tenōr

Tenōr in Latin meant a holding, a course, a direction — from tenēre (to hold). In medieval music, the tenor was the voice that held the cantus firmus — the fixed melody, usually a Gregorian chant — while other voices sang around it in polyphony. The tenor literally held the tune. Everything else was decoration. The word names the function, not the pitch.

As polyphonic music evolved from the thirteenth century onward, voice ranges were classified relative to the tenor. The voice above the tenor was the superius (later soprano). The voice next to the tenor was the contratenor — which split into the contratenor altus (high counter-tenor, becoming the alto) and the contratenor bassus (low counter-tenor, becoming the bass). All four standard voice categories — soprano, alto, tenor, bass — were defined by their relationship to the tenor. The tenor was the center.

The tenor voice became the most celebrated in opera. The high tenor voice — lyric, heroic, passionate — sang the leading romantic roles. Enrico Caruso, who recorded for Victor Records from 1904 until his death in 1921, was the first musician to sell a million records. Luciano Pavarotti became one of the most famous people on Earth through his tenor voice. The Three Tenors — Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras — performed at the 1990 World Cup in Rome to an audience of 800 million.

English borrowed tenor from Old French in the fourteenth century. The word developed a figurative meaning by the fifteenth century: the 'tenor' of a conversation, the 'tenor' of one's life — meaning the general course or direction. This meaning comes directly from the Latin: the thing that is held, the continuous thread. The musical meaning and the conversational meaning share the same logic: the line that runs through everything else.