"Recitative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... retained in documents of this class to a later period than in the case of the Evangelia, viz. down to the eleventh century. For the most part they are furnished with a kind of musical notation executed in vermilion; evidently intended to guide the reader in that peculiar recitative which is still ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... 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 ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... 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
... on 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 ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... 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 Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... 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
... petulance and anger, and in 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 ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... 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 others ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... en Angleterre, was to see 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 always ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... 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 ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... shriek, not unlike what is sometimes practised in the comic dances on our European theatres. They formed the triple semicircle, as the preceding dancers had done; and a person, who advanced at the head on one side of the semicircle, began by repeating something in a truly musical recitative, which was delivered with an air so graceful, as might put to the blush our most applauded performers. He was answered in the same manner, by the person at the head of the opposite party. This being ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... title of all his prose 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 ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... 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 waft ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... 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 ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... been often conjectured that the delivery of their dialogue resembled the modern recitative. For such a conjecture there is no other foundation than the fact that the Greek, like almost all southern languages, was pronounced with a greater musical inflexion than ours of the North. In other ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... neutralities who succumbed to consumption, bile colic, and other more familiar ailments of the patent-medicine litany. But loquacity, apparently, like virtue, is its own reward, for the landlady scarce vouchsafed a comment on this dismal recitative, while Miss Carmichael remained the object of her ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... 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 interfered ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... themselves shouting in a way that not only destroys the singing tone but also the organ that produces it. The truth of this cannot be gainsaid. There is a considerable amount of vocal wreckage strewn along the way, the result of wrestling with Wagnerian recitative. Wagnerian singers are, as a rule, vocally shorter lived than those that confine themselves to French ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... subject is given, 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 ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... guitar, for a love of music is widely diffused, and some of them not only sing but improvise. In the province of the Minho it is not uncommon at these gatherings for a match of improvisation to be held between two rustic bards. One takes his guitar, and in a slow, drawling recitative sings a simple quatrain, which the other at once caps with a second in rhyme and rhythm matching the first. Verse follows verse in steady succession, and the singer who hesitates is lost: his rival rushes in with a tide of rhyme which carries all before it. In such ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... silence, interrupted only by the monotonous and murmured chant of a Gaelic song, sung in a kind of low recitative by the steersman, and by the dash of the oars, which the notes seemed to regulate, as they dipped to them in cadence. The light, which they now approached more nearly, assumed a broader, redder and more irregular splendour. It appeared plainly to be a large fire, but ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... time, the minutest details of this singing and recitation have been the subject of endless wrangling; and even the point whether it was "singing" or "recitation" has been argued. In a wider and calmer view these things become of very small interest. Singing and recitation—as the very word recitative should be enough to remind any one—pass into each other by degrees imperceptible to any but a technical ear; and the instruments, if any, which accompanied the performance of the chansons, the extent of that accompaniment, and the rest, concern, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... assemble about 9 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 ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... A 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
... contained some matter of scandal to those good people, who could more easily dispossess their lawful sovereign, than endure a wanton jest, he was forced to turn his thoughts another way, and to introduce the examples of moral virtue, writ in verse, and performed in recitative music. The original of this music, and of the scenes which adorned his work, he had from the Italian operas; but he heightened his characters, as I may probably imagine, from the example of Corneille and some French poets. In this condition did this part of poetry remain at ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... 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
