"Recitative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... in the 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, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... 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
... subject to the regular division of the bar, it is requisite, while following him attentively, to make the orchestra strike, simultaneously and with precision, the chords or instrumental passages with which the recitative is intermingled; and to make the harmony change at the proper instant, when the recitative is accompanied either by holding-notes or by a tremolo in several parts, of which the least apparent, occasionally, is that which the conductor must most ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... 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 the meaning of the verse. It ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... at 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. Bruce is killed. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... 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, ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... she warbled in a sort of improvised recitative. "Will I take two or two and a half lessons of Georg Henschel? Will I grace platforms in the English provinces? Will I take my two hundred dollars out of the bank and risk it royally? Perhaps the bystanders will glance in at my windows and observe me giving the ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... all their leisure hours, including the greater portion of their lives, with the repetition of songs which are, for the most part, proverbs illustrated, or figures of speech applied to the occurrences of life. Some that they rehearse, in a kind of recitative, at their bimbangs or feasts, are historical love tales like our old English ballads, and are often extemporaneous productions. An example of the former species ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... of 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
... 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
... conclude, 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 before the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... Caesar, the familiar episodes of his life are sacrificed to some imaginary and complicated intrigue presented in the form of long and elaborate songs, thinly accompanied, and separated by stretches of dreary recitative. But in those days persons of culture, in England as well as in Italy, were perhaps more interested in ancient history and in the history of the later Roman Empire than they are now; it is significant that Gibbon's ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... this 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 pathetic song. Margaret had both witnessed the destitution, and had the heart ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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 into this ingenious and happy ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... 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
... Swedish exercises in alt, and makes a very pretty lady of high degree for a pantomime 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... 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 trans John Black
... often walked through the village of Bebbington, whose church had a high stone steeple, nearly to the summit of which the ancient ivy had clambered. And as it came in view he would always say, in a sort of recitative, perhaps reminiscent of Scott's narrative poems, which he was at that time reading aloud to us, "There is of Bebbington the holy peak!" To which I would as constantly rejoin, "'Of Bebbington the holy spire,' father!"—being offended ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... music. No tempo is marked, but, evidently, it must not be rapid. It is a tone-picture of the deception practised by Laban upon Jacob when he substituted Leah in place of Rachel. At first, it is a free recitative. A quotation of a few bars will give a good idea of the extraordinary harmonies ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... beautiful theme on "The March of the men of Harlech," he changed the measure again to "Tri chant o' bunnan" (Three hundred pounds), and immediately a most unmusical-looking man began chanting "Pennillion," or a sort of recitative stanzas, which were soon taken up by another, and this amusement lasted so long that Owen grew weary, and was thinking of retreating from his post by the door, when some little bustle was occasioned, on the opposite ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... child's story in a sort of recitative, singing a little moral refrain now and then. The boy ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... [Solo Recitative.] Hail to thee, Burgomaster! Hail to thee, benefactor! Life burns our deeds within its envious fire, But mem'ry, like a phoenix from the pyre, Rises on stalwart wing to waft ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... 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. We doubt if a finer ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... Somehow or other the recitative gentleman's hat turned over to the wind, and that active body (which never neglects any sportive opportunity) got into the crown, with the speed of an upstart, and made off with it along the stones. A costly hat it was, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Butterworth, several of the latter's songs detached themselves, with 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 and chant— ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... fellow- players became infected by it. Some of them gave her odd, half-laughing glances now and then,—being more or less amazed at the unusual vigour with which she sang, in her pure childish soprano, the few strophes of recitative and light song attached to her part;—the very prima-donna herself caught fire,—and the distinguished tenor, who had travelled all the way from Buda Pesth in haste, so that he might 'create' the chief role in the work of his friend Valdor, began to feel that there was ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... 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 ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... 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 he ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... 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 contrary, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be 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, and the study of Italian and recitative will form an important part of every ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... day). Up, and after being trimmed, alone by water to Erith, all the way with my song book singing of Mr. Lawes's long recitative song in the beginning of his book. Being come there, on board my Lord Bruncker, I find Captain Cocke and other company, the lady not well, and mighty merry we were; Sir Edmund Pooly being very merry, and a right English gentleman, and one ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 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
... chief contributions of the military era to the art of singing was a musical recitative performed by blind men using the four-stringed Chinese lute, the libretto being based on some episode of military history. The performers were known as biwa-bozu, the name "bozu" (Buddhist priest) being derived from the fact that they shaved their heads after the manner ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... boys 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 ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... 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
... about midnight, and let myself gently down through the window, and shaped my course in the direction of the negro houses, guided by a loud drumming, which, as I came nearer, every now and then sunk into a low murmuring roll, when a strong bass voice would burst forth into a wild recitative; to which succeeded a loud piercing chorus of female voices, during which the drums were beaten with great vehemence; this was succeeded by another solo, and so on. There was no moon, and I had ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... 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 on ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... she talked rapidly 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 she went ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... 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
