(It. dialogo; Sp. diálogo; Ger. Dialog; Lat. dialogus).
As applied to music, the term is used in two general senses: to denote the setting of a text involving conversational exchanges between two or more characters; and to describe a musical work (or part of a work) that uses devices such as alternation, echo or contrast in a way that seems analogous to spoken dialogue.
DAVID NUTTER, JOHN WHENHAM (1), DAVID NUTTER (2–3), JOHN WHENHAM (4–5)
In the second sense defined above ‘dialogue’ has been used as a title for certain instrumental works (particularly for organ) that exploit contrasts in tone colour. François Couperin’s ‘Dialogue sur les trompettes, clarion et tierce du g[rand] c[lavierl et le bourdon avec le larigot du positif’ (Messe des paroisses, 1690), in which the ‘dialogue’ is between two organ manuals, is one example; another, in the sphere of orchestral music, is provided by Debussy’s ‘Dialogue du vent et de la mer’ (the third movement of La mer, 1905). Since the Renaissance the term has also been loosely used as a designation for antiphonal vocal music, regardless of text form (e.g. Portinaro’s setting of Petrarch’s Dolci ire, dolci sdegni e dolci paci, 1557); in fact more than half of the dialogues in Gardano’s anthology Dialoghi musicali (RISM 159011) are echo or polychoral pieces rather than textual dialogues.
Used in its first sense, the term ‘dialogue’ is now most frequently encountered in connection with the dialogue of opera and other stage works. During the 16th and 17th centuries, however, with which this article is mainly concerned, the term was also used more specifically to denote the independent dialogue settings included in collections of madrigals, motets and cantatas; and it was for this type of setting that in the early 17th century G.B. Doni coined the phrase ‘dialoghi fuor di scena’. This usage of the term can still be found in the 18th century, though by then it had largely been superseded by the more general designations Cantata and Oratorio.
The history of dialogue texts in musical setting can be traced to the late Middle Ages. Early examples include the dialogue tropes of the 10th and 11th centuries (e.g. Quem queritis and Hodie cantandus est; see Medieval drama, §II and fig.1); the debates and competitions on amatory or political topics during the reunions of troubadour and trouvère guilds in 13th-century France (tenso, partimen, jeu parti); and some monophonic ballades in dialogue form such as the anonymous Douce dame debonnaire (HAM, i, 16), a humorous altercation between the suitor and his lady. The central problem of setting a textual dialogue in polyphony was to distinguish musically between the speakers. Although poems cast as dialogues are common in literary sources from Virgil’s Eclogues onwards, few musical settings survive from before the advent of through composition in the 16th century, perhaps because the formes fixes of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance lacked sufficient elasticity to cope with the irregular word patterns and rapid shifts of speaker typical of most dialogues. Donato da Cascia’s ballata Senti tu d’amor, donna? (ed. in PMFC, vii, 1971, p.62), for example, presents the words of both speakers simultaneously, following the form rather than the content of the text. A more realistic approach in which the suitor’s lines are assigned to the upper voice and the lady’s to the lower (an anomaly that may be an intentional caricature) is found in Niccolò da Perugia’s ballata Donna, posso io sperare (ed. in PMFC, viii, 1972, p.128). Many later dialogues differentiated the conversational exchanges by contrasting high and low pairs of voices, as in Busnoys’ Terrible dame, which also sets both parts of the conversation in first-inversion chords, or ‘fauxbourdon’, perhaps a punning (faux: ‘false’) commentary on the artificiality of courtly love.
A number of dialogue capitoli, barzellette, strambotti and sonnets survive among the works of the frottolists. In the capitolo, because only the upper voice was sung, the dialogue could be divided between the singers by an alternation scheme: the insertion of bar-lines marking off each change of speaker in the 1509 print of Tromboncino’s Aqua, aqua, aiuto, al foco, and the addition of superscript letters above the singers’ respective parts in a 1510 print of his Amor–che vuoi? suggest that two singers were intended. Another dialogue technique, used for barzellette, strambotti and sonnets, was to divide four fully texted voices into pairs representing now one, now the other speaker. Examples include Ruffino d’Assisi’s Haymè amor (RISM 15216), fra Pietro da Hostia’s O Morte (RISM 15314), and Bernardo Pisano’s several settings of Lorenzo Strozzi’s ballata dialogue Son io, donna (1520).
