(Fr.: ‘darkened voice’).
A technique of voice production. It was made famous by the singing of Gilbert Duprez during the 1830s. He is said to have carried the chest register up to c''. Duprez (1845) called this technique voix sombre or voix couverte (covered voice). ‘Covering’ involves the darkening of the vowels, for example, from ‘ah’ to ‘uh’, resulting in a physiological change in mechanism first described by the physicians H. Diday and J.-E. Pétrequin in their ‘Mémoire sur une nouvelle espèce de voix chantée’ (Gazette médicale de Paris, viii, 1840, pp. 305, 455) as a lowering of the larynx. Covered tone is used as an expedient to admit more of the head tone into the area of the break between the head and chest voice, allowing these to be better united. When used in the highest register, as by Duprez, the technique produces a sound of great volume and intensity but can be vocally damaging. The voix sombrée became highly controversial as a voice type and was vigorously attacked by Etienne Jean Baptiste (called Stéphan de la Madelaine) in his Oeuvres complétes sur le chant (Paris, 1875, pp.128ff). Duprez himself is reported to have tired easily because of his use of the voix sombrée, and had a short career.
Manuel García (1847) does not discuss voix sombrée as a voice type; rather, he distinguishes between timbre clair and timbre sombre as distinct vocal qualities in both head and chest voice and discusses these in terms of offering ‘the student a throng of resources which permit him appropriately to vary the expression of the voice’. He equated the use of timbre sombre in the chest voice with Voix mixte.
OWEN JANDER/ELLEN T. HARRIS