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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 nightly until the rain falls.
At one time holding up a piece of blanket, stained with Boyga's blood, he gave utterance to his ravings in a sort of recitative, the burden of which was "This is the red flag my companions died under!"
They parted in the crowd, and Emilius walkt toward the remote apartment, from which, long before he reacht it, he caught his friend's loud recitative. "Ah, so you are here too!" exclaimed Roderick, as he entered: "you have just hit the right moment; I am at the very passage where we were interrupted the other day: sit down, and you may hear the remainder."
For the purpose of explaining the subsequent movement of the drama there is a lot of conversation which Weber, in the Singspiel, would have left to be spoken, and Mozart would have set to dry recitative. Wagner was determined that his music should flow on; but the inspiration of the sea was gone, and he could only fill up with uninspired stuff.
See how soft and warm it is; bless the good soul that sent it; and now I sit me down; so. And I take thee on my left knee, and put my arm under thy little head; so, And then the psaltery, and play a little tune; so, not too loud." "I ikes dat." "I am right glad on't. Now list the story." He chanted a child's story in a sort of recitative, singing a little moral refrain now and then.
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 sang the "Sancta Mater! istud agas, Crucifixi fige plagas," ending with the most impassioned strain of the Stabat Mater,
Stirred up by the Homeric prelections of Crates, cultivated Romans began to read the recitative works of their own literature, the Punic War of Naevius, the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems of Lucilius first to a select circle, and then in public on set days and in presence of a great concourse, and occasionally also to treat them critically after the precedent of the Homeric grammarians.
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 rest is the accompaniment.
"Both were excellent musicians, thoroughly skilled in their profession; both had voices of uncommon sweetness and agility, particularly suited to the bravura style, and executed to perfection and with good taste everything they sang. But neither was Italian, and consequently both were deficient in recitative.
Now and then he prefaces his proper song with many disconnected, extremely staccato notes, following each other at very distant and unexpected intervals of pitch. But the fault is the critic's, I think; to my ear these preliminaries sound rather like the recitative which goes before the grand aria.
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