(Fr.: ‘low treble’).
Term used, especially in French sources, to denote a female voice below the soprano or haut-dessus – in effect a second soprano or Mezzo-soprano. Rousseau (Dictionnaire, 1768) specifically identifies these as vocal terms, as opposed to the instrumental first and second treble (premier dessus and second dessus).
Until the mid-18th century the vocal term was associated only with part-singing. Brossard (Dictionaire, 1703) defines it as a second treble part; as early as 1597 Morley describes a bass descant as ‘that kinde of descanting, where your sight of taking and using your cordes must be under the plainsong’. However, Rousseau points to the solo use of this voice in Italy and writes that the ‘beautiful bas-dessus, full and sonorous, is no less esteemed in Italy than the soprano’. Although he says that France pays ‘no regard’ to these voices, he cites a Mlle Gondré (whose name appears on a ‘Second Dessus’ part for an 18th-century performance of Lully’s Armide) for her ‘very beautiful bas-dessus’ that was ‘very much applauded’ at the Paris Opéra.
Choral writing in French operas from Lully onwards frequently made use of a three-part high-voice petit choeur, where the middle part was for bas-dessus and the lowest for the male Haute-contre. In Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (1829), both upper voices in four-part choruses were labelled ‘dessus’, the lower voice corresponding to the bas-dessus. Berlioz (Grande traité d’instrumentation, 1844) drew attention to Gluck’s choruses of priestesses in Iphigénie en Tauride, which are for dessus and bas-dessus only, and observed that ‘it cannot be denied that, in France, [Nature] is very sparing of [contraltos]’. See also Alto (i).
L. Rosow: ‘Performing a Choral Dialogue by Lully’, EMc, xv (1987), 325–35
LIONEL SAWKINS, ELLEN T. HARRIS