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Tender: strictly the feminine plural of tenero, used as a character word (in Mahler’s Italian it translates zart). Not to be confused with the verb tenere, to hold, the root of tenuto.
Printed above or below the staff as a character word, usually beside a tempo direction (molto sostenuto, tenere); it lasts for the passage it introduces.
Tenere asks for tenderness: soft tone, gentle legato, no pressure. Teneramente and con tenerezza are the standard forms, so prefer them in your own scores; tenere alone is ambiguous, since it is also the verb ‘to hold’. Where it does appear, a translation or the surrounding words settle the meaning.
Mahler, Kindertotenlieder, “In diesem Wetter”, piano, m. 125: “molto sostenuto, tenere” beside the German “sehr getragen, zart”.
Tenere is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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