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For Western humans, choral music is arranged with higher-pitched voices and lower-pitched voices singing different parts.

Even non-Western music is often listed as being arranged for the standard SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass -- with sopranos and altos being women or children, and tenors generally and basses always being men.)

Throat-singing, the most different style I know of, has compositions for men and compositions for women.

But what if people generally change gender, often more than once, at some point during their lives, and don't want to also change their choral role assignments? How can you arrange choral music where each section of the choir has a mix of both higher and lower voices?

(The experience of transgender humans will not be be completely applicable, as my choir members are close to but not entirely like the analogues of humans in their world, who themselves are not entirely like humans on Earth.)

My first thought was syncopated music, where some people sing fast and some people sing slow, but I can't find any good examples for voice online.

I'm most interested in the amateur/high school level, if it makes a difference.

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    $\begingroup$ Men and women (or children) can sing different parts, but they can also sing together in just one part. Yes, men's voices will sound one octave lower than women's (or children's) voices, but that is perfectly fine in the European musical tradition because octaves are considered equivalent. For exampe, see this rendition of the famous finale of the Mikado by G&S; note how the solo passages are contrasted with one-part choral or duet passages. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Mar 28 at 22:42
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    $\begingroup$ P.S. Men's voices sound lower than women's voices not because something magically related to "gender", but because in the life history of a man there comes a time, usually called voice break, when the anatomy of his larynx changes dramatically. When you say that "people generally change gender, often more than once", does this imply extensive surgery to rearrange their phonatory apparatus? $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Mar 28 at 22:50
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    $\begingroup$ How different are the genders of your world, and how different are their voices? And how does the change happen? The human genders have rather different voices, and it's hard for most of us to sing a part intended for the other gender. If your genders have identical voices that will give you one type of answer. If they are as different as humans but randomly and involuntarily change once in a while or of the change is induced by age or environmental factors that will give you other answers. If your people can choose to change genders on a whim that will give you yet different answers. $\endgroup$
    – EdvinW
    Commented Mar 29 at 7:26
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    $\begingroup$ The question here is not whether the people change gender; it's whether their voices change, how much, and in what manner. In human music, assigning a singing role (Soprano, Mezzo, Alto, Tenor, Baritone, Bass, etc) is not tied to gender, but to the range of the person's voice, and perhaps some other qualities (I'm not a music expert; the details will escape me) for a person whose range covers more than one role. -more- $\endgroup$
    – Jeff Zeitlin
    Commented Mar 29 at 11:37
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    $\begingroup$ -more- Consider, for example, the serial hermaphrodite Gethens of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness: It's not clear that their voices changed with their sex; if not, their singing roles wouldn't, either. Thus, to answer this question, you need to focus on the vocal change, not the rest of the biology. $\endgroup$
    – Jeff Zeitlin
    Commented Mar 29 at 11:39

2 Answers 2

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You're straining at a gnat

I lead my church choir, and for a long time one of the tenors was an elderly woman. Voices change as people age (not just at puberty) and it's not that uncommon that women who sang soprano in their youth sing alto in their golden years, and altos tenor. I sang baritone in my youth and sing bass today.

My point?

What range you sing has nothing at all to do with your gender other than as a statistical biological coincidence. I've met high-pitch men and low-pitched women. The most common crossovers are alto-tenor, but I can easily imagine others without any loss of belief.

When you simplify it (a lot), music is scored to take advantage of two things: the type or quality of the sound (voice, brass, wood, string, etc.) and the pitch of the sound (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, and many others). You'll notice that "gender" wasn't mentioned at all.

It's only a problem if you try to crowbar politics into physics. Given the statistical coincidence that biological men tend to sing tenor and bass ranges, I would expect a transgendered woman to sing in those ranges (without a serious amount of surgery that, honestly, doesn't make a lot of sense and might not even be practical with today's tech... but that's just my opinion). Given the less common condition that some biological men sing alto, I can also trivially believe a transgendered woman singing alto.

So... that point...

No choir leader would ever place someone in a vocal range (e.g., soprano) based solely — or even significantly — on gender. A soprano is someone who can sing B3-C6. Period.

Whether or not it would be odd for the same person to dress male on one week and female on another and something ambiguous on the third is a cultural issue, not a singing issue, and likely has more to do with where you want to take your story than it would have with worldbuilding. In a choir, they'd stand in the same place regardless how they present themselves.

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Just don't change your vocal range when you change genders.

With proper training most singers can hit a very wide range of notes. If the gender changes they undergo in life can significantly change their vocal production, then it's also likely that the process can be modified to not change their vocal range if that is something important to them.

One of the examples we can site is that of a Castrato, a man castrates himself before puberty to maintain a high pitch voice and living as a male soprano. A similar process could be done if a woman were to transition to a man, just avoid the hormonal process that causes voice changes in puberty (or whatever puberty analogue is associated with gender change).

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