... though treated with notable 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 ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... 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 ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... oratorio after 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 power of work. He was then in his sixty-eighth ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... particularly in recitative, the style, moreover, least subject to precise laws, that Delsarte used this license; and it was in this ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... 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 ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Greeks, which are still preserved by the Hindoos, they have an 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 ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... fallen Adam with a soured temper. We are Adam and Eve unfallen, in Paradise. Now, then,—the recitative, for the sake of the moral. You will sing the whole duty of woman,—'And from obedience grows my pride ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... tambourines. The 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 Turk, as well as of the merry laughter-loving Greek. A string of Armenian women ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... times all ballads 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
... forward with some 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 ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... 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 ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... or to embellish." Their religion forbids them every sort of painting, sculpture, or engraving; thus the fine arts cannot exist among them. They have no music but vocal; and know of no accompaniment except a bass of one note like that of the bagpipe. Their singing is in a great measure recitative, with little variation of note. They have scarcely any notion of medicine or surgery; and they do not allow of anatomy. As to science, the telescope, the microscope, the electric battery, are unknown, except as playthings. The compass is not universally ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... Baltimore oriole piping his cheery recitative in the top of an elm; chickadees uttering their minor strains, and mourning doves soothing our ears with their meditative cooing, we left the sacred spot, to visit Plymouth Rock. We loved to listen to the purling undertones of Town Brook and wondered ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... noises of the street, they became aware of a dull, continuous sound, and knew that the stream which intersected the park on its way to the river had been freed from ice by the January thaw, and was pouring its swollen waters over the dam. The note was deep and full, like a solemn recitative, as if Nature's diurnal harmonies had sunk to this one transitional key. Above all, the mildness of the air, full of the alluring witchery of a false spring, affected the imagination ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... 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 ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... more music. A tenor voice was singing a recitative now, and that exquisite accompaniment, with a sort of joyful solemnity, still continued. Every now and then, shrill, high, and clear, penetrated a chorus of boys' voices. I, outer barbarian that I was, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... 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 ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... certainly as the grub turns in due season into the winged plague who buzzes and fly-blows—the little reciting bore turns into the dramatic or theatric acting, reading, singing, recitative—and finally into the everlasting-quotation-loving ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... draw those cozy little pictures of a brooding mother bird, with the male perched but a yard away in full song, do not copy from nature. The thrasher's nest I found was thirty or forty rods from the point where the male was wont to indulge in his brilliant recitative. It was in an open field under a low ground-juniper. My dog disturbed the sitting bird as I was passing near. The nest could be seen only by lifting up and parting away the branches. All the arts of concealment had been carefully studied. It was the last place ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... heavens as though it were a part of the solar system inaugurated by Joshua. Again the white-robed Druids filed past me, again I saw that improbable mistletoe cut from that impossible oak, and again cold chills ran down my back with the first strain of the recitative. The thumping springs essayed to beat time, and the private-box-like obscurity of the vehicle lent a cheap enchantment to the view. But it was a vast improvement upon my past experience, and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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
... Miss Kemble, in spite of the subject and the music. Such, indeed, is the power of this lady's genius—which is shed like a halo over the whole opera—that nobody laughs at the broad Irish in which Flavius delivers himself and his recitative; few are risibly affected by the apathetic, and often out-of-tune, roarings of Pollio:—than which stronger testimony could not be cited of the triumph of Miss Kemble; for solely by her influence do those who go to Covent-Garden to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... these, at Dunstable, that Dame Gresford had taken Grisell, and there were also sundry of the gentlemen of the escort. A minstrel was esconced under the wide spread of the chimney, and began to sound his harp and sing long ballads in recitative to the company. Whether he did it in all innocence and ignorance, or one of the young squires had mischievously prompted him, there was no knowing; Dame Gresford suspected the latter, when he began the ballad of "Sir Gawaine's Wedding." She would have silenced it, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... silence. 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
... one might look into the quiescent crater of a volcano after a destructive eruption. Mrs. Almayer's thoughts, after these scenes, were usually turned into a channel of childhood reminiscences, and she gave them utterance in a kind of monotonous recitative—slightly disconnected, but generally describing the glories of the Sultan of Sulu, his great splendour, his power, his great prowess; the fear which benumbed the hearts of white men at the sight of his swift piratical praus. And these muttered statements of her grandfather's might were ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... music, desire above all to find substance, and who are scarcely satisfied with the mere representation of a banquet, are much worse off. In plain English, Wagner does not give us enough to masticate. His recitative—very little meat, more bones, and plenty of broth—I christened "alla genovese": I had no intention of flattering the Genoese with this remark, but rather the older recitativo, the recitativo secco. And as to Wagnerian leitmotif, I fear I lack the necessary culinary understanding ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... oratorio, for it is undoubtedly the highest form of musical dramatic art, and is founded upon and contains the greatest and deepest truths of the Christian life. As regards the actual music forms employed, we find, indeed, similar ones in the operas, such as the various forms of recitative, the aria, the duet, and the chorus, and even the scena; but in the sacred works, who are the heroes and heroines? Are they not the instruments of the Divine power, the messengers of the good tidings? And what are the subjects? ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... 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
