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Tenors

A Minute with Miles
Mary Noble Ours
/
SC Public Radio

The word “tenor” is from the Latin tenere, “to hold”…and in medieval and Renaissance vocal music, from about 1250 to 1500, the tenor voice was the “holding voice.” It was the voice that held the principal melody, often with long held-out notes, and the voice around which the other voices were composed. The tenor voice, always a male voice, was not necessarily a high voice—or at least not originally. And in fact the meaning of “tenor” actually varied from place to place. But it seems that by the 1400s and 1500s the term “tenor” did generally mean a high male voice, and it was the voice that was usually featured in popular songs and early opera. By the mid-1600s, though, the castrati had become the unchallenged stars of opera, and it wasn’t until the late 1700s and early 1800s that the brilliant operatic tenor as we know him today came into his own.

A Minute with Miles is a production of South Carolina Public Radio, made possible by the J.M. Smith Corporation.

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Miles Hoffman is the founder and violist of the American Chamber Players, with whom he regularly tours the United States, and the Virginia I. Norman Distinguished Visiting Professor of Chamber Music at the Schwob School of Music, in Columbus, Georgia. He has appeared as viola soloist with orchestras across the country, and his solo performances on YouTube have received well over 700,000 views.