Anglicized form of FALSETTO.
1707. J. Stevens, trans. Quevedo’s Com. Wks. (1709), 59. A young Man singing … with such a Voice, as seem’d not to come from Heaven … it was a Falset.
1782. Burney, Hist. Mus., II. iv. 374. To the one Chaucer gives a coarse base voice, while the other, just come from Rome, without a beard, sings in Falset. Ibid. (1796), Memoirs Metastasio, II. 174. A great player on the violin in falset.
