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RECITATION

WITH

MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT.

INTRODUCTION.

Ir is with much diffidence that I venture to speak upon a subject wherein Mr. Clifford Harrison is so eminent an authority. He says-and I, for one, entirely agree with him-that the union of the two arts, recitation and music, can only be perfectly achieved by one and the same person. Nevertheless, attempts have been made, and, as Art progresses, will continue more frequently to be made, to fuse the performances of several artists into one satisfactory whole. What has been done with singer and accompaniment can-though with much greater difficulty-be done with reciter and accompaniment.

In considering this matter, it will be most practical to give a survey of the existing field of operationsthat is, to make some remarks upon each and all of the important published works of this kind. They are not numerous, and will afford us a firm basis for our deductions.

We may make two distinct classes; that in which the recitation is merely an adjunct to a musical work, and that in which the positions of the two are reversed. The former class only contains the following four works worth mention as being frequently performed in England:

1. Mendelssohn's music to Athalie, with declaimed portions of the tragedy.

2. Mendelssohn's music to A Midsummer Night's Dream, with accompaniments to certain scenes.

3. Schumann's music to Manfred, with accompaniments to certain soliloquies.

4. A. C. Mackenzie, The Dream of Jubal, a poem with music for soli, chorus, orchestra, and accompanied recitation.

The play of Preciosa, to which Weber composed music, has also been given on the concert platform with a recitation to connect the various pieces of music, but works of this class (in which may be included Lelio by Berlioz) demand no notice, as they contain no examples of accompanied recitation.

Class II. is more numerous, but contains few specimens of real interest. In some cases the poems are not in touch with our present sympathies, or are badly translated from foreign languages (and few translated poems recite well); in most cases the music is ungrateful. Many of the pieces here catalogued will be unknown to our readers.

Music by

5. "Schön Hedvig." Ballad by Hebbel
6. "Der Haideknabe." Ballad by Hebbel
7. "Die Flüchtlinge" (The Fugitives). By Schumann

Shelley

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8. "Der Trauriche Monch." By N. Lenau.
9. "Lenore." By Bürger.

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Des todten Dichters Liebe." By M. Jokai.
Der Blinde Sänger." By Tolstoi.

'Helge's Treue." By Strachwitz.
'Der Ewige Jude."

Music

by

Liszt.

14. 'The Uncle." By H. G. Bell. Music by J. Benedict.
15. "The Minstrel's Curse." By Uhland. Music by F. Corder.
Thorvenda's Dream." Words and music by G. Bantock.
Bergliot." By Björnson. Music by Ed. Grieg.
18. "The Bells." By Edgar Allan Poe.

17. "

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19. 'Ballad of Lorraine." By C. Kingsley. 20. "Soul Music." By G. J. Whyte-Melville. 21. " The Story of the Faithful Soul." By A. Procter. 22. " 'Riding thro' the Broom." By Whyte-Melville. 23. " The Curfew Bell." By Rosa Hartwick Thorpe. 24. "The Raven." By Edgar Allan Poe. 25. "Lochinvar." By Sir Walter Scott. "A Ballad of Hell." By John Davidson. 27. "What my Lover said." By Horace Greeley. 28. " The Legend Beautiful." By H. W. Longfellow. The Thin Red Line." By Alice C. McDonell. 30. "In the Round Tower at Jhansi." By Christina G. Rossetti.

26.

29.

Music

by

Stanley Hawley.

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In addition to the thirteen pieces enumerated above, there are six others by Mr. Stanley Hawley, published with English and German text. They comprise "Fair Helen" (anon.), One of us Two" (Ella Wheeler Wilcox), "The Dead Ship" (Lizette Woodworth Reese), "A Legend of the East Window" (Hubert Cutler), "A. Year's Spinning" (E. B. Browning), and "The Death Potion" (Lizette Woodworth Reese). The settings to these are of a more simple character.

Of

I cannot suppose that this list is quite complete, but at least it contains no omissions of any note. course the music written by Dr. Mackenzie to The Dream of Eugene Aram for Mr. Irving, as well as all Mr. Clifford Harrison's music, cannot be obtained by the public.

MUSICAL WORKS WITH RECITATIONS.

1. The recitation usually given when performing in a concert Mendelssohn's music to Racine's tragedy of Athalie is a kind of condensation or synopsis of the drama written in somewhat laboured rhymed Alexandrines, and leading up to the principal musical numbers. In one or two places, where the original stage dialogue was enhanced by short bits of melodrame (as this kind of music is called), the reciter has the uncomfortable task of being at one moment narrator and at another a person in the play. He never needs, however, to trouble himself about the music, the short phrases and detached chords of which must punctuate and emphasize his sentences. The following is the most important passage:

ATHALIE,

Allegro molto.

C

Where do those
women and their
children go?

The Lord hath

laid the Queen of cities low.

Her priests are captives. Her monarchs are rejected.

Her godly rites forsaken,
unprotected.

Down temple! Cedars burn!

2. Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream used to be given by Mrs. Stirling and others in a shortened form for the better exhibition of Mendelssohn's beautiful music. Accordingly, most of the fairy scenes were spoken as they would be on the dramatic stage. with the pauses for action which the music fills up. This is rather worrying to the reciter, but inevitable.

3. Schumann's music to Lord Byron's Manfred is sometimes performed in the concert-room with a reciter to accompany the music (for that is what it amounts to) of the three soliloquies, "O God, if it be thus," "The spirits I have raised abandon me," and, "There is a calm upon my spirit." The first and last are to be so spoken as to end exactly as the music ends, and this is not easy, the latter being rather slow and far too long for the purpose. Beyond this there is no attempt to make music and words fit in with one another.

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