"Recitative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... if not poetical, when moved by sorrow. Many a time I have seen a Keener commence her wail over the corpse of a near relative, and by degrees she has risen from the simple wail or cry to a high but mournful recitative, extemporized, under the excitement of the moment, into sentiments that were highly figurative and impressive. In this she was aided very much by the genius of the language, which possesses the finest and most copious vocabulary in the ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... St. Merry had a pitch in B flat. In addition to the tempi and the different instruments which make the execution difficult, one must add the recitatives which were very much employed and of which at that time a serious study was made. I recall a beautiful example of recitative in ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... consists solely in dwelling a considerable time on a single note, with the mouth wide open, the head thrown back, and the eyes half shut; then, suddenly changing to another tone, about half a dozen words are strung together, and a sort of dialogue, in recitative, is kept up by the performers. In one direction, a conjurer is seen exhibiting his feats of manual dexterity, surrounded by a motley gaping crowd;—in another, a story-teller exercises the risible faculties of the sedate Turk, ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... the perpetual carousal which seemed to be kept up in the gallery, and by the drum, and the voice of the 'muezzinn,' or chanter, calling the Turks to prayers from the minaret of the mosck attached to the palace. This chanter was a boy, and he sang out his hymn is a sort of loud melancholy recitative. He was a long time repeating the Eraun. The first exclamation was repeated four times, the remaining words twice; and the long and piercing note in which he concluded his confession of faith, by twice crying out the word 'hou!' ['At solemn sound of "Alla Hu!"' Giaour, i. 734] still rings ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... ran for many nights. Its choruses were tuned on the organs of the day. Morgiana's airs, "The Rose upon my Balcony" and the "Lightning on the Cataract" (recitative and scena) were on everybody's lips, and brought so many guineas to Sir George Thrum that he was encouraged to have his portrait engraved, which still may be seen in the music-shops. Not many persons, I believe, bought ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... famous duet with "Box," reciting their marriage to one and the same lady, and the long recitative in which the printer describes his elaborate preparations ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... singing right under my window, and I've never heard him do it before in all his five years. It was the dearest old-fashioned tune ever written and Billy sang the words as distinctly as if he had been a boy chorister doing a difficult recitative. My heart beat so it shook the lace on my breast like a breeze from heaven as he took the high note and then let it go ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... exclaims: "What are ten editorial crowns compared to one such Adagio as that in the second concerto!" The beautiful deep-toned, love-laden cantilena, which is profusely and exquisitely ornamented in Chopin's characteristic style, is interrupted by a very impressive recitative of some length, after which the cantilena is heard again. But criticism had better be silent, and listen here attentively. And how shall I describe the last movement (Allegro vivace F minor, 3-4)—its feminine softness and rounded contours, its graceful, gyrating, dance-like motions, its ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... a natural and real tragedy. Men go to the theatre to be amused. The scenery, the music, the attitudes, the gesticulations, all unite to fix attention and amuse; but the eloquence, so called, of the theatre, is all factitious, and is no more adapted to the real occasions of life than would be the recitative in singing, and it pleases on the same principle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the Conservatorio, is the finest tenor in Italy. I have the pleasure of hearing him frequently, and think the purity of his taste at least equal to the perfection of his voice; rare praise for a singer in these "most brisk and giddy-paced times." He gave us last night the beautiful recitative which ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... current musical topics. She knew the latest operas, and loved the spirit of unrest, the unsettled minor chords of the new school of music; preferred the leit motif to the aria, music drama to opera, and was altogether exceedingly modern in her tastes. She did not like recitative in music, and preferred Wagner and Tschaikowsky to Bach and Verdi. She loved to be stirred up, she said. She liked Beethoven, yes, but he was too mathematical. As for Handel, he was uninteresting in the extreme; and so she went ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... Steirer}, a Styrian country-dance—a musical recitative accompanied by the cithern and set to a tune sufficiently rhythmical to act as one of the original purposes of a ballad, namely ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... told that few of our native artists can speak the Italian language, or sing Italian music, and more especially recitative. My answer is, let them once know that the mere circumstance of their being English born does not shut the stage-door of the King's Theatre against them, all will look up to its boards as the goal of their ambition, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... my uncle had hunted up everybody who could fiddle and blow for the rehearsal. He was proud to show what good musicians the town possessed; but everything seemed to go perversely wrong. Lauretta set to work at a fine scene; but very soon in the recitative the orchestra was all at sixes and sevens, not one of them had any idea of accompaniment Lauretta screamed—raved—wept with impatience and anger. The organist was presiding at the piano; she attacked him