tessitura

[tes-i-toor-uh, tes-see-too-rah]

noun

plural

tessituras, tessiture 

1. the general pitch level or average range of a vocal or instrumental part in a musical composition.

   an uncomfortably high tessitura.

tessitura

/ ˌtɛsɪˈtʊərə /

noun

1. the general pitch level of a piece of vocal music

   an uncomfortably high tessitura

2. the compass or range of a voice

Word History and Origins

Origin of tessitura¹

1890–95; < Italian: literally, texture < Latin textūra; texture

Word History and Origins

Origin of tessitura¹

Italian: texture, from Latin textura; see _texture

Example Sentences

After singing Caláf, which is a pretty hard tessitura, it’s very demanding.

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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.

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The way Adès pitches the violin writing high up, almost daring the soloist to sustain it, recalls the extreme tessitura for the soprano role of Ariel in his opera “The Tempest.”

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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.

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These two registers sound and feel very different, and the singer may have even have two distinct tessituras, one in each register.

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