... However, that is a matter of no consequence, as we are both familiar with the dialog—, or rather the service. The organist having ended his overture, the service begins. Not even the wretched method of the tenor—I refer of course to the clerk—and his miserably affected execution of the recitative passages, can mar the beauty of the words. The audience evidently feels their solemn import. The young lady and the young male person who sit immediately in front of me clasp surreptitious hands as they bow their heads to repeat the ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... end of the fire-bed and poised the wooden tray over his head, and then sprinkled a handful of it on the ground before the glowing bed of coals. At the same time another priest who stood by him chanted a weird recitative of invocation and struck sparks from flint and steel which he held in his hands. This same process was repeated by both the priests at the other end, at the two sides, ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... descended from the pi-pi, the procession formed anew, enclosing us in its centre; where I remained part of the time, carried by Kory-Kory, and occasionally relieving him from his burden by limping along with spear. When we moved off in this order, the natives struck up a musical recitative, which with various alternations, they continued until we arrived at ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... three notes of a Gregorian chant introducing the recitative note; usually sung without the organ, by one of the Clergy or choir who is ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... morning. "Whew!" said I, as soon as I could get my breath from this extraordinary shower bath; "what's all this?" My wife came running towards the cow yard, as I stood with the milk streaming from my hair, filling my eyes, and dropping from the tip of my nose; and she and Biddy performed a recitative lamentation over me in alternate strophes, like the chorus in a Greek tragedy. Such was our first morning's experience; but as we had announced our bargain with some considerable flourish of trumpets among our neighbors and friends, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... individuality, are founded in principle on the Lieder of Schumann and Franz. That is to say, they are written with a high poetical feeling inspired by the verses they sing, and, while melodious enough to justify them as lyrics, yet are near enough to impassioned recitative to do justice to the words on which they are built. Nevin is also an enthusiastic devotee of the position these masters, after Schubert, took on the question of the accompaniment. This is no longer a slavish thumping of a few chords, now and then, to keep the voice on the key, with outbursts ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... one of the older Hebrews in the forward ranks began to sing, in a wild recitative chant, of Canaan and the freedom of Israel. The elders in the line near him took it up and every face in the long column lighted and was lifted in silent concord with the singers. Atsu in his chariot, close by, scanned ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... should you ever be smitten by the blasts of adversity, your charming recitative talent would prove ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... goddesses from 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. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... only against his need of a poet, but against the vexed question, which has been argued for centuries and never solved, of the union of poetry and music. His talks with Francoise had brought him back to his idea, sketched out long ago with Corinne, of a form of musical drama, somewhere between recitative opera and the spoken drama,—the art of the free word united with free music,—an art of which hardly any artist of to-day has a glimmering, an art also which the routine critics, imbued with the Wagnerian ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... 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
... 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
... church choir, and so he led the singing; Parsons had a serviceable bellow, which roared and faded and roared again very wonderfully; Mr. Polly's share was an extraordinary lowing noise, a sort of flat recitative which he called "singing seconds." They would have sung catches if they had known how to do it, but as it was they sang melancholy music hall songs about dying soldiers and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... 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
... the concert began. It was opened with a symphony of Mozart; then followed a recitative and air, sung by Simonetti; next a violincello concerto, played by Herr Romberger (Bernhard Romberg); fourthly, a symphony, by Pleyel; fifthly, an air by Righini, sung by Simonette; sixthly, a double concerto for violin and violoncello, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... babbled whisperingly. "How should I not know the brown-haired Olaf! Olaf of the merry eye—Olaf, the pride of the Norse maiden?" She lifted herself in a more erect attitude, and stretching out her lean arms, went on as though chanting a monotonous recitative. "Olaf, the wanderer over wild seas,—he comes and goes in his ship that sails like a white bird on the sparkling waters—long and silent are the days of his absence—mournful are the Fjelds and Fjords without the smile of Olaf—Olaf ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... also gave Piccini her protection. Gluck, armed with German theories and supporting French music, maintained for dramatic interest, the subordination of music to poetry, the union or close relation of song and recitative; whereas, the Italian opera represented by Piccini had no dramatic unity, no great ensembles, nothing but short airs, detached, without connection—no substance, but mere ornamentation. Gluck proved, also, that tragedy could be introduced ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... 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 make ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... 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 proof impressions of the plate, price two guineas; whereas, on the ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the charming recitative of Herr Tuden Links, to the infant, which is really one of the most charming ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... The recitative, "Care compagne," etc, addressed to the assembled villagers, fell from her lips with a purity of enunciation that made each syllable seem like a note from a silver bell. And then the air, "Come per me sereno," held the house entranced till the ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... gesticulated is almost universally accepted as an exceptional instance, prompted by the failing of Livius' voice through age[103]. We are now fairly well informed of the tripartite diversion of the dialogue into canticum or song proper, recitative, and diverbium or spoken utterance[104], with the incidental accompaniment of the tibia. Though there may be some dispute as to the apportionment of the various classes, the general truth is established.