music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

, SATB is a scoring of compositions for

choir A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...

s or consorts of instruments consisting of four

voice type A voice type is a classification of the human singing voice into perceivable categories or groups. Particular human singing human voice, voices are identified as having certain qualities or characteristics of vocal range, vocal weight, tessitura ...

soprano A soprano () is a type of classical singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hertz, Hz to A5 in Choir, choral ...

alto The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian (Latin: '' altus''), historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In four-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in ch ...

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

and

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

Choral music

Four-part harmony Four-part harmony is music written for four Human voice, voices, or for some other musical medium—four musical instruments or a single keyboard instrument, for example—for which the various musical parts can give a different note for each Cho ...

using soprano, alto, tenor and bass is a common scoring in classical music, including

chorale A chorale is the name of several related musical forms originating in the music genre of the Lutheran chorale: * Hymn tune of a Lutheran hymn (e.g. the melody of " Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme"), or a tune in a similar format (e.g. one o ...

s and most Bach cantatas.Shrock, Dennis
Choral Repertoire
''

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...

'', 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''. or SSATB, with divided sopranos, is a typical scoring in English

church music Church music is a genre of Christian music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclesiastical liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. History Early Christian musi ...

. 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 A boy soprano (British and especially North American English) or boy treble (only British English) is a young male singer with a voice in the soprano range, a range that is often still called the treble voice range (in North America too) no m ...

), "Mz" for

mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano (, ), or mezzo ( ), is a type of classical music, classical female singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the soprano and the contralto voice types. The mezzo-soprano's vocal range usually extends from the A bel ...

, "Ba", "Bar" or "Bari" for

baritone A baritone is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the bass (voice type), bass and the tenor voice type, voice-types. It is the most common male voice. The term originates from the ...

, "C" for both canto (the highest part) and

contralto A contralto () is a classical music, classical female singing human voice, voice whose vocal range is the lowest of their voice type, voice types. The contralto's vocal range is fairly rare, similar to the mezzo-soprano, and almost identical to ...

, and "Ct" for

countertenor A countertenor (also contra tenor) is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of the female contralto or mezzo-soprano voice types, generally extending from around G3 to D5 or E5, although a sopranist (a ...

. "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 In music, an octave (: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is an interval between two notes, one having twice the frequency of vibration of the other. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referr ...

down if it has its own staff.Dr. Barbara Murphy, University of Tennessee, School of Music
/ref> The rules of

voice leading Voice leading (or part writing) is the linear progression of individual melodic lines ( voices or parts) and their interaction with one another to create harmonies, typically in accordance with the principles of common-practice harmony and cou ...

apply to SATB notations.

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,

viola da gamba The viola da gamba (), or viol, or informally gamba, is a bowed and fretted string instrument that is played (i.e. "on the leg"). It is distinct from the later violin family, violin, or ; and it is any one of the earlier viol family of bow (m ...

saxophone The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of brass. As with all single-reed instruments, sound is produced when a reed on a mouthpiece vibrates to p ...

s and

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

s.Trombone Solo SATB Music
sheetmusicplus.com 2022 The abbreviations are also a common way to describe which "voices" perform in instrumental compositions such as

fugue In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...

s, including Bach's '' The Art of Fugue'' and '' The Musical Offering'', written without indicating specific instruments.

Choral music

Notation

Instrumental music

Notes

References

Further reading