Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Notes to the Reader on Sources and Terminology
- Introduction The Pledge of Allegiance
- Part One Establishing an Historical Perspective
- Part Two The Art of Interpreting Rests
- Part Three Case Studies in Musical Punctuation
- Afterword
- Appendix A Translation of Marpurg's Lessons on Musical Punctuation, from His Kritische Briefe über die Tonkunst, vol. 2
- Appendix B Chronological Chart of Punctuation References
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Chapter Seven - Musical Prose—F. W. Marpurg’s Essay on the Punctuation of Recitative
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Notes to the Reader on Sources and Terminology
- Introduction The Pledge of Allegiance
- Part One Establishing an Historical Perspective
- Part Two The Art of Interpreting Rests
- Part Three Case Studies in Musical Punctuation
- Afterword
- Appendix A Translation of Marpurg's Lessons on Musical Punctuation, from His Kritische Briefe über die Tonkunst, vol. 2
- Appendix B Chronological Chart of Punctuation References
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
Recitativo semplice is most natural because its bare notes are placed not only within the natural range of each voice but also notated and distributed so as to perfectly imitate natural speech such that one can distinguish each part of each period, and indicate question marks, exclamation marks and full stops. All of this is expressed through the melody, which varies concurrently with the motion and diversity of the tonalities, which in turn vary in accordance with the different meanings of the words, and according to the various sensations that the composer wants to excite in the listeners’ souls.
—Pietro Lichtenthal, 1836Music and language, as we established in chapter 6, agree on a general categorization of subject matter according to prose and verse, where in the strictest sense the one expresses strong subjects through an irregularity of rhythm, metrical accent, and phrase structure, while the other expresses milder subjects through a contrasting homogeneity. Music and language, however, inevitably disagree as to which category presents the greater challenges for the composer and performer. There is so much music in spoken verse and so much speech in musical prose, the basis for the continuing analogy between the two, that the nearer one medium approaches the other, the greater the difficulty. In verse, as Elocutionist John Walker states in 1781, it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice sense for sound in order to regularize the cadence and flow of language, to turn the more predominant structures of language (those of prose) into that which is more musical. The resulting “affinity between poetry and music,” Walker claims, increases the difficulty in reading verse. Because verse requires an alteration in the inflections of prose, elegant readers of verse often verge on what is called sing song, and those who are less elegant produce a “whining cant.” Jacob Schuback, writing in 1775 on the subject of musical declamation, also comments on the very tenuous relationship between the structures of song and those of natural (prose-like) speech. A composer who has a firm grasp on the rules of declamation will find little pleasure in setting a text to the most verse-like musical expressions, the strophic songs and lieder. In fact, if in the composition something appears to work well—that is, sound and sense happen to coincide—one is better off simply crossing it out as an only greater disappointment lies in wait.
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- Information
- The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth CenturyPunctuating the Classical 'Period', pp. 179 - 202Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008