employment, as a solo instrument, of the female contralto voice, like that of its correlative the bass, is comparatively modern, and even yet not universal. By the opera composers of France and Germany it has been, and still continues to be, but rarely employed. In his adaptation for the French Theatre of his Italian 'Orfeo,' originally composed (1762) for a contralto, Gluck transposed and otherwise re-cast the music of the title-character for a tenor. It is to Rossini and his Italian contemporaries that this voice owes its present very important status. In few of their operas is it unemployed. In the choral music however of the composers of all nations it has now definitively taken its place—till lately monopolised, in England especially, by the male counter-tenor, a voice of somewhat different compass and altogether different quality. [Alto.] In extent the contralto voice sometimes exceeds every other, male or female. Like the bass it has a third register, but far more frequently and successfully brought under control. A contralto has been known to possess an available compass of three octaves. Its most effective notes however, and those only which it is safe to employ in choral music, are the notes which can be placed on the stave (unfortunately obsolete) which has the C clef on the second line—from the G below middle C to the octave above the latter—incorrectly called the Mezzo-soprano stave. [Illustration] Though not so penetrating as the soprano, the contralto voice surpasses it in tenderness and in volume; and even, which is more remarkable, in flexibility, recent contralti have certainly equalled, perhaps surpassed, vocalists of every other class. As examples of singers in the full acceptation of the term the names of Grassini, Pisaroni, Brambilla, and Alboni, all contralti, have become historical.

[ J. H. ]