My first topic has its speculative aspects. In fact, given our present state of knowledge, it’s a real outlier. But I would not bother with it if it hadn’t presented itself in the course of my work, and if some potentially evidential material had not surfaced. And it starts, at least, with a hard and paradoxical fact: we’ve grown bigger. (Analyses vary, but even conservative ones show appreciable height increases in developed countries since 1900. The gains are greater among men, but still significant for women.)  Assuming that, with some exceptions, anatomical proportions have remained consistent, we would be entitled to suppose that on this ground alone naturally resounding voices would be more plentiful than ever before. Taller bodies would mean more capacious skeletal frameworks, longer respiratory tracts with more massive diaphragms and related respiratory musculature, greater vocal fold mass, and a larger resonantal capacity. That should in turn translate into voices that are, on average, at least slightly bigger and slightly lower. Instead, voices are on average smaller, and in both sexes (pardon the binary terminology; I’m speaking of our classical voice categories) truly deep voices are now so rare that encounters with the true basso profondo/tiefer bass, or with the Anglo/Russian/Northern European contralto, are as rare as sightings of the coelacanth.

It’s my belief that the solution to this paradox lies mostly in how voices are used, in pre-training habituation and in training itself. But perhaps I suffer from teacher’s bias, a professionally conditioned tendency to explain everything in terms of usage and technique. So let me continue for the moment with the possibility that something constitutional is involved, something in the actual makeup of tissue and/or the workings of neuromuscular systems. I often think of this by analogy with what seems to be an injury epidemic in the sports I follow most closely, baseball and tennis. In both of these non-contact sports, populated at the high end with hyper-trained, hyper-medicalized athletes who are generally regarded as bigger, quicker, and more powerful than even their legendary predecessors, we are experiencing what appears to be a record rate of breakdown⎯⎯pitchers with torn and frayed elbows and shoulders, position players with blown-out hamstrings or knee joints, tennis players with serious wrist, elbow, shoulder, or hip injuries.

Many factors are commonly cited in relation to this perceived crisis, among them being extended playing seasons with more demanding travel schedules; the increased average velocity of balls thrown and struck by bats or rackets and, therefore, of the overall speed of play, to say nothing of the heightened impact of each hit, the heightened torque of each throw or swing; the stress laid on young bodies by intensive childhood development programs; drugs, including, but not limited to, those uncovered by the steroid-scandal revelations); the very success of modern medical supervision and surgery, thanks to which many great athletes (including virtually the entire roster of my home baseball team, the New York Mets) are playing with mended bodies when they can play at all; etc. Two of my pet suspicions (of which I have nothing resembling proof⎯⎯but that’s the joy of allowing oneself a modicum of educated speculation) have to do with the way strength is now usually acquired (through goal-directed training) as compared with how it more frequently used to grow (as a byproduct of physical work and generally more active lifestyles), and the emphasis on sheer muscle bulk and strength, as distinct from limberness and the myo-elasticity of bodily co-ordinations. (In my first youth, I used to go to the ballpark early when the Cleveland Indians were in town just to watch the greatest pitcher of that day, Bobby Feller, go through his stretching regimen in center field, which rivaled that of any sideshow contortionist. And when it comes to stretching, think: has there been a notable rise in injury occurrence among professional dancers, for whom a more elastic kind of strength is required? I don’t believe so.)