Tessitura

Vocal Definition

The term tessitura is most commonly used when discussing vocal music. It is not meant to describe the entire range of a piece, from highest to lowest note, but to describe what part of the range is used most: a subset of the entire range of the piece.

Range-bins

Instead of describing a new tessitura for each piece, or work, I have defined a set of bins that contain different subsets of the complete range of the horn and then compared the number of notes asked for in each subset. Each bin will be referred to by name, shown below. The bin that is used most called the tessitura.

Comparing the tessitura of each work, the bin that is used the most in a work, is not adequately significant. Nearly all of the works had a tessitura of the mid- bin. As such, each portion of the range is used to compare one work to another.