WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT EVERY CHOIR
In any choir, there are four voice
parts: soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Sometimes these are divided into first
and second within each part, prompting endless jokes about first and second
basses. There are also various other parts such as baritone, countertenor,
contralto, mezzo-soprano, etc., but these are mostly used by people who are
either soloists, or belong to some excessively hotshot classical a cappella
group (this applies especially to countertenors), or are trying to make excuses
for not really fitting into any of the regular voice parts, so we will ignore
them for now.
Each voice part sings in a different
range, and each one has a very different personality. You may ask, "Why
should singing different notes make people act differently?" and indeed
this is a mysterious question and has not been adequately studied, especially
since scientists who study musicians tend to be musicians themselves and have
all the peculiar complexes that go with being tenors, French horn players,
timpanists, or whatever. However, this is beside the point; the fact remains
that the four voice parts can be easily distinguished, and I will now explain
how:
THE SOPRANOS are the ones who sing
the highest, and because of this they think they rule the
world. They have
fancier jewelry, and squishier skirts than anyone else, and they consider
themselves insulted if they are not allowed to go at least to a high F in every
movement of any given piece. When they reach the high notes, they hold them for
at least half again as long as the composer and/or conductor requires, and then
complain that their throats are killing them and that the composer and
conductor are sadists. Sopranos have varied attitudes toward the other sections
of the chorus, though they consider all of them inferior. Altos are to sopranos
rather like second violins to first violins; nice to harmonize with, but not
really necessary. All sopranos have a secret feeling that the altos could drop
out and the piece would sound essentially the same, and they don't understand
why anybody would sing in that range in the first place - it's so boring.
Tenors, on the other hand, can be very nice to have around; besides their
flirtation possibilities (it is a well-known fact that sopranos never flirt with
basses), sopranos like to sing duets with tenors because all the tenors are
doing is working very hard to sing in a low-to-medium soprano range, while the
sopranos are up there in the stratosphere showing off. To sopranos, basses are
the scum of the earth - they sing too darn loud, are useless to tune to because
they're down in that low, low range, and there has to be something wrong with
anyone who sings in the F clef, anyway.

passages full of sharps and flats and tricks of rhythm, and nobody is noticing because the sopranos are singing too loud (and the basses usually are too). Altos get a deep, secret pleasure out of conspiring together to tune the sopranos flat. Altos have an innate distrust of tenors, because the tenors sing in almost the same range and think they sound better. They like the basses, and enjoy singing duets with them, because the basses just sound like a rumble anyway, and it's the only time the altos can really be heard. The altos' other complaint is that there are always too many of them and so they never get to sing really loud.

THE BASSES sing the lowest of
anybody. This basically explains everything. They are solid,
dependable people,
and have more facial hair than anybody else.
The basses feel perpetually unappreciated, but they have a deep
conviction that they are actually the most important part (a view endorsed by
musicologists, but certainly not by sopranos or tenors), despite the fact that
they have the most boring part of anybody and often sing the same note (or in
endless fifths) for an entire page. They compensate for this by singing as
loudly as they can get away with, and most basses are tuba players at heart.
Basses are the only section that can regularly complain about how low their
part is, and they make horrible faces when trying to hit very low notes. Basses
are charitable people, but their charity does not extend so far as tenors --
Basses hate tuning to the tenors more than almost anything else. Basses like
altos, except when they have duets and the altos get the good part. As for the
sopranos, they are simply in an alternative universe that the basses don't
understand at all. They can't imagine why anybody would ever want to sing that
high and sound that bad when they make mistakes. When a bass makes a mistake,
the other three parts will cover him, and he can continue on his merry way,
knowing that sometime, somehow, he will end up at the root of the chord.
There you have it! these four parts may have their differences but together they form a formidable team emphasizing Unity In Diversity
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