Countertenors

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A male singer who uses a falsetto voice to reach pitches typically associated with female singers
2. A vocalist who challenges typical gender norms in music by singing in an unusually high vocal register for males
3. A male vocalist who achieves a high vocal range usually linked with female performers by employing a unique head voice technique

Etymology: Countertenors are the plural of "countertenor", and the word's history runs through the Latin "contrātenor". In medieval polyphony, the "tenor" was the voice that held the main melody, and singers and composers placed a higher voice against it, which is where the "counter" element comes from. That higher part was sung by men, which means the word was never about a particular age or body type but about where a voice sat in the musical texture. The word is a compound built from two English parts, "counter-" and "tenor", so its structure is transparent even though its musical sense is specialised. A countertenor is a male singer who produces notes in the upper range through falsetto or a related technique, which places the voice above the tenor range. The Latin origin accounts for the word's shape, and the musical sense of "tenor" accounts for its meaning. Together they explain why a term that sounds like a description of position in a choir now names a singing voice type.

Synonyms: singers, vocalists