A term for a string instrument, most often denoting a type of viola or a small cello. From the 16th century onwards the term was most commonly applied to a large viola with four strings tuned like a modern viola in 5ths upwards from c. By 1556 Jambe de Fer was using ‘tenor-contralto’ (taille/haute-contre) in this sense. In its earliest uses, however, ‘tenor violin’ must have referred to a three-string viola tuned upwards in 5ths from c, according to theorists such as Ganassi (1543) and Martin Agricola (1545).
Sometimes ‘tenor violin’ refers to an instrument resembling and played like a small cello, with four strings tuned upwards in 5ths from F or G (i.e. a tuning between that of the modern viola and cello). This instrument never attained the status of a principal member of the violin family; although its ‘banishment’ was regretted by Arnold Dolmetsch, Gerald Hayes and others, its use was peripheral and sporadic, and it was hardly noticed by the theorists or explicitly called for in music after the mid-17th century. It was a victim of the clear historical tendency, in the violin family, to keep the number of members to a minimum (i.e. three) and at the same time to increase the playing range and variety of colour of which each member was capable.
The c-tuned ‘tenor violin’ was actually a regular c-tuned viola, but the term implied a viola of large size, normally used to play in the lower part of the viola register. In contrast, the ‘alto’ (or ‘contralto’) viola was smaller and favoured a higher tessitura. This explains why Stradivari referred to his ‘Tuscan’ tenor viola as ‘T.V.’ and the contralto of the same set as ‘C.V.’. Some of these early ‘tenors’, especially before 1700, were very large instruments whose body lengths extended the player’s arm to the limit – one reason most of them were later cut down in size. The Stradivari ‘Tuscan’ tenor (now in Florence) has a body length of 47·9 cm, and the magnificent viola of Andrea Amati, made for Charles IX of France and dated 1574 (now in the Hill Collection, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford), measures 47 cm. Some instrument makers continued to construct very large violas intended to be played on the arm (e.g. the Ritter viola-alta in the 19th century), but all these instruments almost immediately disappeared owing to the physical difficulty of playing them.
In the 16th and 17th centuries the four parts of an ensemble, corresponding to soprano, alto, tenor and bass ranges, were typically assigned to one violin, two violas (one being larger than the other) and bass violin. According to Mersenne (1636–7), the five parts of a string ensemble were allotted to one violin, three (c-tuned) violas of differing sizes and bass violin. In Mersenne’s ‘ordinary ensemble’ the three violas were called quinte or cinquiesme, haute-contre (contralto) and taille (tenor). In this typical ensemble there was no ‘tenor’ between the range of the viola and cello. Around 1700 partbooks labelled ‘tenor viola’ and ‘alto viola’ were both intended to be played on the c-tuned viola, but one part was in a lower range of the viola than the other. In Italian music and most other music after 1700 the four parts of an ensemble were more generally allocated to two violins, viola and cello; and, if in five parts, to two violins, two violas (alto and tenor) and cello.
D.D. Boyden: ‘The Tenor Violin: Myth, Mystery, or Misnomer?’, Festschrift Otto Erich Deutsch (Kassel, 1963), 273
P. Holman: Four and Twenty Fiddlers: the Violin at the English Court 1540–1690 (Oxford, 1993, 2/1995)
A. Kory: ‘A Wider Role for the Tenor Violin’, GSJ, xlvii (1994), 123–53
E. Segerman: ‘The Name “Tenor Violin”’, GSJ, xlviii (1995), 181–7
DAVID D. BOYDEN