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tessitura

/ˌtɛsɪˈtʊərə/
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Other forms: tessituras

If you're a singer with a remarkably wide tessitura, the range of notes that you can sing without straining is impressive. You could comfortably sing a piece of music with very high and very low notes.

Without training, the average person’s tessitura is only about six consecutive notes. That doesn't mean that they can't sing other notes at all; it just means that singing lower or higher notes is a strain. A piece or passage of music also has a tessitura, the range that a singer's voice stays within for most of the piece. A piece with a low tessitura has notes that are mostly in the lower part of a singer's range; one with a high tessitura has notes mostly in the higher part of a singer's range.

Definitions of tessitura
  1. noun
    (music) the general range of pitch in a piece of music or vocal part, or the range of a singer’s voice
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