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TSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > Music Revision Notes > A level music - Arias and Recitatives
I will give you some general features of arias and recatatives, because once you know them you can spot them easily from anything. And remember (baroque) opera is a part of the general syllabus too so it could come up in the unprepared listening section of the exam.
Arias - not much text used, frequent use of melismas, repetition, sequences. Full accompaniment. Have a da capo structure (ABA) where the return of the A section is ornamented. I recommend you listen to an Aria from Handel's Messiah as it will give you a good impression. Usually they focus on important parts of the text.
Recitatives - loads of text. the idea of them is to get through a lot of plot. So not many melismas, if any. Therefore they are predominantly syllabic (one note per syllable) and occasionally neumatic (a few notes per syllable.) No repetition, and no structure. they are through composed.
Accompaniments - in a seco recatitive, the only accompaniment is from the continuo (keyboard instrument like organ/harpsichord, and a bass instrument like cello or bassoon)
The accompaniment is just plink plonk chords played every now and again. Loads of perfect cadences to finish off the phrases. Very basic accompaniment. No sustained notes! i repeat, no sustained notes at all and no strings. If these are present it is a accompagnato recitative.
Accompagnato - pretty much full accompaniment. fuller, richer texture than seco. sustained string notes. And other stuff like in St John's passion, whenever Christ speaks there is a halo of strings. (accompiganto) to give god like connotations.
Or in the messiah when the angels are speaking there are semiquaver arpeggios from the strings to represent the flapping of the angels' wings.
Remember all of the above feature masses of word painting - seriously, its an easy way to get marks. find a bit of music that has word painting and explain why. Ranges from simple ones like "though art gone up on high" (this is an aria from the Messiah by Handle) being set to music as an ascending figure, from more complicated ones like the flapping wings mentioned earlier. Also words in dido and anaeas like "grief" and other negative words are often set to dissonant chords, representing the negative connotations of the words.
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Hope this helps, feel free to ask questions :-)