with the bitterest reproaches. He got up and in silent obduracy marched out ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... them to give one of their feast-dances. The performers consisted of about fifteen old, and as many young persons, whom they arranged in close order. The young girls laid aside a part of their dress to exhibit their forms to more advantage, and they commenced a kind of recitative, accompanied by all manner of gesticulations, with a sort of guttural husk for a chorus. It was not necessary to understand their language to comprehend their meaning; and it is unnecessary to add, that their tastes did ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... women were first introduced on the scene. In 1656, indeed, Mrs. Coleman, wife to Mr. Edward Coleman, represented Ianthe in the first part of the Siege of Rhodes: but the little she had to say was spoken in recitative."] and her husband, and she sung very finely, though her voice is decayed as to strength but mighty sweet though soft, and a pleasant jolly woman, and in mighty good humour. She sung part of the Opera, though she would not own she ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... as soon as the recitative duet began in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master Ashton, Charles, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucie, thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because of the music, which ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... of aria. The dialogue is generally given in the most monotonous manner possible—using only high throat and head tones, occasionally lowering or raising the voice on a word, to express emotion. This monotonous, and to European ears, strangely nonchalant, nasal recitative, is being continually interrupted by gong pounding and the shrill, high sound of discordant reed instruments. When one or more of the characters commits suicide (which as we know is an honoured custom ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... again addressed to Mr. Peters. He ought not to withhold from the audience your admirable version of the Recitative in the Adagio of the F minor Concerto for Piano Solo, and should add these few pages to ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... copiously otherwise: your Bonaparte represents his Sorrows of Napoleon Opera, in an all-too stupendous style; with music of cannon-volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are the tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities.—Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can write such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... relaxation, indicatory of implacable detestation of integral tergiversation and exoteric intrigue. They fraternized with a phrenological harlequin who was a connoisseur in mezzotint and falconry. The piquant person was heaping contumely and scathing raillery on an amateur in jugular recitative, who held that the Pharaohs of Asia were conversant with his theory that morphine and quinine ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway
... passage sounds all at once as an outburst or crash of harps in the still air of autumn. The verses seem as if played to the ear upon some unseen instrument. And the poet's manner of reciting verse is similar. It is not rhetorical, but musical: so very near recitative, that for any one else to attempt it would be ridiculous; and yet it is perfectly miraculous with what exquisite searching he elicits and makes sensible every particle of the meaning, not leaving a shadow of a shade of the feeling, the mood, the degree, untouched. ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... exercises Halevy says: "From the holy precincts the prayers of the faithful rise aloft to heaven. From midnight on, we hear the clear, rhythmical, melancholy intonation of the precentor, the congregation responding in a monotonous recitative. Praise of the Eternal, salvation of Israel, love of Zion, hope of a happy future for all mankind—these form the burden of their prayers, calling forth sighs and tears, exclamations of hope and joy. Break of day still finds the worshippers assembled, and every evening without fail, as the sun sinks ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... measure begins another chapter, in which we have a series of recitative-like phrases, the most of which end upon diminished chords and contain or suggest enharmonic modulations of extreme modern type. The recitatives are very expressive, and their proper delivery necessitates ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... on the king's side, been knighted for his services, escaped to France, and was afterward captured and imprisoned in England for two years—had managed to evade the law against stage plays as early as 1656, by presenting his Siege of Rhodes as an "opera," with instrumental music and dialogue in recitative, after a fashion newly sprung up in Italy. This he brought out again in 1661, with the dialogue recast into riming couplets in the French fashion. Movable painted scenery was now introduced from France, and actresses took the female ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... other reciprocally. Between the two a third element exists: an accompaniment of eighths in uniform succession without any significance beyond that of filling out the harmony. This third element is to be kept wholly subordinate. The little, one-voiced introduction in recitative style which precedes the aria reminds one vividly of the beginning of the Ballade ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... radical inconsistency; and, though he did not learn for many years to develop his musical ideas according to a theory, and never carried that theory to the logical results insisted on by his great after-type, Wagner, he accomplished much in the way of sweeping reform. He elaborated the recitative or declamatory element in opera with great care, and insisted that his singers should make this the object of their most careful efforts. The arias, duos, quartets, etc., as well as the choruses and orchestral parts, were made consistent with the dramatic motive and