Contratenor

What it means

Contratenor is originally not a voice type but a voice designation of the polyphonic music of the late Middle Ages. In this music the tenor carries the main voice, often a given cantus firmus; the contratenor stands opposite it and moves in the same register, partly above, partly below it. Later the voice was split into a higher and a lower branch, the contratenor altus and the contratenor bassus, from which the designations alto and bass emerged.

Musical use

For understanding early music the term is important, because it shows how today's voice registers arose: not from the classification of human voices but from the structure of the texture. The contratenor is in its leading often leaping and less melodic than tenor and discantus, because it fills the gaps of the texture and completes the sonorities. Whoever performs such music today must know this role in order to weight the voice correctly. In more recent usage the word is also used as a synonym for countertenor, that is, for a high male voice — a meaning that is only indirectly connected with the original one.

Performance practice

In the performance of medieval polyphony it is worthwhile to hear the texture first without the contratenor to grasp tenor and upper voice as a framework; afterward it becomes clear which function the third voice takes on. Do not sing it as an independent melody but watch the sonorities at the goal points. Scoring and execution — with voices, instruments, or mixed — are questions of interpretation about which the sources seldom give information and which are to be decided in the ensemble.

Bear in mind that the modern use of the word for a high male voice is only indirectly connected with the historical designation of the part: in texts on medieval music it is always to be checked which meaning is meant. For the performance of such music it holds to shape the voice according to its function in the texture and not as an independent melody. Settle scoring and execution as a deliberate decision, since the sources say little. Watch the sonorities at the goal points and sing with calm tone production.