tessitura
Americannoun
noun
-
the general pitch level of a piece of vocal music
an uncomfortably high tessitura
-
the compass or range of a voice
Etymology
Origin of tessitura
1890–95; < Italian: literally, texture < Latin textūra; see texture
Explanation
If you're a singer with a remarkably wide tessitura, the range of notes that you can sing without straining is impressive. You could comfortably sing a piece of music with very high and very low notes. Without training, the average person’s tessitura is only about six consecutive notes. That doesn't mean that they can't sing other notes at all; it just means that singing lower or higher notes is a strain. A piece or passage of music also has a tessitura, the range that a singer's voice stays within for most of the piece. A piece with a low tessitura has notes that are mostly in the lower part of a singer's range; one with a high tessitura has notes mostly in the higher part of a singer's range.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
After singing Caláf, which is a pretty hard tessitura, it’s very demanding.
From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 5, 2024
Unfortunately, Villazón struggled with the low-for-him tessitura; his voice, tired and frayed, often floated around the center of the pitch when he wasn’t tweaking melodies to suit his range.
From New York Times • Dec. 10, 2023
The prince in ‘Rusalka’ and Lohengrin actually have nearly the same tessitura, so I can build on my experience.”
From New York Times • Feb. 23, 2023
She also struggled, as many cellists do, with the treacherously high tessitura of the sixth suite, which was originally written for a five-stringed instrument.
From Washington Post • Oct. 17, 2016
A song’s range concerns all of the notes in a song from lowest to highest, while the tessitura concerns the part of the register that contains the most tones of that melody.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
