Ambitus (music)

In medieval music, ambitus (Ecclesiastical Latin: ['am.bi.t̪us]) is a Latin term literally meaning enclos[ur]e, and in Medieval Latin means the "range" of a melodic line, most usually referring to the range of scale degrees attributed to a given mode, particularly in Gregorian chant.

In Gregorian chant specifically, the ambitus is the range, or the distance between the highest and lowest note.

Earlier writers termed the modal ambitus "perfect" when it was a ninth or tenth (that is, an octave plus one or two notes, either at the top or bottom or both), but from the late fifteenth century onward "perfect ambitus" usually meant one octave, and the ambitus was called "imperfect" when it was less, and "pluperfect" when it was more than an octave.

Ambitus may also mean the range of a voice, of an instrument, or more generally, of an entire piece of music,[1][2] and describes its pitch extremes.

Unlike the terms register and tessitura, ambitus does not refer to how notes are used in a piece.