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I'll see your barbershop and raise you Palestrina and Tallis.

My old dear. I started singing in the womb -- my Mom and Dad loved to sing duets with each other and to each other at home. With a mind and heart following that vocal enchanting expression through life, back in the mid-'50s singing with the Syracuse University Chapel Choir was one highlight.

In it I recall performing much of this kind of thing in the bass section, including also Handel's "Messiah" (a different type but harmonious) under Dr. Arthur Poister, one of the finest organist and choral director ever.

But, dear of my heart, these could not begin to compare with the structure attainable only by men, whose voices remained below the range of the upper partial tones provided by the oral cavity resonating at particular frequencies by which the human ear discerns which vowel is being sung, regardless of the pitch df intonation, as researched and defined by Hermann von Helmholtz, the physician and physicist who wrote the well-known volume "On The Sensations Of Tone" -- the sounds of the human voice. In it he mentions the unusual perfectly harmonious chord structure obtained by a male quartet singing four-part harmony, and tones heard other than the ones being written in their arrangements.

Without going further on the theoretical aspects, I beg you to hear through this performance of the Irish tune "Oh, Danny Boy" arranged for and sung by The Suntones International Champions (click here).

As you listen, please open your ears to hear the notes that are not from the pitches of the notes in the arrangement, but of the amplitude of the combined upper partial tone resonances, each of the same frequency, arising from the oral cavities intoning the same vowel! (See ""SingWise" (click here) about these formants.

This makes chords heard that are extremely rich, and not occurring with accompaniment by a tempered instrument, nor of notes in a range which the female voices block from resonance. Listen carefully, and you will hear quite loud notes wafting above the ranges of the notes being sung. They begin about the range of the female alto voice, as Helmholtz has predicted from the scale of frequencies pertaining to and resonant with the particularly key chosen for their arrangement (which is E-flat, by the way,correspondeingly in good agreeent with the pitches of the vowel formants)..

Having done this, let me ask you to please hear out the same song done by a chorus of more than 180 men to the very end. The Moral Majority" (click here), of the Dallas, Texas area, an International Champion also.

Please note at the last final cadence the men's voices comprise a range of about two and a half octaves, but the final chord having notes that cover about five octave!

And considering the topic, t would seem that for you, as for me, the height of the richness and emotion ought to bring out one's tears in response. Does that not equal -- nay, far supersede the capabilities of the G-minor piece of your Tallis group, and that of the Palestrina group also?

(Written with a sympathetic but advanced musical view)

Well, as long as we're bandying qualifications about -- my paternal grandparents were opera singers, grandmother had a degree in opera performance from Shorter College (Rome, GA) and sang at the Met (in the chorus, but still . . . ) Both of them were professional staff singers in church, and continued to sing opera locally. My father's earliest memory is from about age 2 when his dad got up to sing a solo, and I have an old photo of my grandfather singing the title role in "The Mikado" for the Rome Opera Company (Rome, while a small town, fancied itself as a cultural oasis in N. GA. They were not wrong - it is still a charming town with a very active artistic community). Dad was always an amateur singer (as am I) but mom was a professor in the music department at Georgia State University. I studied piano for 15 years or so, sang in juried and auditioned high school, college, and church choirs (and still at it, simply a journeyman alto but solid skills). Toured, sang at Spoleto, etc.

I have absolutely nothing against barbershop, its structure and harmonies are very interesting - it's just not my game. But I venture to say that the 100 year test will see most of the more highly technical flights of fancy disappear- while Mr. Tallis and "Our Phenix, M. Byrd" sail on in glory some 400 years since.

If technical complexity is your thing, then consider "Spem in Alium" -

"In Queen Elizabeths time þere was à songe sen[t] into England in 30 p[art]s (whence þe Italians obteyned þe name to be called þe Apices of þe world) wch beeinge Songe mad[e] a heavenly Harmony. The Duke of — bearinge à great love to Musicke asked whether none of our English men could sett as good à songe, and Tallice beeinge very skilfull was felt to try whether he would undertake þe matter, wch he did & made one of 40 p[ar]tes wch was songe in the longe gallery at Arundell house, wch so farre surpassed þe other that the Duke, hearinge þt songe, tooke his chayne of Gold fro[m] his necke & putt yt about Tallice his necke & gave yt him."