situations. In a word, Gluck ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of the operator, who beats upon them with two sticks. But the finest songs are sung without accompaniment and are of the nature of dramatic recitals in the manner of a somewhat monotonous and melancholy recitative. To hear a wild Punan, standing in the midst of a solemn circle lit only by a few torches which hardly seem to avail to keep back the vast darkness of the sleeping jungle, recite with dramatic gesture the adventures of a departing soul ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... then wrung her hands, but shed not a tear—"speed, Hugh," she said, "speed, speed, husband of my heart—the arms of God are they not open for you, and why do you stay?" These sentiments, we should have informed our readers, were uttered, or rather chaunted in a recitative of sorrow, in Irish; Irish being the language in which the peasantry who happen to speak both it and English, always express themselves when more than usually excited. "The sacred oil of salvation is upon you—the sacrament of peace and forgiveness has lightened ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... court inquired, in a sort of chant or recitative, whether the prisoner had anything to say why judgment should not be given in accordance ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... the charming recitative of Herr Tuden Links, to the infant, which is really one of the most charming gems in ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... piano, demipatient and wholly joyful, his fingers twinkled the yellowed and black keys into fits of merriment, or, after an abrupt pause, built heap upon heap of bass chords. Then the mood would change and, to a whanging accompaniment, he would chant, recitative fashion, the three poems which alone ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... divine gift it implies is more freely dispensed than some others, for while there are (or were, for one has taken his Last Degree) eight musical quills, there was but one pair of lips which could claim any special consecration to vocal melody. Not that one that should undervalue the half-recitative of doubtful barytones, or the brilliant escapades of slightly unmanageable falsettos, or the concentrated efforts of the proprietors of two or three effective notes, who may be observed lying in wait for them, and coming down on ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... from sorrow long drawn out, the sharp ache of Sin, the glimpses of unhallowed Joy, the strain of upward Endeavor, the serene peace of Faith and Love, crowned by the blessed Vision of the Grail. 'Tis past. The prelude melts into the opening recitative. ...
— Parsifal - Story and Analysis of Wagner's Great Opera • H. R. Haweis
... are under the same conditions as in Plautus. We have (1) scenes provided with music, probably represented in MSS. by C (Canticum). (2) Scenes sung as recitative, with musical accompaniment, in MSS. denoted by M.M.C. (perhaps for 'Modi Mutati Cantici'). (3) Scenes in senarii, without music, in MSS. denoted by DV (Diverbium). The division into scenes is very ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... is sung is a kind of droning recitative, depending much on expression and feeling. To read it, it may, perhaps, seem humorous; but it is that humour which is near akin to pathos, and to those who have seen the distress it describes it is a powerfully ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... I clambered down to the cottage by Moraine Lake. The next morning, in addition to the birds already observed in the valley, I listened to the theme-like recitative of a warbling vireo, and also watched a sandpiper teetering about the edge of the water, while a red-shafted flicker dashed across the lake to a pine tree on the opposite side. As I left this attractive valley, the hermit thrushes seemed to ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... gestures and expressions, seemed to be an improvisation concerning the strangers they had found upon the beach, and were evidently addressed to them. There was something curious in the character of this Fuegian song. Rather recitative than singing, the measure had, nevertheless, certain divisions or pauses, as if to mark a kind of rhythm. It was brought to a close at regularly recurring intervals, and ended always in the same way, and on the same note, ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... of ours, had its origin in the festival of Dionysus, god of wine, which was celebrated with dance, song, and recitative. The recitative, being in character, was improved into the Drama, the chief author of the improvement, tradition says, being Thespis. But the dance and song were retained, and became the Chorus, that peculiar feature ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... matters and his general prominence—as his own singing of the Melodies in good society kept up his sentimental and patriotic prestige, and his personal lionizing, in a remarkable degree. He played on the piano, and sang with taste, though in a style resembling recitative, and not with any great power of voice: in speaking, his voice had a certain tendency to hoarseness, but its quality became flute-like in singing. In 1811 he made another essay in the musical province; writing, at the request of the manager of the Lyceum Theatre, an operetta named ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... rhyme for trouble, unless it were approximated by debbil,—which is, indeed, a favorite reference, both with the men and with his Reverence. But the chaplain, peacefully awaiting, gently repeated his text after the chant, and to my great relief the old chorister waived all further recitative and let the funeral ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... perceive the sun in heaven, to greet the creating light. And where was this music more immanent than in the New World, in America, that essentialization of the entire age? By what environment was it more justly appreciated, Saxon though the accents of its recitative might be? Germany had borne Wagner because Germany had an uninterrupted flow