Barbershop music countertenor, the baritone resembles the Heldentenor or lyric baritone in range and a tenor in tessitura, and the lead generally corresponds to the tenor of classical repertoire, with some singers possessing a tessitura more similar to that of a high baritone. Barbershop singing is performed both by men's and women's groups; the elements of the barbershop style and the names of the voice parts are the same for both. The defining characteristic of the barbershop style is the "ringing" chord, one in which certain overtones of the four voices reinforce each other, sometimes so strongly that the overtone is perceived
Barbershop music The genre gradually faded into obscurity in the 1920s, although barbershop-style harmonies remained in evidence in a cappella forms of traditional black gospel and white gospel. Other researchers argue that today's barbershop music is an invented tradition related to several musical features popular around 1900, including quartet singing and the use of the barbershop chord, but effectively created during the 1940s in the ranks of the Barbershop Harmony Society whilst creating a system of singing contests and its contest rules. The revival of a cappella singing took place around 1938 when a tax lawyer named Owen C. Cash sought to