voice

In grammar, the form of the verb which in English gives two different ways of viewing the action of the verb. ‘The police officer arrested the criminal’ is active while ‘The criminal was arrested by the police officer’ is passive. See active voice and passive voice.

When a verb is in the active voice (as in the first sentence), the subject of the sentence (the police officer) is the one that performs the action. When a verb is in the passive voice (second sentence), the subject of the sentence (the criminal) is acted upon by the verb. The active object in the first sentence (the criminal) is the same as the passive subject in the second sentence. The active subject in the first sentence (the police officer) is put into a phrase in the passive (second) sentence with the word by.

voice

In music, the human singing voice. Sound is produced by forcing air from the lungs through the larynx and making the vocal cords vibrate. The pitch of the sound can be altered by tightening or loosening the muscles of the larynx, and the sound is amplified and modified by the mouth and nasal cavities.

The term ‘voice’ is also used to refer to the separate parts of a piece of music – even when they are played rather than sung. It is especially used when talking about the separate lines in counterpoint, such as a fugue in four voices.

There are several categories of singing voice, which depend on how high or low the performer normally sings. Female singers are usually classified as either soprano (the highest voice), contralto (often shortened to ‘alto’, the lowest female voice), or mezzo-soprano (a medium-high voice). Boys whose voices have not yet broken sing in the same range as the female voices, but are referred to as trebles and altos, rather than sopranos and contraltos. The main categories of men's voices are tenor (the highest male voice), bass (the lowest), baritone (between the two), and countertenor (above the tenor range). Some men can use falsetto, a sort of false high voice, to sing in the countertenor, alto, and even soprano ranges.

Acoustics of the voice The human voice produces sound in the same way as a free-reed instrument, set in motion by air from the lungs being expelled under pressure by contraction of the diaphragm. The sound source is a set of vocal folds (two strips of cartilage stretched across the larynx at the back of the throat). These act as a flexible valve controlling the escape of air as a series of pulses, creating a sound rich in harmonics. The pitch of this sound can be varied by tension or relaxation of the larynx. The timbre of the voice is created by the resonances of the mouth and nasal cavities, and can be varied by changing the shape of the mouth and throat to produce the different vowel and consonant sounds.

Vocal registers Until recently, theorists divided the voice into different registers, known as the chest voice, throat voice, and head voice, based on what was believed to be the physiological source of voice production. These terms are now used more as a description of tonal quality. They are the equivalent of the low, medium, and high portions of a singer's range, felt rather than produced in those parts of the body. The term ‘head voice’ was probably used in early music to describe falsetto. Modern vocal registers are classified mainly by the vocal range and gender of the singer.

Voices in counterpoint Western art music has its roots in medieval church music, which was a purely vocal form. As polyphony developed in the late Middle Ages, each line of music was referred to as a ‘voice’, a practice that continued even when describing the parts of an instrumental piece. The term refers not only to the separate instruments or singers in an ensemble, but also to the lines of a contrapuntal work. So, for example, a fugue in four voices may be written for four separate instruments (or singers), but is just as likely to be for a keyboard instrument such as the organ or harpsichord.

voice

Sound produced through the mouth and by the passage of air between the vocal cords. In humans the sound is much amplified by the hollow sinuses of the face, and is modified by the movements of the lips, tongue, and cheeks.

voice

In poetry, the speaking persona or personality of a poem produced by the stylistic choices of the poet. Voice is related to tone and mood in a poem, in that they are all determined by diction or word choice, syntax, line length, and other elements contributing to the poem's overall feeling. However, voice is considered more personal and, therefore, more unique. While any poet can use a tone that is angry or write a poem that is melancholic in mood, all poets strive to create their own individual voices.

The US poets Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson both achieved unique voices; their methods of writing are impossible to emulate.