"On the knowledge necessary for one who wishes to recite well in the theatre" the rhetorical tradition of delivery and the performance practice of recitativo semplice in eighteenth-century dramma per musica

Abstract

Recitative is so integral an element of eighteenth-century opera that without understanding it we cannot hope to understand the genre as a whole. Yet the notation of recitativo semplice leaves so much to the discretion of the performers that it, in turn, cannot be understood without making sense of its performance practice. The aim of this study is therefore to contribute to reconstructing a theoretical and practical basis for that performance practice, and in particular, for the unnotated aspects of recitative for which it is otherwise almost impossible to account. Following Giambattista Mancini’s advice to singers in his Riflessioni Pratiche sul Canto Figurato (1777) to “listen to the speech of a good orator” as a model for recitative delivery, I argue that the “rules of perfect declamation” followed by orators were those dictated by the discipline of rhetoric, and that the rhetorical paradigm of delivery thus represents a model for recitative performance practice. Chapter 1 outlines the scope of the study and its principal sources. The following chapters examine the implications of the rhetorical understanding of delivery for the performance of recitativo semplice. In Chapter 2, the case is made that the rhetorical principles of delivery did apply to musical recitation as much as to spoken declamation. Some consideration is also given to the ways in which this body of knowledge and its corresponding skills in vocal delivery may have been acquired by Italian singers. The nature and purpose of delivery as it was understood in the rhetorical tradition forms the subject of Chapter 3. Chapter 4 discusses its principles as they apply to musical declamation in recitative, under the headings of Quintilian’s “virtues of delivery”. These are shown to be consistent themes, even when they were not named as such, in early modern theatre and singing treatises as well as in writing about rhetoric. In Chapters 5 and 6, these prin ciples, and in particular the overriding virtue of decorum o! r “appropriateness”, are applied to the musical parameters of vocal delivery in recitative: rhythm, timbre, dynamic and pitch. The rhetorical paradigm of delivery is shown to cast valuable light on the vocal performance practice of recitativo semplice, and in particular on its unnotated aspects.