of musical expression. But had the North American continent been able to produce musical art, it could have produced none more indigenous, more really autochthonous, than that of Richard Wagner. Whitman was ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... of operatic work. The Elizabethan writers—not only the dramatists, but the authors of romances—interspersed their blank verse or their prose narration with short lyrical poems, just as in the days of Mozart the airs and concerted pieces in an opera were connected by wastes of recitative that were most aptly called 'dry'; and as it was left to a modern poet to tell, in a series of lyrics succeeding one another without interval, a dramatic story such as that of Maud, so was it a modern composer who carried to completion, ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... be more animated, and at the same time more expressive of the thought conveyed in the verse than the following chorus?—the introduction to which is a sort of recitative ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sick room in a mechanical recitative, as if accustomed to recount every particular of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... observed such a nice Impartiality to our two Ladies, that it is impossible for either of them to take Offence. I hope I may be forgiven, that I have not made my Opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue; for I have no Recitative; excepting this, as I have consented to have neither Prologue nor Epilogue, it must be allowed an Opera in all its Forms. The Piece indeed hath been heretofore frequently represented by ourselves in our Great Room ...
— The Beggar's Opera • John Gay
... they break, break, break. We may close our eyes and fancy we are with Edmund Danton in his sea-girt dungeon, or with Tennyson and his "cold, gray stones," or with King Canute and his flattering courtiers on the sandy shore. But a song sparrow with his recitative "Oleet, oleet, oleet," followed by the well-known cadenza, dispels the fancies and calls our attention to himself as he sits on a hop hornbeam and sings at half-minute intervals. The wind ruffles his sober coat of brown and gray and he looks like a careless artist, thrilling ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... intermixture of provincial peculiarities may, perhaps, have an agreeable effect, as the notes of different birds concur in the harmony of the grove, and please more than if they were all exactly alike. I could name some gentlemen of Ireland, to whom a slight proportion of the accent and recitative of that country is an advantage. The same observation will apply to the gentlemen of Scotland. I do not mean that we should speak as broad as a certain prosperous member of Parliament from that country[473]; though it has been well ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... her eyes, brighter than usual with excited feeling, and said in her saddest recitative, "How I wish I had learned German when I was at Lausanne! There were plenty of German teachers. But now I can be of ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... same boat," resumed the Doctor in the deep tones which somehow sounded like bass recitative; "the Rector, Colonel Russell, and I—not to say Carey himself. We all wished to increase our incomes with as little trouble and risk as possible—so it seemed then, but if the bank comes to smash, all the old Redcross gentle-folks, as we were pleased to call ourselves, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... books before him to serve as a screen, one hand shading his eyes, and an inkless pen in the other, was scratching his copy-book with noisy earnestness, as if time were too short for all he had to write about the pious AEneas's recitative, while he surreptitiously read the Comte de Monte Cristo, which lay open in his lap—just at the part where the body, sewn up in a sack, was going to be hurled into the Mediterranean. I knew the page well. There was a splash of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Scriptures furnish the words. The seer's prophecies, the Psalmist's strains, the evangelist's narrative, the angels' song, the anthem of the redeemed, are transferred to aria, recitative, and chorus. The sentiment is as majestic as the music is grand. He who sought out the fitting words had studied his Bible, and he who joined to them musical sounds dwelt in the region ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... a late hour in our shirt-sleeves, with the casements wide open on the now solitary piazza, while I wrote and my companion was drawing. So employed, a strain of distant music stole on the ear in the stillness of the night, one of those plaintive melodies common among the Sardes, a sort of recitative by a tenor voice, with ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... have been learning to like Italian opera at an insane cost; we have kindly winked at the follies of opera-bouffe; probably nowhere in the world are the intellectual depths of a German symphony and the passionate declamation of an Italian recitative more thoroughly appreciated. This is the natural musical exposition of our complex and various life. This wondrous variety, which indicates possibilities not yet revealed, pleases us without being always clear to our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... admirable in point, at a moment's notice, on a subject the most inauspicious, and apparently impossible either to wit or rhyme,—yet with an effect that delighted a party, and might have borne the test of criticism the most severe. These verses he usually sang in a sort of recitative to some tune with which all were familiar,—and if a piano were at hand, he accompanied himself with a gentle strain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... another followed the 'Messiah,' none of them entitled to rank with that great work for either loftiness of subject or grandeur of expression, yet many containing passages of unrivalled beauty. 