Accompagnato
Exemplary Repertoire:
Others:
Grove: Accompagnato
(It.: ‘accompanied’; past participle of accompagnare).
A short term for recitativo accompagnato, i.e. RECITATIVE accompanied by the orchestra with expressive motifs, equivalent to recitativo obbligato. It is often used to designate a dramatically important scene, often a soliloquy (e.g. ‘Abscheulicher’ in Fidelio), which is usually followed by an aria. Handel used the term both in the strict sense of recitative, where the accompaniment allows the singer freedom (e.g. ‘O notte’ in Amadigi), and as a description of what would more correctly be described as arioso, where a regular tempo is implied (‘For behold, darkness shall cover the earth’ in Messiah). The appearance of the word ‘accompagnato’ where a tempo mark would be expected is therefore also an indication that the pulse may be irregular. The gerund accompagnando (‘accompanying’) is sometimes used to denote the subsidiary nature of a part in, for instance, Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments.
See also TEMPO AND EXPRESSION MARKS.
-Jack Westrup, David Fallows
Jack Westrup and David Fallows. "Accompagnato." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 15 Sep. 2013. <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/00108>.
Grove: Recitative
1. Up to 1800
(ii.) Performance
Accompanied recitative had a special role to play in settings of the Passion story. Thomas Selle used various combinations of instruments in an attempt at musical characterization in his St John Passion (1643), and both Johann Sebastiani and Johann Thiele used string accompaniment for the recitative in their settings of the St Matthew Passion (1672 and 1673 respectively). The convention of surrounding the words of Jesus with a ‘halo’ of string sound, while those of the Evangelist and the minor characters were set to recitativo semplice, dates at least from Schütz’s Die sieben Wortte unsers lieben Erlösers (1645) and is observed in Passion settings by Alessandro Scarlatti (c1680), J.V. Meder (c1700), J.S. Bach (1729) and others. Bach’s St John Passion (1724) is somewhat unusual in that the words of Jesus are accompanied only with continuo. A more elaborate kind of accompaniment, in which the orchestra has independent passages of a violent or pathetic character, is found not only in opera but also in the cantata. A particularly remarkable example is the bass recitative ‘Ja! ja! die Stunden sind nunmehro nah’ in Bach’s secular cantata Der zufriedengestellte Äolus (‘Zerreisset, zerspringet, zertrümmert die Gruft’, bwv205), where the singer is accompanied by the full orchestra, including two horns, three trumpets and timpani, with wild excursions on the woodwind and strings.
-Dale E. Monson (with Jack Westrup)
2. After 1800
During the first decade of the 19th century the distinction remained intact between the conversational recitativo secco and the more declamatory recitativo accompagnato, both varieties being marked off from the set numbers by the use of ‘versi sciolti’ (freely alternating lines of seven- and eleven-syllable verse). Subsequently, however, under the reign of Murat in Naples, which saw the importation of early French grand opera, the fashion started of scoring the secco recitative for strings, exemplified by Mayr’s Medea in Corinto (1813) and Rossini’s Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (1815). By 1820 this had become the rule for serious works, keyboard accompaniment being restricted to opera buffa and semiseria. In due course both types of recitative became subsumed into the scena. All passages intended to be delivered in the rhythm of ordinary speech continued to be marked ‘recitativo’, however, even for only a few bars, a practice that continued until the 1890s, as in Verdi’s Otello (1887) and Catalani’s La Wally (1892). In the operas of Puccini and his successors, on the other hand, the term vanishes, being replaced by the marking ‘a piacere’ in the voice-part and ‘col canto’ in that of the orchestra.
In France recitative was confined to works produced at the Opéra and, during the 1860s, at the Théâtre Lyrique, as for example in Gounod’s Faust (1860, revised version), Berlioz’s Les Troyens à Carthage (1863) and Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles (1863) and La jolie fille de Perth (1867). Traditionally its text was set out in ‘vers libre’, consisting of lines of varying length with an alexandrine basis, to the setting of which the weak tonic accents of the French language permitted considerable flexibility. For most of the century opéra comique employed spoken dialogue and ‘mélodrame’ as a link between its set numbers, but during the 1880s it too became through-composed, as for example in Massenet’s Manon (1884) in which mélodrame alone forms the connecting tissue. The recitatives added by Guiraud to Bizet’s Carmen (1875), though they ensured the opera’s international circulation, were never performed by the Opéra-Comique; nor were they heard in Paris before the opera’s first performance at the Palais Garnier during the 1950s.
German Singspiel, in which the dialogue was spoken, admitted only accompanied recitative, as exemplified by ‘Abscheulicher!’ in Beethoven’s Fidelio. The move towards continuous music began, as Meyerbeer’s diaries show, in about 1816, though it yielded no work of substance until 1823 with Spohr’s Jessonda and Weber’s Euryanthe (Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella, though completed in 1822, was not performed until 1854). Here there is no fixed pattern of verse for the recitatives, some of which approximate to prose. Recitative is found in Wagner’s early works up to Der fliegende Holländer (1843), but not in the more continuous texture of Tannhäuser (1845). In Lohengrin (1850), even passages such as the exchanges between Ortrud and Telramund at the start of Act 2, which are delivered in the rhythm of ordinary speech, are no longer qualified by the term; while in the music dramas from Das Rheingold onwards, where the bounds between lyrical and declamatory elements are quite differently defined, it does not apply at all.
