(Lat.: ‘against the tenor’).
The name given in the 14th and early 15th centuries to a polyphonic line composed in the same range as the Tenor. The practice of writing a part ‘against the tenor’ superseded the typical 13th-century process of adding parts above a tenor line. The first theoretical mention of the word ‘contratenor’ occurs in the treatise In arte motetorum (CS, iii, 88; 14th–15th century), and its earliest known appearance in a musical source is in a fragmentary motet manuscript of between 1315 and 1319 from the cloister of S Giorgio Maggiore, Venice (facs. in Quadrivium, ix (1968), table 1). The innovatory practice of adding a contratenor to a tenor is interestingly revealed in two motets (Vos quid admiramini/Gratissima/Gaude gloriosa and Impudenter circuivi/Virtutibus laudabilis) by Philippe de Vitry (1291–1361), which may be performed either with a conventional single-line tenor (‘tenor solus’) or with the same part ingeniously rewritten in the new manner as two lines, ‘tenor’ and ‘contratenor’.
In late 14th- and early 15th-century works with borrowed tenors (motets, isorhythmic motets and tenor masses) the cantus firmus appears in long note values, while the added contratenor moves with rather more rhythmic flexibility, often assuming the chief responsibility for providing the harmonic foundation (e.g. Dunstaple’s Preco preheminencie). In a typical three-voice chanson of the period the tenor and contratenor parts are both more active (though usually not as florid as the superius). The tenor, no longer prius factus, still shows signs of having been written at least bar by bar in advance of the contratenor in so far as it usually forms perfect intervals with the top voice (e.g. Du Fay’s Belle, veulliés moy retenir).
The technique of conceiving a tenor part first and then adding another line, or lines, against it persisted after about 1450, when the contratenor split into two parts, the Contratenor altus and the contratenor bassus; it is still reflected in Pietro Aaron’s instructions ‘Del modo del comporre il controbasso, et controalto doppo il tenore et canto’ (Il Thoscanello de la musica, 1523, bk 2, chap.21). In the generation of Josquin Des Prez, as composers began to stratify more clearly the ranges of voices in polyphony and, in particular, as they became interested in the art of imitative counterpoint, the term ‘contratenor’ and the compositional approach that went with it became obsolete. For further information see D. Hoffmann-Axthelm: ‘Contratenor’ (1973), HMT.
OWEN JANDER