(Ger.: ‘tenor song’).
The principal type of German polyphonic lied from about 1450 to about 1550. Tenorlieder are characterized by a cantus firmus (or ‘tenor’) which frequently consists of a pre-existing melody and is most often found in the tenor part. The cantus firmus is generally surrounded by three contrapuntal voices, giving a total of four parts, though early examples are usually in three parts and late ones sometimes in five or more. Many Tenorlieder are in bar form (AAB).
The Tenorlied seems to have grown out of monophonic traditions derived from Minnesang; its stylistic features were influenced by the 15th-century Franco-Flemish chanson favoured at German courts. At the beginning of the 16th century the Tenorlied attained great popularity, with many fine examples by Hofhaimer, Isaac, Heinrich Finck and others. Works by these composers sometimes begin with voices entering in imitation, though the imitation rarely persists for more than a few bars, and the cantus firmus character of the composition is seldom in doubt. The outstanding composer in the genre was undoubtedly Senfl, whose nearly 250 surviving lieder show sensitivity to text declamation, melodic freshness and a high degree of contrapuntal skill. Lassus also composed Tenorlieder, but by his time the genre was being supplanted by German secular compositions influenced by the villanella and madrigal. Many Lutheran chorale melodies are borrowed from the Tenorlied repertory, and in texture and melodic idiom the Tenorlied exerted a strong influence on the first generation of polyphonic chorale settings.
Tenorlieder texts range from serious poems of high literary quality to the humorous and obscene; they are generally anonymous. Most texts are strophic, and since the same music had to serve more than one stanza there was little opportunity for the text-painting associated with other 16th-century genres.
‘Tenorlied’ is a modern term, originally used in connection with a theory advanced by Moser, Schering and others that only the tenor was designed to be sung, the other parts being intended for instruments. This notion was questioned by Geering and others, and more recent writers tend to use the term to indicate the structural use of a cantus firmus in any voice and without necessarily implying any particular performing practice. Das Tenorlied (ed. N. Böker-Heil, H. Heckman and I. Kindermann, CaM, ix–xi, 1979–86) is a valuable thematic index of the entire repertory.
See also Lied, §I, 2–3.
R. Eitner: Das deutsche Lied des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1876–80)
R. Eitner: ‘Das alte deutsche mehrstimmige Lied und seine Meister’, MMg, xxv (1893), 149–55, 164–79, 183–204, 206–20; xxvi (1894), 1–135
H.J. Moser: Paul Hofhaimer (Stuttgart, 1927)
A. Schering: Aufführungspraxis alter Musik (Leipzig, 1931), 86–92
H. Osthoff: Die Niederländer und das deutsche Lied (1400–1640) (Berlin, 1938/R)
A. Geering: ‘Textierung und Besetzung in Ludwig Senfls Liedern’, AMf, iv (1939), 1–11
C.P. Reinhardt: Die Heidelberger Liedmeister des 16. Jahrhunderts (Kassel, 1939)
K. Dell’Orto: Lyric Poetry of the German Renaissance 1480–1525 (diss., Johns Hopkins U., 1973)
S. Keyl: ‘Tenorlied, Discantlied, Polyphonic Lied: Voices and Instruments in German Secular Polyphony of the Renaissance’, EMc, xx (1992), 434–45
M. Staehelin: ‘The Constitution of the Fifteenth-Century German Tenor Lied: Drafting the History of a Musical Genre’, Music in the German Renaissance: Sources, Styles, and Contexts, ed. J. Kmetz (Cambridge, 1994), 174–81
L. Finscher: ‘Lied and Madrigal, 1580–1600’, ibid., 182–92
STEPHEN KEYL