haute-contre

Tous ces diapasons différens réunis forment une étendue générale d'à-peu-près trois octaves qu'on a divisées en quatre parties, dont trois appellées haute-contre, taille & basse appartiennent aux voix masculines, & la quatrieme seulement qu'on appelle dessus est assignée aux voix aiguës, sur quoi se trouvent plusieurs remarques à faire.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: champion of among other things, mezzos! Celeste Winant 2008

These voices are divided into four categories; haute-contre (high tenor/male alto), taille (low tenor/lyric baritone) and basse (bass) for masculine voices, and dessus (treble) for high voices.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: champion of among other things, mezzos! Celeste Winant 2008

Thus, modern mezzos/contraltos such as myself wrestle with the slightly-too-high tessitura of the dessus or the slightly-too-low tessitura of the alto (or haute-contre).

Music on the Horizons Celeste Winant 2006

Thus, modern mezzos/contraltos such as myself wrestle with the slightly-too-high tessitura of the dessus or the slightly-too-low tessitura of the alto (or haute-contre).

Archive 2006-10-01 Celeste Winant 2006

Back then, the four voices (tenor (todays bass), counter-tenor (todays taille), motetus (todays haute-contre) and triplum (todays dessus)) all sang from the same clef.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: champion of among other things, mezzos! Celeste Winant 2008

In France, a countertenor might feel all the more acutely the implied slur that his vocal range has a certain prissiness to it, for une haute-contre here is feminine.

VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly Vol X No 2 1983

_tessitura_ employed, must have possessed either a _haute-contre_, or

Style in Singing W. E. Haslam