Disputatio:Tenor

Tenor

"Tenor" is a perfectly appropriate term. Perosi et al. used "contraltus, tenor, bassus," etc. And frankly, "theatrum lyricum cantor vocis acuta" etc. etc. etc. is just plain absurd when one could say the same with five letters -- five letters which already form a Latin word! LionhardusCiampa 17:00, 24 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

Probe dicis, amice. Examples of music notation document the use of the word tenor from medieval times continuously to the present. In medieval and some later music, however, it denotes not so much a vocal range as a contrapuntal function: that of "holding" (hence the name, 'the holder', qui tenet) the plainchant, against which the other voices sing—a function not unlike that of the chorale in J. S. Bach's chorale preludes. By Renaissance times, the tenor typically moved in the normal upper male range, with a bassus well below it, a superius above it, and a contratenor and/or an altus beside and sometimes a little below but more often a little above it. In the texture conceived vertically, it tended to stay more or less in the middle. IacobusAmor 17:26, 24 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

Right you are -- I had forgotten much of what you said. RE the chorale in JSB, it is good to utter the term "cantus firmus," seeing as it's a very nice Latin one! In any case, you also helped me to remember that long, long before Perosi -- Palestrina et al. -- they used tenor, bassus, etc. Of course for the soprano it was usually discantus. Speaking of which: for soprano which is better, sopran or sopranus? LionhardusCiampa 17:46, 24 Septembris 2007 (UTC)