'Jephtha,' which was the last oratorio he composed, contains the magnificent recitative, 'Deeper and deeper still,' and the beautiful song, 'Waft her, angels.' It was while writing 'Jephtha' that Handel became blind, but, though greatly affected by this loss, it did not daunt his courage or lessen his ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... education, An ignorant, noteless, timeless, tuneless fellow; But being the prima donna's near relation, Who swore his voice was very rich and mellow, They hired him, though to hear him you 'd believe An ass was practising recitative. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... vocal score. Of the aria, "O Hoffnung," there are as many as eighteen different versions, and of the final chorus, ten; and these are not exceptional cases by any means. As Thayer remarks: "To follow a recitative or aria through all its guises is an extremely fatiguing task, and the almost countless studies for a duet or terzet are enough to make one frantic." Thayer quotes Jahn's testimony that these afterthoughts are invariably superior to the first conception, and adds that "some of his first ideas ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... frivolous, insincere, imbecile. Its sole function was, and always has been, to help idlers of the upper classes to while away their evenings. The absurd notion of a Platonic music was rivalled by the absurdity of the composition. The inane dialogue was made up of interminable recitative, in the midst of which an occasional chorus—introduced in conformity with supposed classical practice—must have come as a most refreshing relief; for choruses they could write. It was dramatic in so far that it was provided with all the paraphernalia of the stage and that the singers ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... The recitative is an affront to common sense, and if there be any spectacle more than another opposed to the genius of the English character and unsuited to its taste it is the ballet of the opera house. Its eternal dumbshow, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... virtue of the first water, and was cultivated accordingly in those ancient times. Ballads at first, and down to the beginning of the war with Troy, were merely recitations, with an intonation. Then followed a species of recitative, probably with an intoned burden. Tune next followed, as ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Bert, jumping to his feet; "let up on that dismal recitative. It would make a dog howl ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... few moments on a quiet night, might hear singular symphonies from these waters, as from a lampless orchestra, all playing in their sundry tones from near and far parts of the moor. At a hole in a rotten weir they executed a recitative; where a tributary brook fell over a stone breastwork they trilled cheerily; under an arch they performed a metallic cymballing, and at Durnover Hole they hissed. The spot at which their instrumentation rose loudest was a place called Ten Hatches, whence during high ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... book." He proved, indeed, his singular admiration for those familiar lines in a manner which I believe to be unique. He set them to music, and the notes are extant in a book of manuscript music in his library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The piece is a finely-elaborated recitative fully equal to the requirements of grand opera. The composer gives intelligent and dignified expression to every word of the soliloquy. Very impressive is the modulation of the musical ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... d'Entremont thought he had never heard anything more delightful than these simple melodies sung thus lustily by earnest voices. The reading of each couplet by the minister before it was sung seemed to him a sort of recitative. He knew enough of English to find that the singing was hopeful and triumphant. Wearied with philosophy and blase with the pomp of the world, he wished that he had been a villager in New Geneva, and that he might have had the faith to ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... greater or less feeling of metrical form lying behind them. For convenience they may be distinguished, according as verse or prose predominates, as (1) irregular unrimed metre, (2) very free blank verse, (3) unusual mingling of metre and prose, a kind of recitative, and (4) mere prose printed as verse, or what may be called free-verse par excellence. A few illustrations will help to ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... stanzas in a high key and with sprightly gesticulations. "Frenchy's" brother spoke in his own tongue a piece that was suitable to the occasion; much to his amazement, it elicited peals of laughter. When he sat down, the program wound on its tedious, recitative way until the tree was again supplied with candles by the neighbor woman's son, and the little girl arose to deliver a welcome to that same Santa Claus ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Couldn't we do something desperate—dine at a Latin Quarter restaurant for instance? What was that place you were telling me of, where the waiter has a wonderful voice and makes the orders he shouts down the tube sound like the recitative of the basso at ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... sublime beauty of the surrounding scenery," or to reflect on the deeds of their ancestors. He cites a specimen of their songs, which, he says, is often sung by them; it is without rhymes or regular measure, and is given in a sort of recitative beginning with this ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... as it was, Flora knew who was sitting behind her. She heard him speaking. Under the notes of the recitative he was speaking to Clara. The pleasure of finding him here was sharpened by the surprise. She listened to his voice, the mere intonation of which brought back to her their walk through the Presidio woods as deliciously as if she were ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... Let me repeat my conviction (Terminal Essay, 144-145) that The Nights, in its present condition, was intended as a text or handbook for the Rawi or professional story-teller, who would declaim the recitative in