In music, SATB is a scoring of compositions for choirs or consorts of instruments consisting of four voice types: soprano, alto, tenor and bass.
Choral music Four-part harmony using soprano, alto, tenor and bass is a common scoring in classical music,SATB musiklexikon.infoChoral collections – Choir SATB Carus-Verlag 2022Voces8 SATB / A Cappella Songbook thalia.de 2022 including chorales and most Bach cantatas.Shrock, Dennis: Choral Repertoire Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 298,
The letters of the abbreviation are also used by publishers to describe different scorings for soloists and choirs other than four-part harmony. For example, the listing "STB solos, SATB choir" of Bach's Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, BWV 140, indicates that a performance needs three soloists: soprano, tenor and bass, and a four-part choir. "SATB/SATB" is used when a double choir is required, as in Penderecki's Polish Requiem.Polish Requiem Schott Music 2022 or SSATB, with divided sopranos, is a typical scoring in English church music.Te Deum in D / By Henry Purcell alfred.com A listing for Bach's Mass in B minor includes the maximum of SSATB soloists and SSAATTBB eight-part choir and also indicates that it contains choral movements for SATB, SSATB, SSATBB and SATB/SATB, as well as arias for individual soloists, and duets for SS, ST and SA.
Other letters of abbreviation, however with less consistency, have been used by publishers, such as "Tr" for treble (boy soprano), "Mz" for mezzo-soprano, "Ba", "Bar" or "Bari" for baritone, "C" for both canto (the highest part) and contralto, and "Ct" for countertenor.Arvo Pärt: Miserere Universal Edition 2022 "SATB div." indicates that parts are sometimes divided (divisi) during a piece, often sharing the same staff.
Moreover, multiple parts can be assigned; first tenors, second basses, and so on.
Notation When the soprano and alto are notated in one staff, all stems for the soprano go up, and all for the alto go down. Similarly, when the tenor and bass are notated in one staff, the upper voice is marked by stems up, and both voices are written in bass clef, while the tenor is usually written in treble clef marked an octave down if it has its own staff.Dr. Barbara Murphy, University of Tennessee, School of Music
+ "SATB-style" voice staff stem soprano (S) treble clef up alto (A) treble clef down tenor (T) bass clef up bass (B) bass clef down
Instrumental music In a broader sense, choirs of instruments can also be described by the abbreviation SATB, often for members of the same family of instruments, such as consorts of recorders,The Schott Recorder Consort Anthology Schott Music 2022 viola da gamba,Viola da Gamba SATB sheetmusicplus.com 2022 saxophonesSaxophone Quartet saxpress.com 2022 and trombones.Trombone Solo SATB Music sheetmusicplus.com 2022 The abbreviations are also a common way to describe which "voices" perform in instrumental compositions such as fugues, including Bach's The Art of Fugue and The Musical Offering, written without indicating specific instruments.
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