[105] The important feature of this for our purpose is that, if ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... 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 before the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... appears a gathering place, and the bright holukus of the women, the gay shirts and bandanas of the men, the brilliant wreaths of natural flowers which adorn both, the hot-house temperature, the new trees and flowers which demand attention, the strange rich odours, and the low monotonous recitative which mourns through the groves make me feel that I am in a new world. Ah, this is all Polynesian! This must be the land to which the "timid-eyed" lotos-eaters came. There is a strange fascination in the languid air, and it is strangely sweet "to dream ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... which had hitherto been used in the lyrical part of the drama, and adopted the Pindaric ode. Many poets followed in the same path; more action was given to the dramatic parts, and greater variety to the music, in which the airs were agreeably blended with the recitative duets; other harmonized pieces were also added, and after the lapse of a century Apostolo Zeno (1669-1750) still further improved the melodrama. But it was the spirit of Metastasio that breathed a soul of fire ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... kindled an enormous campfire and with the scalps of the dead flaunting from spear heads danced the scalp dance, reenacting in pantomime all the episodes of the massacre to the monotonous chant-chant, of a recitative relating the foray. At the next camping-ground, Radisson's hair was shaved in front and decorated on top with the war-crest of a brave. Having translated the white man into a savage, they brought him one of the tin looking-glasses used by Indians to signal in the sun. "I, viewing myself all in a ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... 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; ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... came into the sick room in a mechanical recitative, as if accustomed to recount every particular ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... 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, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... '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 power of work. He was then ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... The organ of 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 ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... and day for ten days, and Carl, in great enthusiasm, forwarded the libretto for Caroline's opinion. She sent it back with violent criticisms, based upon her long stage experience and her intuition of stage effects. We can never thank her sufficiently for cutting out endless pages of songs and recitative by the melancholious old Hermit who, in the original version, was to commence the opera, and wander in and out of it ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... di Camera. Chamber, or private, Musick; where the Multitude is not courted for Applause, but only the true Judges; and consists chiefly in Cantata's, Duetto's, &c. In the Recitative of Cantata's, our Author excelled in a singular Manner for the pathetick Expression ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... rapidly, at another he hummed a melody; again, half declaiming, half singing, he read off a recitative; and then bent over and wrote with all his might. The light began to smoke, and the wax dropped over his music, but he saw none of it; neither saw he the daylight that had replaced his candles. He ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... 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 would laugh also. However, she still ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... A fine, manly voice, of great richness and depth, was soon heard, singing to an accompaniment on the same instrument. The air was grave, and altogether unusual for the social character of one who dwelt upon the ocean, being chiefly in recitative. The words, as near as might be ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... low chant, sweet and sorrowful, she repeated the story which each had told her, running them into a continuous recitative. The old woman rose from the floor, and joining in the chant in a quavering croon, sprinkled salt at the thresholds of the doors and at the feet of every person, ending by throwing a large handful up ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... 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 ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... which is preserved to us in the written text, but raised by the accompanying appeal to the sense, made as it must have been made by such artists as the Greeks, by the grouping of forms and colours, the recitative, the dance and the song, to such a greatness and height of aesthetic significance as can hardly have been realized by any other ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... the usual hour Ned went to Church, and selected for his morning service one of those Churches in which the pews are free, and in which the hymn is given out and sung by the congregation, a half recitative. ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... were given in Madame Deshoulieres' inimitable recitative, the party had come close to the rustic pair. "People may well say," muttered Madeleine, "that the pictures of Nature are always best at a distance. Can it be possible that this is a shepherdess—a shepherdess of Lignon?" ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... an Orfeo which he never completed, as the theatre which ordered it failed before it was finished. Only fragments of the work remain, and, fortunately enough, these have been engraved in an orchestra score. These fragments are uneven in value. The dialogue, or recitative, which should bind them together was lost and so we are unable to judge them fairly. Among the fragments is a brilliant aria on Eurydice which is rather ridiculous, while another on Eurydice dying is charming. We also find music for mysterious ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... devotional 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 ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... 