The Omnitone

The human voice was always man's most expressive musical instrument, and until a few centuries ago it was also the most flexible. Then part singing was invented, and in time the singer's voice became corseted by custom into one of six categories: soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass. Like any set of muscles restricted to less than full capabilities, the human voice became the slave of the restriction. Individuals once even went to such extremes as castration to break out,* but occasionally a voice comes along that needs no adjustment to make musical news: the thrilling voice of Soprano Lucrezia Agujari, which rose almost three octaves from middle D; the freak voice of the 19th century's Eugenia Mela, a woman who sang tenor; the incongruous bass voice of a three-year-old boy in Prague in 1936; and, more recently, the voice of Peruvian Yma Sumac, whose singing voice covers four octaves.

In London last week a new voice was making news. It belongs to pretty, pencil-slim Jennifer Johnson, 23, and its useful range is an extraordinary 4 1/2 octaves, or everything from bass to soprano.

Jenny, like Agujari and Sumac, is no freak. Her range is considerably greater than most,/- her voice is sweet and powerful, and she has it under reliable, effortless command. (She can cover almost an additional two octaves, but with little musical value.) In her tenor range she can sound either like a contralto or a real male tenor. Some critics find Jenny's voice a bit dry, but this can be overcome, she believes, before she makes her professional debut. She does not plan to make it for about two years. Until then, she will continue to study with the man whose bold beliefs about the human voice she may be helping to prove.

All Ranges & Registers. Jenny's teacher is an intense, grizzled, German-born man named Alfred Wolfson, 59, who made his living after World War I as a remedial voice trainer, fled to London after Hitler took power, and there developed a theory that is now almost an obsession. "Man has misjudged, underestimated, neglected and finally stultified his voice," he says. "Man has elevated the sin against nature to a dogma, the dogma of those strictly confined, neatly labeled categories: male voice and female, high voice and low, child's voice and adult's. In reality, the natural human voice comprises all these ranges and registers."

Wolfson points to some ten pupils to illustrate his theory. He has a tape recording of one of them singing all the principal roles of The Magic Flute, from the Queen of the Night's famously difficult coloratura (F above the staff) to Sarastro's well-deep basso (F below the bass staff). A group of four women students recorded the minuet from a Haydn string quartet, singing cello, viola and violin parts. One boy has recorded his rumbles and squeaks over a range of seven octaves, a young man has produced close to nine under Wolfson's tutelage.

First of a New Kind. Jenny Johnson is Wolfson's star pupil, the first with a quality fit for critics. After showing documents to prove that she has no structural abnormality in her voice mechanism, she sings the high notes of a coloratura selection, then switches to her male tenor voice for Ridi, Pagliaccio without apparent strain. Says Wolfson: "The famous larynx of gold of great singers is just a legend. Everyone possesses one." In Wolfson's dream Jenny and her co-pupils will be the first with a new kind of voice; it may have to be called an omnitone.

Having spent an hour a day for the past five years at her voice training, Jenny is perfectly willing to move on slowly. Her biggest problem now is to find music to display her voice in public, for most composers have long helped to keep the corset strings tight by writing music to fit the man-imposed limitation on man's voice. Mozart composed killing coloratura arias for his high-singing sisters-in-law, Josepha and Aloysia Weber; Giuseppe Colla supplied music for his wife-to-be, Agujari; Moises Vivanco supplies it .for his wife Yma Sumac. Jennifer Johnson is now looking for someone to write music for Jennifer Johnson.

* It has been 300 years since Pope Benedict XIV7 forbade the practice of assuring by surgery a steady supply of soprano voices.

/- Normal effective singing range is roughly two octaves, more with voice training. Manhattan-born Soprano Maria Meneghini Callas has three octaves, up to F sharp above the staff. The great Caruso had a C -only an octave and four notes lower than Callas' high note, a bottom C down in the bass range, three octaves lower.

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