![]() Not surprisingly Tinctoris named Ockeghem as the finest bass he had ever heard. Composers such as Busnois, Pierre de La Rue and Ockeghem wrote works that feature two parts below the tenor the Missa Saxsonie of Nicolas Champion (1526) has a bassus part, A-d’, and below it a baritonans part, F-b. Voice nomenclature puts stress on the Greek prefix bari- (‘low’), producing such inventions as baricanor, baripsaltes, bariclamans, barisonans and baritonans. In the late 15th century, for example, there was a rapid growth of interest in the bass voice, observable not only in the creation of separate bass lines as a harmonic foundation to counterpoint (the contratenor bassus), but in the emphasis on low voices for their novel sonorous effects. Hand in hand with the gradually expanding compass of polyphonic music went a growing appreciation of the different timbres and ranges of male voices. Pictorial evidence seems to indicate, however, that throughout the ensuing centuries the top lines of polyphony were most often performed not by boys but by men, singing falsetto where necessary. ![]() The use of boys’ voices for high parts is mentioned as early as the late 9th century, when the author of the Scolica enchiriadis allowed that in the performance of parallel organum ‘the highest voice can always be supplied by the voices of boys’. An awareness of distinct vocal registers in the late medieval period became more pronounced as the range of the several lines of polyphony begin to expand, especially since church music was sung exclusively by male voices. Until the 19th century almost all mention of the vox capitis (later voce di testa) can be taken as referring to falsetto. Jerome of Moravia’s 13th-century treatise Discantus positio vulgaris mentions three voice registers: vox pectoris, vox guttoris, and vox capitis (chest, throat and head registers). ![]() In Medieval and Renaissance Polyphony falsetto singing played an important part, probably long before the technique was specifically described.
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