Roland Barthes and the Grain of Panzéra's Voice

Roland Barthes's perception of voice having a ‘grain’ is one of the best-known legacies of the last century's history of ideas, especially in discussions of popular music. His evidence, the singing of Charles Panzéra, compared with that of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, is explored and illustrated here in the context of a discussion of the origin of ‘grain’ and its wider implications. It is only rhetorically that one may consider the ‘geno’-song separately from the ‘pheno’-song, but the implied interplay of structure and effect is a powerful critical resource, neglected to date because Barthes's vision requires explanation, as proposed here.