Head voice

In vocal music, head voice is one of two meanings as different vocal pedagogical circles differ on its meaning. It can mean:

The term goes back at least as far as the Roman tradition of rhetorical instruction. Quintilian (ca. AD 95) recommends teaching students ut quotiens exclamandum erit lateris conatus sit ille, non capitis ("that when the voice has to be raised the effort comes from the lungs and not from the head," Inst. 1.11.8, transl. Russell). The first recorded mention of the term in a musical context was around the 13th century, when it was distinguished from the throat and the chest voice (pectoris, guttoris, capitis — at this time it is likely head voice referred to the falsetto register) by the writers Johannes de Garlandia and Jerome of Moravia. The term was later adopted within bel canto, the Italian opera singing method, where it was identified as the highest of three vocal registers: the chest, passagio and head registers. This approach is still taught by some vocal pedagogists today.

However, as knowledge of human physiology has increased over the past two hundred years, so has the understanding of the physical process of singing and vocal production. As a result, many vocal pedagogists have redefined or even abandoned the use of the term head voice. In particular, the use of the term head register has become controversial since vocal registration is more commonly seen today as a product of laryngeal function. For this reason, many vocal pedagogists argue that it is meaningless to speak of registers being produced in the head. The vibratory sensations that are felt in the head are resonance phenomena and should be described in terms related to vocal resonance, not to registers. These vocal pedagogists prefer the term "head voice" over the term "head register." These vocal pedagogists also hold that many of the problems which people identify as register problems are really problems of resonance adjustment. This helps to explain the controversy over this terminology. Also, the term head register is not used within speech pathology and is not one of the four main vocal registers identified by speech pathologists. The following is an overview of the two predominant views on head voice within vocal pedagogy.

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