Pl. -os. [a. It. canto song, singing:—L. cantus, f. canĕre to sing.]
† 1. A song, ballad. Obs.
1603. G. Fletcher, Death of Eliza, iii. To heare a Canto of Elizae’s death.
1633. P. Fletcher, Purple Isl., VI. lxxvi. Then should thy shepherd (poorest shepherd) sing A thousand Canto’s in thy heav’nly praise.
1656. Blount, Glossogr., Canto, a Song or Sonnet.
1710. Pict. Malice, 12. The Canto, or Poem in Dogrell Rhime.
2. One of the divisions of a long poem; such a part as the minstrel might sing at one ‘fit.’ (Used in Italian by Dante, and in Eng. by Spenser.)
1590. Spenser, F. Q. (heading) Canto I. Ibid. (1596), IV. ii. 54. The which, for length, I will not here pursew, But rather will reserve it for a canto new.
1603. Drayton, Bar. Wars, I. lxvii. 8. As the next Canto dreadfully shall tell.
1759. Dilworth, Pope, 20. This truly elegant piece in five cantos.
1883. G. Lloyd, Ebb & Flow, II. 195. Its storied pavements, reminding one of the examples of Pride in the twelfth canto of the Purgatorio.
ǁ 3. Mus. [Ital.] See quot. 1879.
a. 1789. Burney, Hist. Mus. (ed. 2), II. iv. 325. Canto … the upper part or melody in a composition of many parts.
1879. Hullah, in Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 306/1. Technically canto is more generally understood to represent that part of a concerted piece to which the melody is assigned. With the old masters this was, as a rule, the TENOR; with the modern it is almost always the SOPRANO.
