Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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36 RECITATIVE EECITING-NOTE
constructed movements. Scarlatti's accompaniments
exhibit a freedom of thought immeasurably
in advance of the age in which he lived.
Sebastian Bach's recitatives, though priceless
as music, are more remarkable for the beauty of
their harmonies than for that spontaneity of
expression which is rarely attained by composers
unfamiliar with the traditions of the stage.
Handel's, on the contrary, though generally
based upon the simplestpossibleharmonic foundation,
exhibit a rhetorical jierfection of which
the most accomplished orator might well feel
proud ; and we cannot doubt that it is to this
high quality, combined with a never -failing
truthfulness of feeling, that so many of them
owe their deathless reputation—to the unfair
exclusion of many others, of equal worth, which
still lie hidden among the unclaimed treasures of
his long-forgotten opersis. Scarcely less successful,
in his own peculiar style, was Haydn, whose
' Creation ' and ' Seasons ' owe half their charm
to their pictorial recitatives. Mozart was so
uniformly great, in his declamatory passages,
that it is almost impossible to decide upon their
comparative merits ; though he has certainly
never exceeded the perfection of ' Die Weiselehre
? !
dieser Knaben,' or Non ' temer.' Beethoven attained
his highest flights in AbscheuUoher ' ! wo
eilst du hiu ' and Ah, ' perfido ; Spohr, in
'
' Faust,' and
'
Die letzten Dinge ; Weber, in
' Der Freisohiitz.'
'
The works of Cimarosa, Kossini,
and Cherubini abound in examples of accompanied
recitative, which rival their airs in
beauty ; and it would be difhcult to point out
any really great composer who has failed to
appreciate the value of the happy invention.
Yet even this invention failed either to meet
the needs of the dramatic composer or to exhaust
his ingenuity. It was reserved for Gluck
to strike out yet another form of recitative,
destined to furnish a more powerful engine for
the production of a certain class of effects than
any that had preceded it. He it was who first
conceived the idea of rendering the orchestra,
and the singer to all outward appearance entirely
independent of each other ; of filling the
scene, so to speak, with a finished orchestral
groundwork, complete in itself, and needing no
vocal melody to enhance its interest, while the
singer declaimed his part in tones which, however
artfully combined with the instrumental
harmony, appeared to have no connection with
it whatever ; the resulting effect resembling
that which would be produced, if, during the
interpretation of a symphony, some accomplished
singer were to soliloquise aloud in broken
sentences, in such wise as neither to take an
ostensible share in the performance nor to
disturb it by the introduction of irrelevant
discord. An early instance of this may be
After the disappearance of
found in 'Orfeo.'
Euridice, the orchestra plays an excited crescendo,
quite complete in itself, during the
course of which Orfeo distractedly calls his lost
bride by name, in tones which harmonise with
the symphony, yet have not the least appearance
'
of belonging to it. In Iphigenie en Tauride,'
and all the later operas, the same device is
constantly adopted ; and modern composers
have also used it freely—^notably Spohr, who
opens his 'Faust' with a. scene, in which a
band behind the stage plays the most delightful
of minuets, while Faust and Mephistopheles
sing an ordinary recitative, accompanied by
the usual chords played by the regular orchestra
in front.
By a process of natural, if not inevitable
development, this new style led to another, in
which the recitative, though still distinct from
the accompaniment, assumed a more measured
tone, less melodious than that of the air, yet
more so, by far, than that used for ordinary
declamation. Gluck has used this peculiar
kind of Me7,ai Sedtativo with indescribable
'
power, in the prison scene, in Iphigenie en
Tauride.' Spohr employs it freely, almost to
the exclusion of symmetrical melody, in 'Die
letzten Diiige.' Wagner makes it his cheval de
bcUaille, introducing it everywhere, and using
it as an ever-ready medium for the production
of some of his most powerful dramatic effects.
His theories on this subject have already been
discussed 'so fully that it is unnecessary to
revert to them here. Suffice it to say that his
Melos, though generally possessing all the more
prominent characteristics of pure recitative,
sometimes approaches so nearly to the rhythmic
symmetry of the song, that—as in the case of
'
Nun sei bedankt, mein lieber Schwan ! '
it is difficult to say, positively, to which class
it belongs. We may, therefore, fairly accept
this as the last link in the chain which fills up
the long gap between simple ' Recitative secco
and the finished aria. ['The free declamation,
built on the natural inflexions of the speaking
voice, which is employed for the vocal part of
Debussy's ' Pelleas et M^lisande," though not
styled 'recitative,' has much in common with
it.] , w. s. E.
RECITING-IirOTE (Lat. Repereussio, Nota
domiTians). A name sometimes given to that
important note, in a Gregorian Tone, on which
the greater portion of every verse of a psalm
or Canticle is continuously recited ; and it is
commonly used of the corresponding note in
Anglican chant.
As this particular note invariably corresponds
with the Dominant of the Mode in which the
Psalm-Tone is written, the terms. Dominant,
and Reciting -Note, are frequently treated as
interchangeable. [See Modes and Psalmody.]
The Reciting -Note makes its appearance
twice in the course of every tone ; first, as the
initial member of the Intonation, and afterwards
as that of the Ending ; the only exception
to the general rule is to be found in the