Voce Bianca: Purity and Whiteness in British Early Music Vocality

Abstract

[...]pure" women's vocal styles became so successful that it is now expected that women singing early music will sound like Emma Kirkby or members of the Tallis Scholars, a British ensemble that has done much to disseminate a particular sound through performances and summer schools in Australia, the United States, and England.1 Commentators often fondly compare women's early music voices to those of prepubescent choirboys. Yet, even ensembles that deliberately develop a different female sound are described as sounding pure: as Kirsten Yri has noted, the full-bodied, vibrato-warmed sound of Sequentia's Vox Feminae is just as likely to be described as pure as the head-voice blend of Anonymous 4.2 While in Donald Grieg's words early music "singing is often 'impure', works towards distinction and difference, is 'unclear', and, crucially, employs vibrato," purity is a discursive construct used to reject some singers and the approaches to early music that they embody