I saw a poster up today for a local performance by Rockapella, one of the better-known a capella groups in the country. Boy, did that take me back. Long ago, I sang baritone for the MIT Logarhythms, and I'd like to grab you by the collar for a moment of praise for baritones.
See, in male a capella, there are typically four harmonic lines, or voices. The leads (second tenors) have it easy; they sing the melody (or lead line, hence the name). The (first) tenors also have it easy; they sing the natural harmony, typically drifting along in parallel thirds to the melody. If you're prone to singing harmony along with the easy listening station, chances are you're duplicating the tenor line. Both of their lines tend to look something like this:
o o
o o o o
o o o
The (second) basses bounce along on the bass line; their notes are the base note of whatever chord is sung at the moment. Their lines tend to look like this in print:
o o o o o o o o
(pronounced ?Bum, bum. Bum, bum. Bum, bum. Bum, bum.?)
And then there's the baritones (or baris, singular bari). We generally don't get a harmonic line; we get whatever note is left over to fill out the chord. Often this is the fifth, often the seventh. When the composer decides to add some jazzy dissonance, we get the dissonant notes. If there are dreadful intervals to hop across, we get the intervals. Our scores look like someone fired birdshot at the page.
I'm not complaining about the difficulty of the baritone line. I came to see it as a challenge, one we could readily meet. It was fun watching the other parts whine when they had an irregular line to sing. Wussies. No, a challenging line was easy to take. The hard thing to swallow was the anonymity.
Since the baritone line is defined negatively ? whatever is left over ? it isn't much to listen to, just a tuneless wandering within the song's key. That means it shouldn't stand out enough for the audience to hear it, just to sense vaguely that something is there. Our job is to blend into the scenery, fill out the chord without making any waves. And, to a large degree, we work to make the rest of the group sound like they're blending better with one another than they actually are. We're the petty bureaucrats of the song world, doing thankless but necessary work, making everybody else look good.
Baritones don't get to showboat. Baritones don't get solos, which are persistently written just a wee bit too high for us. Baritones don't get mobbed by chicks after the concert. (Well, I went to MIT. Chicks didn't rush any of us after the concert. But we could envy parts in other groups.)
So just pause the next time you listen to your favorite recording and thank the baritones, or the violas, or whoever it is filling out the rest of the chord. We may not hear you, but it's nice to know we're appreciated.