... 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
... drink at Lammas-tide than be a man of no moon," continued Christian, in the same shattered recitative. "'Tis said I be only the rames of a man, and no good for my race at all; and I suppose that's the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... even 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 works are rather symphonic ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... phrase, "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 ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... almost prosaic lucidity of sentiment and plot, 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 realised by any other ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... who had so well guarded the secret, was entirely unprepared to hear the Montfort parentage thus publicly avowed; and the bride, who had as little known of her father's intentions, sat with downcast eyes, blushing and tearful, while the beggar's recitative went briefly and somewhat tremulously over his resuscitation, under the hands of the fair and faithful Isabel. Her hand was held by her bridegroom from the first, with a pressure meant to assure her that no discovery could alter his love and regard; but when the name of Montfort sounded on his ear, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various
... was not of the most easy kind; it was the cantatas of Clerambault. It may be conceived with what attention and perseverance I studied, when I inform my reader, that without knowing anything of transposition or quantity, I contrived to sing with tolerable correctness, the first recitative and air in the cantata of Alpheus and Arethusa; it is true this air is, so justly set, that it is only necessary to recite the verses in their just measure to ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... that of the young men. Their huts being placed at a little distance from one another, such an arrangement would appear to put an end to anything like social intercourse or conversation; but they have invented a means of overcoming this difficulty by making a species of chant, or recitative, their customary mode of address to each other. In an encampment at night the young men recount to one another their love adventures and stories; and the old men quarrel with their wives or play with their children; suddenly a deep wild chant ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... 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 ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... hayashi, does not seem to be sung at the end of a fixed number of lines, but rather at the termination of certain parts of the recitative. There is also no fixed limit to the number of singers in either band: these may be very many or very few. I think that the curious Izumo way of singing the burden—so that the vowel sounds in the word iya uttered by one band, and in the word sorei uttered by the other, are made to blend together ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... to see a Russian wedding. It was a most interesting ceremony. There was a large choir, from the cathedral, who sang a long and beautiful anthem before the service began; and the deacon (from the Church of the Assumption) delivered several recitative portions of the service in the most magnificent bass voice I ever heard, rising gradually (I should say by less than half a note at a time if that is possible), and increasing in volume of sound as he rose in the scale, until his final note rang ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... of the dissolution of the palace and gardens by the waving of Armida's wand is astonishing; it appears completely to be the work of inchantment, from the rapidity of execution which follows the potentissime parole. The French recitative however does not please me. The serious opera is an exotic and does not seem to thrive on the soil of France. The language does not possess sufficient intonation to give effect ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... the opera had consisted of a number of semi-detached solos, duets or choruses to which tunes were set. These pieces were joined up by any jumble of notes sung by the characters on the stage, usually with no artistic meaning whatsoever, known as the recitative. In a word, the opera was a mere ballad concert. The recitative was so utterly foolish and meaningless, as a rule, that men like Beethoven and Weber, when they composed music-dramas, abolished it altogether, and ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... 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, with its fantastic ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... 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 customary in ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... savage holla! or 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 repeated several times, the whole body, on ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... hired all the 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
... [Mdlle Duchesnois] recitative, and find that in nine verses out of ten 'A cobbler there was, and he lived in a stall' is the tune of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 206, October 8, 1853 • Various
... hum of the 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 ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... 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 ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... you 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 ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... 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 from ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... 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 at St. Giles's, so ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... said 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 ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... 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 ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... 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, we concluded ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... illustrations. The volume closes with a doggerel translation of one of several Gospel ballads which Carey had written in Bengali in 1798. He had thus early brought into the service of Christ the Hindoo love of musical recitative, which was recently re-discovered—as it were—and now forms an important mode of evangelistic work when accompanied by native musical instruments. The original has a curious interest and value in the history ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... respite 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
... we have the charming recitative of Herr Tuden Links, to the infant, which is really one of the most ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... 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 Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... She may be twenty-five, but is more probably fifteen. She acts as Adjutant to Madame, and rivals her mother as deliverer of sustained and rapid recitative. She milks the cows, feeds the pigs, and dragoons her young brothers and sisters. But though she works from morning till night, she has always time for a smiling salutation to all ranks. She also speaks English quite creditably—a fact of which Madame is justly proud. "College!" explains the ...
— All In It K(1) Carries On - A Continuation of the First Hundred Thousand • John Hay Beith (AKA: Ian Hay)
... example of the difficulty of the German words, with the everlasting consonant endings to the syllables, take the recitative at the ...
— How to Sing - [Meine Gesangskunst] • Lilli Lehmann
... as he 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 ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... therefore 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 example of the effects it is capable of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... 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 were exorcists ...
— 1001 Questions and Answers on Orthography and Reading • B. A. Hathaway |
