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The Origins of English Recitative
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 1983
Extract
While masque texts tell us a great deal about some aspects of musical performance, on other issues they are reticent and equivocal. Textual information is at its most frustratingly perplexed on the question of the extent to which the new Italian monody influenced the music for the Jacobean masque. There is some difficulty in deciding when recitative was first introduced to England, and it depends on the reliability of two references in the 1640 Folio edition of Ben Jonson's Works. In the text of Lovers Made Men performed on the 22 February 1617, Jonson begins by describing the opening scene and then adds,
And the whole Maske was sung (after the Italian manner) Stylo recitative, by Master Nicholas Lanier; who ordered and made both the Scene, and the Musicke. (lines 26–28)1
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References
1 All line references to Jonson masques are from the complete edition, Ben Jonson, ed. C.H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, 11 vols (Oxford, 1925–52), vii.Google Scholar
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36 British Library MS Sloane 2329, f.75v. I am most grateful to Dr Penny Gouk for drawing my attention to the Galilei references here.Google Scholar
37 Professor Stoddart Lincoln has drawn my attention to an example from a Davenant play which illustrates the caution with which such references must be treated. In The Man's the Master (1668), one of the characters calls for a song, and the stage direction reads, ‘The SONG in recitative and in parts’. British Library Add. MS 33234 contains a setting of this song by John Bannister, and it seems quite likely that this was the setting used in the play, yet it gives no hint of either recitative or parts. If the play text is not simply wrong, then it seems that Davenant must have been prepared to call any non-strophic and monodic setting ‘recitative’ (although that still would not explain what happened to the ‘parts’).Google Scholar
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