The performance of affect in recitativo semplice

• Published in: Music performance research 2012-01, Vol.5, p.49-58
• Main Author: Maddox, Alan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 17th century; 18th century; Musical interpretation; Musical notation; Musical performances; Musicians & conductors; Opera; Rhetoric; Rhythm; Singers
• ISSN: 1755-9219

Performance practice for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century recitativo semplice remains problematical as it was so sketchily captured in notation, leaving many elements to the discretion of the performers. The literature on declamation provides a practical model for recitative delivery, however: spoken oratory according to the discipline of rhetoric. When recitative is read in the way suggested by contemporary sources, not as 'music' but as musically elaborated declamation, it becomes apparent that a performer of recitative has available all of the rhetorical resources of spoken declamation to express the meaning and affect of the words, including variation of rhythm, pacing, timbre, articulation, emphasis and pitch inflection. While the notation of simple recitative gives much less obvious clues to expression than does the notation of an aria, affect can nevertheless be deduced from the words and from musical cues, particularly relating to vocal tessitura and the harmonic tension encoded in the continuo. The expressive range of declamation is then dictated by the objectives of dramatic verisimilitude, constrained and directed by the principles of rhetorical decorum. Analysis of the words and music of a scene from Handel's Tamerlano demonstrates a historically informed approach to the delivery of recitativo semplice according to rhetorical precepts.