quasi-conversational tones, would intone the Saj'a and would chant the metrical portions to the twanging of the Rababah or one-stringed viol. The Reviewer declares that the original has many such passages; but why does he not tell the reader that almost the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... in recitative, the style, moreover, least subject to precise laws, that Delsarte used this license; and it was in this style that ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... thought of Hazel's lissom waist, her large eyes, rather scared, her slender wrists he cursed until the peewits arose mewing all about him. In the thick darkness of the lonely fields he might have been some hero of the dead, mouthing a satanic recitative amid a chorus ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... a language and style not adopted in common discourse, "it is required that the sentiments also should be in the same proportion raised above common nature." There must be an agreement of all the parts with the whole. He recognizes the chorus of the ancient drama, and the recitative of the Italian opera as natural, under this view. "And though the most violent passions, the highest distress, even death itself, are expressed in singing or recitative, I would not admit as sound criticism the condemnation of such exhibitions on account of their being unnatural." "Shall reason ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... irresistible—little cries, meaningless by themselves, but, when brought together, they created an enchanted garden, marvellous and seductive. But it was the duet that followed that compelled his admiration. Music hardly ever more than a recitative, hardly ever breaking into an air, and yet so beautiful! There the notes merely served to lift the words, to impregnate them with more terrible and subtle meaning; and the subdued harmonies enfolded ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... unintelligible. Among the early Greeks, for many centuries, the several characters of poet, musician, lawgiver, and philosopher, were combined in the same individual; and it is probable that the music of that period consisted principally of recitative or musical declamation. This species of composition, so utterly neglected and unknown to the English school, possesses great powers of expression, both when in its simple form and when accompanied. A modern ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... farces and the singers of Roast Beef(779) from between the acts at both theatres, with a man with one note in his voice, and a girl without ever an one; and so they sing, and make brave hallelujahs; and the good company encore the recitative, if it happens to have any cadence like what they call a tune. I was much diverted the other night at the opera; two gentlewoman sat before my sister, and not knowing her, discoursed at their ease. Says one, "Lord! how fine Mr. W. is!" "Yes," replied the other, with a tone of ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... about six inches, and through them, accompanied by Robin, the Inspector clove his way to the encampment, where Dicky, who seemed to be rapidly losing his head, was delivering a sort of recitative to every one in general, accompanied by the policeman ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... Griffith Gaunt's case. The Rev. William Wentworth published, in the usual recitative, the banns of marriage between Thomas Leicester, of the parish of Marylebone in London, and Mercy Vint, spinster, of this parish; and creation, present ex hypothesi mediaevale, but absent in fact, assented, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... you suppose that's for?" asked Dodd in an undertone. "I don't know," was the reply; "keep quiet and you'll see." The regular throbs of the drum continued throughout the distribution of the willow sticks and at its close the drummer began to sing a low, musical recitative, which increased gradually in volume and energy until it swelled into a wild, barbarous chant, timed by the regular beats of the heavy drum. A slight commotion followed, the front curtains of all the pologs were thrown up, the women stationed ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... contrapuntal writing, and, if performed by a choir of three or four hundred voices, would produce an overpowering effect. The divine call of Simon Peter and his brethren is next described in a tenor recitative; and the acceptance of the glad tidings is expressed in an aria, "The spirit of the Lord is upon me," which, by an original but appropriate conception, is given to the soprano voice. In the next number, the disciples are dramatically represented by twelve basses and tenors, singing in four-part ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... proceeding in which she was always much the earlier, Dorothea, who was seated on a low stool, unable to occupy herself except in meditation, said, with the musical intonation which in moments of deep but quiet feeling made her speech like a fine bit of recitative— ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... and unequal notes, the only rhythm was that produced by the quantity of the syllables, and was of necessity comparatively monotonous. And further, it maybe observed that the chant thus resulting, being like recitative, was much less clearly differentiated from ordinary speech than is our modern song. Nevertheless, in virtue of the extended range of notes in use, the variety of modes, the occasional variations of time consequent on changes of metre, and ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... his brother tunes his violin to accompany him, and he begins to rehearse in recitative, with wonderful fluency and precision. Thus he will, at a minute's warning, recite two or three hundred verses, well turned, and well adapted, and generally mingled with an elegant compliment to the company. The Italians are so fond of poetry, that many ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... p.m., in the street and sing chants set to music by some poet of Gujarat or Hindustan. The chants are really prayers to God for rain, for forgiveness