Post by Stuart H on Feb 22, 2007 15:19:10 GMT
Hi all,
There was an article in The Times today about Hayley's effect on Steve Abbot's dog!
I will post the actual article when I get it tomorrow. For now, here's the link to the online version.
entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article1421373.ece
Stuart
Full online article inserted for posterity 23 Feb; Dave
There was an article in The Times today about Hayley's effect on Steve Abbot's dog!
I will post the actual article when I get it tomorrow. For now, here's the link to the online version.
entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/opera/article1421373.ece
From The Times, February 22, 2007
The voice that made a dog beg for mercy
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
She may possess “the voice of an angel” to her native New Zealanders, but to some of our four-legged friends Hayley Westenra is a pain in the ear.
According to her record company, the 19-year-old soprano can sing beyond the range of human hearing, hitting notes that can be heard only by animals. But, unlike the people who have bought more than three million of her albums, the animals appear to be less than impressed.
A border terrier called Iggy Pup was the first to react when Westenra went into the studio to make her latest album and began to explore how high she could sing with some vocal gymnastics.
The dog, owned by Steve Abbott, the singer’s manager, is no stranger to music and has never reacted to the sounds made by any other of Universal’s top names, who include Katherine Jenkins and Angela Gheorghiu. He has always waited patiently in the studio until his master’s voice signals that it was time to go home.
This time, however, Iggy was transformed into something wild, as Westenra’s vocals soared. “He was going berserk,” she said yesterday. “He was picking up on something.” Mr Abbott said: “The house is full of music and he comes to the studio. It’s never bothered him before. He rarely barks, but he was yelping away. I had to take the dog out.” Mark Wilkinson, of Universal, said: “The dog was reacting to something people in the rest of the studio could not hear.”
Initially, nobody at Universal connected the dog’s behaviour with Westenra’s singing. But then something similar happened at a studio near Salisbury, which is next to a field. There, her less than appreciative audience included some llamas, which also began to react strangely to her voice.
She said: “They were going crazy, making weird sounds. It was really bizarre.” She added: “When I’m performing, I probably go up to a couple of octaves above middle C. But with vocal gymnastics it’s at least two and bit octaves above, and there are times when I’m not making a sound.
“It is when I take to the higher reaches that the animals start to react. The dog was responding to something that we couldn’t hear.”
Chip Jenkins, a voice coach, said: “I’m flabbergasted. It’s incredible. In eight years of teaching at the Academy of Contemporary Music, I’ve only encountered one student who had ‘whistle tone’, which is the same range as that of Mariah Carey, but I’ve never heard of a singer who could produce notes that could only be heard by animals.”
David Gowland, a voice coach at the Royal Opera House, was more sceptical. He said, by way of a possible explanation: “The animals might be sensitive to the higher harmonics within certain notes. It’s to do with sound waves and frequencies and the harmonics above that that maybe the dog was picking up.”
Westenra is Britain’s fastest-selling classical artist yet, selling two million records before the age of 17, with her debut album, Pure, topping the classical charts and going gold within a week.
Her third album, Treasure, is released next Monday. All the notes can be heard by human beings. She is also giving a concert on Saturday, at the Cadogan Hall, London, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Iggy Pup will probably give it a miss.
Singing so high it hertz
Richard Morrison
It is well known that animals can hear frequencies inaudible to us. A young woman such as Ms Westenra may detect frequencies as high as 20,000 hertz; though for middle-aged males such as me the upper limit may be as low as 12,000hz. By contrast, dog whistles sound at about 22,000hz and bats communicate at anything up to 100,000hz.
By contrast, the “top C” blasted out by operatic divas is a mere 1,046hz. The Queen of the Night aria in Mozart’s The Magic Flute ascends to an F above that, while the Peruvian chanteuse Yma Sumac extended her phenomenal range to a C above that (2,093hz).
But what gives voices their distinctive quality is their timbre, made up of “overtones” that stretch upwards from the fundamental pitch being sung. It is theoretically possible that Ms Westenra produced only the overtones, not the fundamental — and that these were above what human ears could hear.
The voice that made a dog beg for mercy
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
She may possess “the voice of an angel” to her native New Zealanders, but to some of our four-legged friends Hayley Westenra is a pain in the ear.
According to her record company, the 19-year-old soprano can sing beyond the range of human hearing, hitting notes that can be heard only by animals. But, unlike the people who have bought more than three million of her albums, the animals appear to be less than impressed.
A border terrier called Iggy Pup was the first to react when Westenra went into the studio to make her latest album and began to explore how high she could sing with some vocal gymnastics.
The dog, owned by Steve Abbott, the singer’s manager, is no stranger to music and has never reacted to the sounds made by any other of Universal’s top names, who include Katherine Jenkins and Angela Gheorghiu. He has always waited patiently in the studio until his master’s voice signals that it was time to go home.
This time, however, Iggy was transformed into something wild, as Westenra’s vocals soared. “He was going berserk,” she said yesterday. “He was picking up on something.” Mr Abbott said: “The house is full of music and he comes to the studio. It’s never bothered him before. He rarely barks, but he was yelping away. I had to take the dog out.” Mark Wilkinson, of Universal, said: “The dog was reacting to something people in the rest of the studio could not hear.”
Initially, nobody at Universal connected the dog’s behaviour with Westenra’s singing. But then something similar happened at a studio near Salisbury, which is next to a field. There, her less than appreciative audience included some llamas, which also began to react strangely to her voice.
She said: “They were going crazy, making weird sounds. It was really bizarre.” She added: “When I’m performing, I probably go up to a couple of octaves above middle C. But with vocal gymnastics it’s at least two and bit octaves above, and there are times when I’m not making a sound.
“It is when I take to the higher reaches that the animals start to react. The dog was responding to something that we couldn’t hear.”
Chip Jenkins, a voice coach, said: “I’m flabbergasted. It’s incredible. In eight years of teaching at the Academy of Contemporary Music, I’ve only encountered one student who had ‘whistle tone’, which is the same range as that of Mariah Carey, but I’ve never heard of a singer who could produce notes that could only be heard by animals.”
David Gowland, a voice coach at the Royal Opera House, was more sceptical. He said, by way of a possible explanation: “The animals might be sensitive to the higher harmonics within certain notes. It’s to do with sound waves and frequencies and the harmonics above that that maybe the dog was picking up.”
Westenra is Britain’s fastest-selling classical artist yet, selling two million records before the age of 17, with her debut album, Pure, topping the classical charts and going gold within a week.
Her third album, Treasure, is released next Monday. All the notes can be heard by human beings. She is also giving a concert on Saturday, at the Cadogan Hall, London, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Iggy Pup will probably give it a miss.
Singing so high it hertz
Richard Morrison
It is well known that animals can hear frequencies inaudible to us. A young woman such as Ms Westenra may detect frequencies as high as 20,000 hertz; though for middle-aged males such as me the upper limit may be as low as 12,000hz. By contrast, dog whistles sound at about 22,000hz and bats communicate at anything up to 100,000hz.
By contrast, the “top C” blasted out by operatic divas is a mere 1,046hz. The Queen of the Night aria in Mozart’s The Magic Flute ascends to an F above that, while the Peruvian chanteuse Yma Sumac extended her phenomenal range to a C above that (2,093hz).
But what gives voices their distinctive quality is their timbre, made up of “overtones” that stretch upwards from the fundamental pitch being sung. It is theoretically possible that Ms Westenra produced only the overtones, not the fundamental — and that these were above what human ears could hear.
Stuart
Full online article inserted for posterity 23 Feb; Dave