The only English operas of the 19th century to have endured are constructed on the model of French opéra comique, using spoken dialogue with occasional melodrama. Balfe, however, made two through-composed settings, Catherine Grey (1837) and The Daughter of St Mark (1844), both of which revert to the 18th-century English tradition of recitative in heroic couplets (as used in Arne’s Artaxerxes, 1762). A less clumsy, more flowing expedient based on blank verse can be found as late as 1891 in Sullivan’s Ivanhoe.
Recitative in Russian opera is more measured and even-paced because of the nature of the language; nor is it marked off metrically from the closed numbers. Hence the development of Dargomïzhsky’s ‘melodic recitative’ as the basis of an entire opera, examples of which are furnished by Musorgsky’s uncompleted Marriage (composed 1868), Dargomïzhsky’s The Stone Guest (1872) and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri (1898).
As operas became more continuous during the course of the 19th century, recitative as such inevitably disappeared. Its legacy, however, can be found in the comparatively unvocalized delivery required in such operas as Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea (1937) and the SPRECHGESANG employed in the operas of Berg and Schoenberg. A modern variant of recitativo secco occurs accompanied by piano in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia (1946) and by harpsichord in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress (1951).
-Julian Budden
Dale E. Monson, et al. "Recitative." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 15 Sep. 2013. <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/23019>.
Resources
W. Dean. ‘The Performance of Recitative in Late Baroque Opera’, ML, lviii (1977), 389–402
F. Corder. Vocal Recitative Historically and Practically Described. London: Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, [ca. 1922] (secco vs. stromentato, improvisation, rhythm, accompaniment).
Joshua Hong, Hsiao-Hsuan Lin, Alex Rosen, Jordan Smith
JoAnn Kulesza
PY.530.535/01: Opera Styles/Traditions
19 September 2013
Recitativo accompagnato
This term is sometimes shortened to ‘Accompagnato.’ ‘Accompagnato’ is the past participle of ‘accompagnare,’ meaning ‘accompanied’ in Italian. In classical music, accompagnato denotes a recitativo that is accompanied by the orchestra part, but not sung in strict time, placing the genre in between recitativo secco (accompanied only by continuo, non-strict time) and arioso (accompanied by orchestra, strict time). However, G. F. Handel would sometimes use the term for ariosos as well. Nevertheless, if the term accompagnato appears in place of a tempo marking, it is typically an indication that the tempo is irregular.
Accompagnato was utilized in the early passions of Thomas Selle (St. John, 1643), Johann Sebastiani (St. Matthew, 1672), and Johann Thiele (St. Matthew, 1673). Selle used a variety of instruments to accompany the vocalists, while Sebastiani and Thiele used strings. A convention in the composition of passions eventually grew out of Heinrich Schütz’s Die sieben Wortte unsers lieben Erlösers (1645): the words of Jesus would always be accompanied by strings (commonly referred to as the ‘halo’ effect). This convention can be perceived in the passions of Alessandro Scarlatti (c. 1680), J. V. Meder (c. 1700), and J. S. Bach (1729).
In the Classical era, composers continued to use both recitativo secco and recitativo accompagnato, the latter taking a more definitive form. The term accompagnato was no longer used to describe any music to be sung out of time, but specifically accompanied recitative preceding an aria, or occasionally an ensemble. Mozart wrote many accompanied recitatives in his operas and for his concert arias. His orchestrations used the whole orchestra, whose many colors helped to more deeply illustrate emotion and expression in the scene. Other composers to employ this technique in this way include Donizetti (La favorita, Lucia di Lammermoor) and Rossini (La Sonnambula).
The lines between secco and accompagnato began to blur after 1800 as composers began using the scena in their stead. By 1820, only opera buffa and semiseria contained recitatives accompanied by keyboard and/or continuo. In all other operas, secco was accompanied by strings, and the term ‘recitativo’ came to simply mean that one particular section of the music was to be sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech. This is common in works composed throughout the 1800’s, and as late as Guiseppe Verdi’s Otello (1887). However, in works by Giacomo Puccini and later composers, the term ‘recitativo’ was no longer used, replaced by markings of ‘a piacere’ and ‘col canto’ in the vocal and orchestra parts, respectively.
Outside of Italy, a wide variety of developments in recitativo accompagnato took place. In German singspiel, recitativo accompagnato was the norm (Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fidelio), but as the idea of continuous music began taking hold, there became less room for defined recitativo and aria in general. There are moments throughout the works of Richard Wagner in which the voice part furthers the plot and is written in a declamatory manner, but these moments are interwoven with lyrical material. Furthermore, one can hardly call the orchestra ‘accompaniment’ when it comes to Wagner’s mature works. In France, from 1800-1900, only works produced at the Opéra and the Théâtre Lyrique could utilize recitativo accompagnato. The Opéra-Comique didn’t use recitativo at all but rather spoken dialogue. Gounod’s Faust (1860) is an example of the former, and Massenet’s Manon (1884) of the latter.