of sins and for absolution from ingratitude for former bounties. One with a strong voice sings the recitative, and then the chorus breaks in with the words "Order, O Lord, the rain-cloud of thy mercy!" Thus chanting the company wanders from street to street till midnight and continues the practice nightly until the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... two human beings sitting between him and the red glow. A man and a woman. The sight seemed to inspire the careworn sage with a frivolous desire to sing. It could hardly be called a song; it was more in the nature of a recitative without any rhythm, delivered rapidly but distinctly in a croaking and unsteady voice; and if Babalatchi considered it a song, then it was a song with a purpose and, perhaps for that reason, artistically defective. It had all the imperfections of unskilful improvisation and its subject ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... all this in one breathless, monotonous recitative, took the thousand francs out of his breast-pocket and held them out timidly towards the foreign gentleman, who motioned them aside and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... had known him all his life, looked at him curiously for a moment, and then, in a far-away, sort of voice, made recitative: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... characteristics should serve as a general explanation of their purport. The second, twelfth and fourteenth rhapsodies are admirable examples of the series. In general these "Hungarian Rhapsodies" open with a few brief bars suggestive of tragic recitative, which leads into a broad yet strongly marked and searching rhythm, upon which is built a slow, stately yet mournful melody, broken in upon here and there by strange weird runs and rapid passages. These latter serve a double purpose. They imitate the ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... original music, dealing in harmony rather than in tune, and there are motives, of course all in the minor key, which might be utilized by advanced peoples; these sons of nature would especially supply material for that recitative which Verdi first made something better than a vehicle for dialogue. Hence the old missioners are divided in opinion; whilst some find the sound of the "little guitar," with strings of palm-thread and played with the thumbs of both hands, "very low, but not ungrateful," others speak of the "hellish ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... though confiding some deep, sad, occult mystery, the singers began in a rapid, sweet recitative: "With Thy blessed saints in glory everlasting, the soul of this Thy servant save, set at rest; preserving her in the blessed life, as Thou hast loving kindness ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... theoretical works. Not having a tail, this fox, therefore, solemnly argued that tails were useless appanages. You remember your AEsop! Instead of melodic inspiration, themes were to be used. Instead of broad, flowing, but intelligible themes, a mongrel breed of recitative and parlando was to ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... miscellaneous Musical Interlude, commencing with The Lamentations of Jerom-iah! In nasal recitative. To be followed by The favourite Cackling Quartette, by Two Hen-birds who are ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, Of unnamed heroes in the ships—of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach, Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing, And out of these a chant for the sailors ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... Grasshoppers. It is the sort of noise that a spinning-wheel makes, a very unobtrusive sound, a vague rustle of dry membranes rubbed together. Above this dull bass there rises, at intervals, a hurried, very shrill, almost metallic clicking. There you have the air and the recitative, intersected by pauses. The rest is ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... However, he only wished to get a few yards before them, for his canoe men soon lifted their paddles out of the water, and the boat fell back to its former situation. The musicians in the large canoe performed merrily on their instruments, and about twenty persons now sung at intervals in recitative, keeping excellent time with ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... really affect one profoundly. They only sing when the mood takes them; never with a view to please others, but always simply to give vent to their emotions. Their love-songs generally open with a sentimental recitative, and then change into actual singing, with frequent modulations from one key into another. The time is irregular, and though certain rhythmical peculiarities recur constantly, yet each performer gives to what he sings so strong a personality of execution as ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... fire, and now drenched it with cool beryl tints that extinguished the flames, a low murmur became audible, swelling and rising upon the air, until the thunder-throated organ filled all the cloistered recesses with responsive echoes of Rossini. Some masterly hand played the "Recitative" of Eia Mater, bringing out the bass with powerful emphasis, and concluding with the full strains of the chorus; then the organ-tones sank into solemn minor chords indescribably plaintive, and after a while a quartette of choir voices ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... were made to music, and the minstrel sang them to his harp or screamed them in recitative. Thus they reached farther, were welcomer guests in feast and camp, and were better preserved. We shall have more to say on this in speaking of our proposed song collection. Printing so multiplies copies of ballads, and intercourse is so general, that there is less need of this adaptation ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... Lablache, Viardot and Ronconi, Persiani and Tamburini, - and Jenny Lind too, though she was at the other house. And what an orchestra was Costa's - with Sainton leader, and Lindley and old Dragonetti, who together but alone, accompanied the RECITATIVE with their