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Ritter tells me that, contrary to what I thought, you have kept up the tempo of the recitatives according to my indications, and that therefore the dreaded caprice of the singers, as far, at least, as the tempo was concerned, had no license. For this also I must thank you, but am a little perplexed as to the advice I recently gave you.
In the third act alone was I obliged to give Iphigenia, as well as Artemis, whom I had myself introduced, recitatives of my own composition. Throughout the rest of the work I revised the whole instrumentation more or less thoroughly, but only with the object of making the existing version produce the effect I desired.
Perhaps no more valuable testimony to the character of these operas can be adduced than that of Baron Grimm: "In his operas Rameau has overpowered all his predecessors by dint of harmony and quantity of notes. Some of his choruses are very fine. Lulli could only sustain his vocal psalmody by a simple bass; Rameau accompanied almost all his recitatives with the orchestra.
Many of the slow openings of the overture are antiphonal, passages sometimes being echoed, and sometimes a passage is continued by being repeated with the ups and downs of the melody inverted. Dozens of devices may be observed, but all are servants of an endless invention. The variety of the songs and recitatives is wondrous. Purcell was one of the very greatest masters of declamation.
Besides, Bach set comic dialogue to music exactly as he set the recitatives of the Passion, there being for him, apparently, only one recitative possible, and that the musically best. He reserved the expression of his merry mood for the regular set numbers in which he could make one of his wonderful contrapuntal traceries of pure ornament with the requisite gaiety of line and movement.
I must therefore assume that the dragging took place where you, as conductor, lost your immediate power, viz., in the recitatives. I have been assured that the recitatives were not attacked by the singers as I had performed them to my friends at the piano. Allow me to explain myself a little more particularly, and forgive my mistake of not having done so before.
I was presently out of pain: he sung his two recitatives with all imaginable taste and judgment; and what was yet more, with a very agreeable voice. I never enjoyed a more pleasing surprise. After mass, M. Venture received the highest compliments from the canons and musicians, which he answered jokingly, though with great grace.
Men, like women, have a stock in hand of recitatives, of cantabile, of nocturnes, airs and refrains shall we say of recipes, although we speak of love which each one believes to be exclusively his own. Men who have reached Lousteau's age try to distribute the "movements" of this repertoire through the whole opera of a passion.
The composition at times is operatic in character, while the text calls for a mode of treatment solemn and religious, as in Passion-music. If set to some other text, this work would be well nigh faultless; the recitatives are singularly good, and there is a rich orchestration. It is reminiscent of Händel and prophetic of Wagner. The Hallelujah Chorus in particular is a magnificent piece of work.
Nowhere in the score of my "Lohengrin" have I written above a vocal phrase the word "recitative;" the singers ought not to know that there are any recitatives in it; on the other hand, I have been intent upon weighing and indicating the verbal emphasis of speech so surely and so distinctly that the singers need only sing the notes, exactly according to their value in the given tempo, in order to get purely by that means the declamatory expression.
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