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 ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... singing 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 ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... with my hand over my heart and listened. It was Billy 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... 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 ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... eagerly to Ibykus, as he told how the Athenian, Phrynichus, had introduced the religious dramas of Thespis of Ikaria into common life, and was now representing entire histories from the past by means of choruses, recitative and answer. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... marquis, who is no other than Miss MADGE TITHERADGE stepping down from the "legitimate" and bringing an air and an elocution unusual and admirable. She made her excellent speaking voice do duty in recitative for song, and the innovation is not unpleasing. If it be fair in frivolous public places to dig down to those thoughts that better lie too deep for tears, Mr. ALFRED NOYES' A Song of England, clear spoken by her with tenderness and spirit, is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... service, (in a mixed gay company who think of sound more than sense, not very easy,) the warbling of sacred phrases, and variations on the summoning trumpet, and imitated angelic praise, and the unfelt expressions of musical repentance, and unfearing despondency of guilt in recitative, are any thing but congenial to a mind properly attuned. I hope I am neither prudish, nor squeamish, nor splenetic, but speak only what many feel, and few care to express. Now, the cure in future for all this would be very simple: Why not have some lay oratorios? Protestants have appropriated ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... verisimilitude, and yet with a symbolic syncopation that indicated the Lion Dance was a very ancient and conventional ceremony. These dancers gave way to a chorus of singers. For interminable hours, so it seemed, they chanted a high, shrill recitative, carried in fugue by deeper voices. The burden of the song was evidently an impromptu. Occasionally some peculiarly apt or pleasing phrase was caught up for endless repetition. And in the background, against the farther background of the undistinguished masses, those who had formerly carried on ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... "and believe the glad tidings of God," is a masterpiece of 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
... their music, from the main work, and lingered in choral or solo service in places where the sacred operetta was presented, both in America and England. One of these is an effective solo in deep contralto, with a suggestion of recitative ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... Power began in a sardonic recitative: 'I am a traveller, and it takes a good deal to astonish me. So I neither swooned nor screamed when I learnt a few hours ago what I had suspected for a week, that you are of the house and lineage of Jacob.' He flung a nod towards the canopied tombs as he spoke.—'In other ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... I wish that life was an opera. I should like to LIVE in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of your dirty clothes in a ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... better to write a recitative under which the instruments can do some good work; for in this scene, which is to be the best in the whole opera, there will be so much noise and confusion on the stage that an aria would cut but a sorry figure. Moreover there will be a thunder-storm ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... as a recitative, both in English and Italian,—In questa tomba. He seemed to bring out a hidden force in his singing, which was not apparent on ordinary occasions. His reading of poetry was also fine, but he depended in it rather too much on his voice, too little on ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... middle,—I should be accused of building a second English hoax upon the primitive German hoax. In general I have proceeded as one would in transplanting a foreign opera to our stage: where the author tells the story ill—take it out of his hands, and tell it better: retouch his recitative; bring out and develope his situations: in this place throw in a tender air, in that a passionate chorus. Pretty much in this spirit I have endeavoured to proceed. But it is a most delicate operation to take work out of another man's loom, and put work in: ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... of the 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
... gather his straying wits to him. With a sharp effort that seemed to send a tremor through his whole long body he forced his faculties back into their grooves. With a muttered word of encouragement from the Bishop, he began hoarsely that precise, recitative form of confession that the good priests of Lower Canada have been drilling into the children for the ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Glamerton a man carrying in his hand a bundle of papers as a sample of what he had in the pack upon his shoulders. He bore a burden of wrath. They were all hymns and ballads of a minacious description, now one and now another of which he kept repeating in lugubrious recitative. Amongst them some of Watts's, quite unknown to Glamerton worshippers, carried the palm of horror. But there were others which equalled them in absurdity, although their most ludicrous portions affected the populace only as a powerful realization ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... 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 ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... Sabre, but straight across the top of his head and began an appalling, and as it seemed to Sabre, an endless recitative. "The Colonel's killed. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... him sounding the depths and cadences of the Living Temple, "bearing on its front this doleful inscription, 'Here God once dwelt,'" was like listening to the recitative of Handel. But Isaiah was his masterpiece; and I remember quite well his startling us all when reading at family worship, "His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God," by a peremptory, explosive ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown |
