I208 



ON VOCAL SOUNDS. 



following diagram, where the dotted lines give the range of certain remarkable 

 voices, and the figures represent the number of vibrations per second. 1 



Upper note of Lucrezia Ajugari. 

 2048 ' 



fa 5 Upper note of Nilsson in II Flauto Marjico. 



1365 



Ajugari could trill on this note. 

 1152 



1024 



76S 



640 



512 



435 



341 



Sopra no 



Mezzo-soprano. 



Contralto. 



Ten or. 



Ajugari. 



Baritone. 



Sessi, 3^ octaves. 

 Farinelli, 3J octaves. 



64 



42 



32 



Gaspard Forster, 3 octaves. 



Beginning of musical tone. 



There is thus a range for ordinary voices of nearly two octaves, and 

 certain rare voices may have a range of three and a half octaves. The 

 deepest tone on record is that of Forster, fa_ x (42 vibs. per second), and 

 the highest, that of Ajugari, on the authority of Mozart, do 6 (2048 vibs. 

 per second). The table shows that the lowest note of Forster is not 

 much above the pitch at which the perception of tone begins, and that 

 from this note to the highest of Ajugari is a range of nearly six octaves. 

 From the lowest note of an ordinary bass voice to the highest of an ordi- 

 nary soprano the range is only about three octaves. In this connection, 

 it is interesting to observe that the range of the human ear is from efo_, 

 (32 vibs. per second) to do 10 (33,768 vibs. per second), or eleven octaves. 



1 From article "Voice" in " Encyc. Brit.," 9th edition, vol. xxiv. p. 275, by John 

 G. M'Kendrick. The letters used to designate the tones have been added. 



2 German writers use h instead of b, b instead of hb, ais for at, and gis for <jt, etc. 



t 



