Meaning of the word "cantore"

The original meaning is here: http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/cantore/

Then today, cantore (or also chorister) is commonly one of the members of a choir, often with activities related to worship.

"The word 'cantore' [singer/chanter] is used in two different contexts: 'cantore' can indicate the musician who sings, the singer, just as 'violinist' indicates the musician who plays the violin; but 'cantore' is also the poet, lyric or epic, who, to the sound of the lyre, harp or lute, composes his poetry and also intones it. The rhapsodes, the minnesingers, Homer, Petrarch, the figures of Shakespearean fools, Ossian, the harpist from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are singers in this second sense. The origin of this 'cantore' is different from that of the musician who sings.

In the first meaning of the term, it refers not to the composer, but to the performer; this would also hold true if it were the composer himself singing his own work (or participating by singing in its performance). In the musician who sings, we perceive primarily the man in this particular activity, and not as a totality. By contrast, the 'cantore' who enunciates, the poet, is conceived as the man in his entirety; as the man who speaks or who speaks by singing."

Thrasybulos G. Georgiades

I note how "cantore" is directly semantically linked to "cantoria", more so than to "coro". In Italian and from a historical perspective, cantore is almost always someone who sings in an ecclesiastical choir, or someone who sings in the cantoria (which does not exclude the soloist).

But let's be careful with false friends... I have heard "cantore" used as the Italian equivalent of the German "Kantor"!! The Kantor was a sort of director of liturgical and paraliturgical music in large Lutheran churches. J.S. Bach became Thomaskantor in Leipzig, i.e., Cantor of St. Thomas Cathedral. In German too, therefore, Kantor derives from cantoria (Kantorei), but assumes a slightly different meaning over time. Slightly, because even cantor, from the Latin, can also mean choir director in the Italian area.

I am not an expert, but while searching I saw that rather than cantor, in the Western Christian rite (therefore in pre-Reformation Catholicism), the soloist and "director" of the choir was called "Primicerius Scholae". And this brings us back to the more common use of the word cantor, namely Schola Cantorum, which is not the school of chants but the school of cantors.

I have a friend who deals with ancient polyphony. I have NEVER heard him pronounce the word "corista" (choir member). He always and only calls them "cantori" (cantors).

Now you have to satisfy a curiosity, but isn't "choir" actually the place where the singers sit?

oh well, in Italian as in other languages, synonyms abound

But if you wanted to ask what the "original" meaning of coro was, it derives from Greek (Choròs χορός) and is the chorus of tragedy, i.e., a group that sings and dances, from which choreography, choreutics etc. follow.

I also prefer to use the word

thallo wrote:

I note how "cantore" is directly semantically linked to "cantoria", more so than to "coro". In Italian and from a historical perspective, cantore is almost always someone who sings in an ecclesiastical choir, or someone who sings in the cantoria (which does not exclude the soloist).

But let's be careful with false friends... I have heard "cantore" used as the Italian equivalent of the German "Kantor"!! The Kantor was a sort of director of liturgical and paraliturgical music in large Lutheran churches. J.S. Bach became Thomaskantor in Leipzig, i.e., Cantor of St. Thomas Cathedral. Even in German, therefore, Kantor derives from cantoria (Kantorei), but takes on a slightly different meaning over time. Slightly, because even cantor, from the Latin, can also mean choir director in the Italian area.

I am not an expert, but while searching I saw that rather than cantor, in the Western Christian rite (therefore in pre-Reformation Catholicism), the soloist and "director" of the choir was called "Primicerius Scholae". And this brings us back to the more common use of the word cantor, namely Schola Cantorum, which is not the school of chants but the school of cantors.

I have a friend who deals with ancient polyphony. I have NEVER heard him pronounce the word corista (choir member). He always and only calls us "cantori" (cantors).

I also prefer to use the word "cantore", rather than "corista"; my first choir director (when I was, indeed, a cantore) was a Franciscan who always encouraged us by calling us "cantori!".

Today, on the other hand (that is, as a choir director), I in turn call them "cantori".

I am left with a doubt regarding those who sing in non-ecclesiastical settings: for example, are the courtiers of the Duke of Mantua in "Rigoletto", or the guests at the party in Act I of "La Traviata", "cantori"?