Heroes of the concert hall

Before getting down to some hard iconoclasm, let me first declare that to me all tenors, no matter what music they sing, nor even how well or badly they sing it, are heroes. Not because they tend to get heroes’ parts, but simply because of what they do, physically. Never blessed with much of a singing voice myself — even my speaking tone is rather rasping, which may or may not explain why Radio Three hasn’t been in touch lately — I view tenors with a mix of deep envy and utter amazement. Since puberty — with the exception of the occasion when, in order to help out my hall of residence in the inter-hall music competition at Exeter University, I rather ill-advisedly sang the countertenor top line in Byrd’s Mass for Three Voices before the doyen of all choir trainers and our judge, Sir David Willcocks — I’ve never been able to sustain any note higher than middle E, and that for only a second or two before the onset of what feels like tonsillitis. Like most men, I’m firmly stuck in baritonal regions. How is it that these Special Ones can soar with apparent ease to A, to B, even to C, and what’s more stay there? It’s surely a miracle.

Of course, it’s no such thing. Singing, like athletics, is a matter of rigorous training, of getting all the right muscles to do the right things at the right time. And, for tenors, a matter of possessing the right sort of larynx, I suppose, just as a high jumper has the right body type. Lately I have been listening a lot, something I rarely do with any CD since so many drop through the letterbox, to Mark Padmore’s recently released Harmonia Mundi disc of Handel arias. Padmore is one of my very favourite tenors.