harmonious chords on 'cello and double-bass. Is singing a lost art? Or is that but a TEMPORIS ACTI question? We who heard those now silent voices fancy there are none to match them nowadays. Certainly there are no dancers like Taglioni, and Cerito, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... that is to say, have mercy on us, is a psalm, composed of verses, which are sung alternately in a very different manner. A celestial music is heard by turns, and the verse following, in recitative, is murmured in a dull and almost hoarse tone. One would say, that it is the reply of harsh and stern characters to sensitive hearts; that it is the reality of life which withers and repels the desires of generous souls. When the sweet choristers resume their strain, hope revives; but ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... principle. He said, the same observation would hold in all languages; that a Swiss talking French was more easily understood than a Parisian, by a foreigner who had not made himself master of the language; because every language had its peculiar recitative, and it would always require more pains, attention, and practice, to acquire both the words and the music, than to learn the words only; and yet no body would deny, that the one was imperfect without the other: he therefore ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... that sobbing subsidence to even temper; to their complacent gurglings and sleepy murmurs. One—and the most Infantile of all—not of the Family, has a distinctive note, a copyright tone which none imitates, and which becomes at times a sonorous swelling boom, a lofty recitative, for even an island has its temper ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... remember sweet Alers Ben Bolt?" began Susy, in the same breath and the wrong key. "Sweet Alers, with hair so brown, who wept with delight when you giv'd her a smile, and—" with knitted brows and appealing recitative, "what's er rest of ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... more poetical than musical. The suppression of the lyrical element, and therefore of melody, is with him a systematic parti pris. No more duos or trios; monologue and the aria are alike done away with. There remains only declamation, the recitative, and the choruses. In order to avoid the conventional in singing, Wagner falls into another convention—that of not singing at all. He subordinates the voice to articulate speech, and for fear lest the muse should take flight he clips her wings. So that his ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... us yesterday in the evening, and to invite Mie Mie and me to come sometimes to hear her daughter-in-law play upon the harp. I did not expect melody in their heaviness, but I shall certainly go, as the recitative part will be in French, and that you know is ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... was he at all reluctant to let it be seen how much he valued the glory of being descended from the poet. By and by, at Mr. Aiken's instance, he sang one of Burns's songs,—the one about "Annie" and the "rigs of barley." He sings in a perfectly simple style, so that it is little more than a recitative, and yet the effect is very good as to humor, sense, and pathos. After rejoining the ladies, he sang another, "A posie for my ain dear May," and likewise "A man's a man for a' that." My admiration of his father, and partly, perhaps, my being an American, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... burst of laughter rang out. The girl spoke in too recitative a way, having repeated her story so many times already that she knew it by heart. The doctor's remark was sure to produce an effect, and she herself laughed at it in advance, certain as she was that the others ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... which is, indeed, a favorite reference, both with the men and with his Reverence. But the chaplain, peacefully awaiting, gently repeated his text after the chant, and to my great relief the old chorister waived all further recitative, and let the ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... music with its soft and plaintive airs is a very different thing from the music of grand opera. Chinese music could not be represented on Western instruments, the intervals between the notes being different. Chinese singing is generally "recitative" accompanied by long notes, broken, or sudden chords from the orchestra. It differs widely from Western music, but its effects are wonderful. One of our writers has thus described music he once heard: "Softly, as the murmur of whispered words; now loud and soft together, like ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... which is meant by some writer (who it is I cannot now remember) when he criticises the wood thrush for spending too much time in tuning his instrument. But the fault is the critic's, I think; to my ear these preliminaries sound rather like the recitative which goes ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... steal away as they see lights and hear a commotion in the palace. Donna Anna comes back to the garden, bringing her affianced lover, Don Ottavio, whom she had called to the help of her father. She finds the Commandant dead, and breaks into agonizing cries and tears. Only an accompanied recitative, but every ejaculation a cry of nature! Gounod is wrought up to an ecstasy by Mozart's declamation and harmonies. He suspends his analysis to ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a proverb: "He who sings thinks not of evil." Tomaseo thought their folk-songs richer than those of any other nation, ranging as they do over all manner of subjects. They are generally heroical or amorous in character, divided into short verses and sung in two parts; the bass delivers a kind of recitative, and the baritone joins in, the long final note with which each finishes dying away in a full chord. It is extraordinary how serious the men are over it, even when singing over their wine, in which they sometimes exceed. At Trau one Sunday afternoon we saw a party of eight or ten sitting round ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson |
