passion. Recitative is however employed at present in the Italian Opera, as the means of expression, as well as for the common purposes of the dialogue.

Nothing has puzzled musical logicians more than the attempt to define this term.

Rousseau, in his dictionary, speaks of it thus:-'Recitative. A discourse recited in a musical and harmonious tone. It is a method of singing which approaches nearly to speech, a declamation in music, in which the musician should imitate as much as possible, the inflexions of the declaiming voice.'—

Busby attempts to explain it thus:-Recitative. A species of musical recitation, forming the medium between air and Letorical declamation, and in which the composer and performer rejecting the rigorous rules of time, endeavours to imitate the inflexions, accent, and emphasis, of natural speech.'

One calls 'Recitative-a kind of singing that differs but little from ordinary pronunciation.'

Another says,Recitative is speech delivered through the medium of musical intonation.'

Whilst others, still more general, describe it as singing speech,' and

'speaking song.'

Before we know what we require in knowledge, we never perceive how little satisfies us: and perhaps it is here first shown,--that all these words, though written to instruct, contain no further explanation, than might be given by the humblest auditor at an oratorio. By the terms of all these definitions, Recitative is somehow made up of speech and song. Now the elementary movements of song had, in a degree, been known and described; and therefore the meaning of its term in the definition, might not have been incomprehensible, if vocalists had ever thought of showing its nature and influence in the compound. But, as regards the knowledge of speech, on which these definitions are constructed, let us hear Rousseau, under the very article we have quoted above. "The inflections of the speaking voice' says he, are not bounded by musical intervals. They are uncontrolled, and impossible to be determined.'

6

An understanding therefore of the nature of Recitative,

through the nature of its mingled or interwoven constituents, song and speech, the latter of which was thus declared to be utterly inappreciable, must have required some other powers of comprehension than we at present possess. For having no perception of the characteristics of one of the constituents, the idea of Recitative must have been, if I may be allowed to jest, not unlike that of our personal acquaintance with the heads of a family, the father of which is married to an invisible woman.

In general definition, Speech, Song and Recitative, are varied modes of intonation, deriving their specific differences from the kind and combination of their vocal elements. Having described the melodial peculiarities of speech and song, I shall, by the same light of analysis, endeavour to point out the characteristic intonation of Recitative.

The plainest form of what is called Recitative, for its form varies, is at once distinguishable from speech and song, by the following mode of its construction.

First. It has no symmetrical rythmus or musical measure in the progression of its melody.

Secondly. It employs the protracted radical and vanish, and the wave, on its long quantities, and occasionally the equable concrete on short ones.

Thirdly. Its melodial intervals, or the discrete movements of its radical pitch, are of all dimensions, both in upward and downward transition.

Fourthly. It employs the means of time, force and quality of voice.

These are the simple elements, constituting Plain Recitative: and the following are some of the principles of their application.

The melodial progress consists of a succession of phrases of the monotone, and of every interval, even to the rising and falling octave and these are so disposed, as to effect a continued variety. Thus its melody exhibits no systematic distinction between a diatonic ground-work, and the emphasis of higher intervals, such as gives effective power and dignity to speech the successions of pitch being rather according to the promiscuous mingling of song. I have not been able to recog

nize, in what is called unaccompanied recitative, any application of the doctrine of key; its melodial relationships having in this respect the characteristic of speech. The full pauses are made by phrases of every form, from the monotone, to the rising and falling discrete octave: the current melody, and the pausal phrases consisting, for the most part, of the protracted radical or vanish, with an occasional rising and falling concrete and

wave.

Such being the structure of Recitative, it is conclusive, that the power of expression must fall far below that of speech. Making the inflexions of the speaking voice, which it pretends to borrow, the measure of this power, the only forms of expression I have been able to perceive, in the plain mode of Recitative above described, are included under the following heads :

First. The expression of slow or rapid utterance, and of long and short quantity.

Secondly. That of the degrees of force, both as to emphasis and drift.

Thirdly. That of quality, particularly of guttural emphasis and aspiration.

Fourthly. That of intonation, by the employment of the discrete rising fifth or octave for inquiry; of the downward skip for positive or imperative declaration; and of the wave of the semitone and minor third for plaintiveness. But even these do not seem to be so applied, according to invariable rule; for I have heard true interrogative phrases and declarative questions, intonated with a simple monotone, or ditone, or downward fifth or octave; and forcible imperatives, with the widest ascending intervals.

The form of Recitative, of which I have been treating, would be heard by the common ear, as something distinct from both speech and song: and the above enumeration of its elements, must convince us, that not having the whole of the constituents of either, it must be different from both. But as we now have an analytic perception of the respective structures of them all, we can see what is common to the three, and what peculiar to each. We perceive too, that one can not assume the character of another, without dropping itself, and becoming

that other and that those definitions which set forth Recitative, as a musical intonation of speech, or an engrafting of the inflexions of speech on song, are no more than absurdities. We can further see, that as it is made up of the elements of song and speech, the characters of one or the other may predominate according to the prevalent use of their respective elements. And so it happens with dramatic composition, that the singer often changes the mode of the above described plain Recitative, to that of florid execution, by freely introducing the constituents of song. Hence instead of the plain melody, constructed of the few elements above mentioned, he introduces, in a greater or less degree, the arsis and thesis in all their forms, divisions of every variety, tremors, shakes, notes and waves in short, whilst employing these elements, under a barred and rythmic time-he does, in effect, produce the full characteristic of song itself.

In regarding then these three modes of intonation, it appears that Speech and Song, both by construction and effect, are most unlike each other :- -that Recitative, even of the plainest sort, by construction more nearly resembles song, and in the execution of vocalists, most readily runs into it :that speech has the most extended and delicate powers of expression; because there is in it, a union of sentimental language with its instinctive intonation, and a perfect adaptation of one to the other that song exclusively of words, and with its music alone, has the means of exciting feelings of grandeur, pathos, gaiety and grace, by the force, quality, quantity, and intonation of the voice and that Recitative, which, by one of the not unfrequent delusions of perception, was originally introduced, and has since been continued for centuries, as carrying the double agency of vocal and oratorical expression, does, by this vain design to effect a combination of incompatible functions, really destroy the peculiar and delightful essence of each.

:

We owe the modern creation or revival of Recitative, in part, to the mystic influence of that vampire of classic authority, which whilst fanning us into a self-glorifying stupefaction, has for ages been drawing out the life blood of our intellectual independence. The ignorance of the Greeks, upon the ana

lysis of the vocal functions, obliged them to describe their limited perceptions, by loose explanation and indefinite metaphor; whilst the moderns have been contented, in this as in other of their arts, to take a record of the poverty of their analytic knowledge, as the historic scraps of their perfection. The learned world has teased itself into despair, by attempts to discover, wherein consisted the inimitable charm of Greek poetical recitation; and to reduce to palpable illustration the extraordinary formal causes of that 'melodious language,' which when writers on the human voice shall fully understand their subject, they will admit to be very little more melodious than their own. Among the Greeks,' says Rousseau, and he may well speak for the rest in this matter,—among the Greeks, all their poetry was in recitative.' And again: The Greeks could sing in speaking, but among us, we must either sing or speak; we can not do both at the same time.' With such a mystical and distracting physiology as is here set forth, no wonder that worshippers of the inexplicable power and perfection of antiquity, should have raised up altars to this Unknown God.'Nor that Pulci the poet, in reciting his Morgante Margiore, as we are told, at the table of Lorenzo de' Medici, should have imagined himself to be the happy instrument of a needed revelation, of the method of Grecian dramatic-recitative, or of Homer's declamatory song.

HERE I conclude the cursory view of the physiological functions of song and recitative: having avoided therein, every thing like a practical consideration of the subject. Some one better qualified than myself may be disposed to prosecute the inquiry. In the first part of this work, I have set forth the nature of expression in Speech, by an elementary description, and detailed illustration of its particular forms. An investigation of the nature of expression in Song and Recitative, by the light of that analysis, and according to the hints here thrown out, would be interesting, and might be successful. Nothing could give me more pleasure than to assist in its development. But this would lead me from some other designs