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Uncle Tom’s Cabin vocabulary

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recitative: synonyms: accompagnato, stromentato ???

tags: [music]

► definition

Definition:

a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas) in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms of ordinary speech. Recitative does not repeat lines as formally composed songs do. It resembles sung ordinary speech more than a formal musical composition.
[...]
Later operas, under the influence of Richard Wagner, favored through-composition, where recitatives, arias, choruses and other elements were seamlessly interwoven into a whole. Many of Wagner's operas employ sections which are analogous to accompanied recitative.

Recitative is also occasionally used in musicals, being put to ironic use in the finale of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera. It also appears in Carousel and Of Thee I Sing.

George Gershwin used it in his opera Porgy and Bess, though sometimes the recitative in that work is changed to spoken dialogue. Porgy and Bess has also been staged as a musical rather than as an opera.

^{text from Wikipedia, licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike}
^{https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/}
^{music sample: J.S Bach - Cantata No.152 - V. Recitative, provided by European Archive, public domain}
^{https://musopen.org/music/3429-cantata-tritt-auf-die-glaubensbahn-bwv-152/}

► uses

Uses:

He was not a remarkably fluent reader, and was in the habit of reading in a sort of recitative half-aloud, by way of calling in his ears to verify the deductions of his eyes. In this tone he slowly recited the following paragraph:

"EXECUTOR'S SALE,—NEGROES!—Agreeably to order of court, will be sold, on Tuesday, February 20

Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin

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a Swiss talking French was more easily understood than a Parisian, by a foreigner who had not made himself master of the language; because every language had its peculiar recitative, and it would always require more pains, attention, and practice, to acquire both the words and the music, than to learn the words only;

Tobias Smollett. The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771)