(Ger. Terzett; It. terzetto).
A composition for three solo voices with or without accompaniment. The term was defined by J.G. Walther (Musicalisches Lexicon, 1732) and occasionally appears in scores from the first half of the 18th century (e.g. Handel’s Solomon, 1748, and J.S. Bach’s Cantata no.38). Many compositions for three voices were written before then, however, in the forms of the tricinium, the madrigal and the villanella in the Renaissance; accompanied pieces for three similar voices were not infrequent in 17th-century opera and oratorio, for example the three famigliari in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (1642) and the interludes for the three shepherds and three wise men in Schütz’s Historia, der … Geburth … Jesu Christi (1664).
In the Classical period the ‘terzett’ (so named in the scores) frequently appears. Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte contain celebrated examples. In the latter work, that for the Three Boys, ‘Seid uns zum zweitenmal willkommen’, continues the earlier operatic tradition of trios for similar voices (which survived to Wagner’s time in the three Norns and three Rhinemaidens of the Ring), although in general the name implies no such limitation of voices nor any particular style of treatment. For the little trio ‘Soave sia il vento’ in Così fan tutte Mozart used the diminutive, ‘terzettino’. The terzetts in Weber’s Der Freischütz include one with a choral conclusion; that from Mendelssohn’s Elijah for the three angels, ‘Lift thine eyes to the mountains’, is in every feature simply an unaccompanied partsong. Chamber terzets are found in the works of Haydn, Mozart and Schubert. Dvořák called his op.74 trio for two violins and viola ‘Terzetto’, but the use of the term for instrumental music in the sense of ‘Trio’ is uncommon. (MGG2; G. Reinäcker)
MICHAEL TILMOUTH/R