Verdelot appears to have been the first to write dialogues for five and six voices. His five-voice dialogues generally use varied textures to create an illusion of textual discourse (e.g. Pur troppo donn’in van tant’ho sperato and Quant’ahi lasso); but in the six-voice dialogues Quando nascesti Amore? (text by Sasso, ed. in Slim, 1972) and Chi bussa? (ed. in Harrán, 1968) the two upper voices are systematically contrasted with the lower four, producing a musical division that exactly follows that of the text. Willaert’s seven-voice setting of Quando nascesti, Amor? (Musica nova, 1559), probably composed in the late 1530s, shows an expansion of Verdelot’s dialogue methods in several ways. By adding a voice to Verdelot’s two-versus-four scoring, Willaert could exploit contrasting ensembles of three high and four low voices to differentiate between the speakers of the dialogue. However, a rigid disposition of the voice groupings is never strictly maintained, as one of the voices from the lower choir is frequently added to the upper choir, producing a sham double-choir effect. If his portrayal of the speakers’ gender by contrasting high and low voices was an orthodox imitation of nature, Willaert’s innovatory use of varied textures, his immaculate word-setting and his perfectly controlled formal design set a standard that was truly new, a standard, furthermore, that was clearly discernible in the dialogues of his pupils Perissone Cambio, Baldassare Donato, Rore and Vicentino. Moreover, Willaert was the first to set for seven voices the three sonnet dialogues from Petrarch’s Canzoniere (Liete e pensose, Che fai alma and Occhi piangete), thus establishing a musical as well as a textual precedent of far-reaching and lasting importance. In these dialogues the continual voice interchange between choirs is even more pronounced, to the extent that usually only the two highest voices of each group carry the complete words of the dialogue. This arrangement suggests that only two of the voices need be sung while the remainder could be played on instruments, a suggestion consistent with what is known of performing practice in Venetian academies, for whose use Musica nova is considered on firm evidence to have been composed.
In spite of an apparent similarity in style to sacred music for cori spezzati, early 16th-century dialogues for eight-part double choir can be shown to be a natural outgrowth in style and method of the seven-voice dialogue. In 1550 Cambio published several eight-voice dialogues in which one of the four-part choirs is often supported by a fifth voice drawn from the other choir; in the tutti sections only one of the bass parts actually supports the harmony, indicating that spatial separation of the choirs in performance was not intended (as it was in true cori spezzati music). Moreover, Vicentino distinguished between dialogues and other multiple-choir works, stating that because the dialogue was sung ‘in a circle’ (i.e. with the performers close together) it was permissible to use intervals between the bass parts that would be prohibited in double-choir style (L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica, 1555, iv, chap.28, ff.85–6).
The subject matter of dialogues gradually changed from semi-obscene and humorous ‘He–She’ altercations (e.g. Verdelot’s Chi bussa?, Janequin’s Ouvrez moy l’huys, Encina’s Pedro, y bien te quiero) to refined Petrarchistic texts as advocated by Bembo (e.g. the introspective sonnet dialogue between Cupid and the poet, Amor, se così dolce, set by Rore in 1557). The humanistic revival of texts and themes from classical antiquity is evident in Rore’s eight-part setting in recitational style of Horace’s ode Donec gratus eram tibi, also set by Portinaro in an Italian translation (Mentre m’havesti caro, 1554). Donato’s seven-voice dialogue between shepherds and nymphs relating the rape of Proserpine, Ahi miserelle (1553), shows a fusion of pastoral and classical literary motifs. Infernal dialogues, usually depicting an encounter between Charon and the fiery soul of the rejected suitor, achieved lasting popularity. In particular, Serafino de’ Ciminelli dall’Aquila’s strambotto dialogue Crudo Caronte (and its variants, Caron, Caronte and Ferma, Caronte) enjoyed a remarkably widespread international vogue, first in Italy with settings by Portinaro (1560), Boyleau (1564), Alcarotto (1569), Sabino (1582) and Scaletta (1590), and later in France and England (see below). Similar in subject is Striggio’s nine-voice dialogue O fer’aspro dolore (RISM 15844), which exploits an exceptionally low tessitura suggestive of the depths of the underworld (sub-bass, bass, tenor and alto clefs). As the century progressed, the brooding melancholy of the Petrarchistic, introspective dialogue (in which the poet converses with his own eyes, heart or soul) gradually lost ground in favour of the joyfully extrovert but superficial pastorale like Gastoldi’s ‘baccanale’ Tutti lieti honoriamo (1589) and Vecchi’s ‘boscareccia pastorale’ Ecco rident’a noi (RISM 159011), or scenes of imagined seduction in which the poet wreaks vicarious revenge on a formerly unobtainable lady, such as Alessandro Orologio’s setting of Lucilla, io vo morire (1586).
As secular music on a grand scale the dialogue was eminently suited to court festivities requiring music that could convey, by reason of its volume of sound, its clear harmonic structure and its contrasting ensembles of voices, a sense of pomp and grandeur. The texts for these spectacles generally are emblematic dialogues between allegorical or mythological deities designed to flatter the princely patrons whose virtues they extol. Examples include Sperindio Bertoldo’s eight-voice dialogue between the Muses, Chi è questo Alphonso, o muse (1562), written for Alfonso II d’Este’s accession as Duke of Ferrara in 1559, Wert’s brilliant virtuoso display piece for seven voices, In qual parte si ratto i vanni (1581) for Vincenzo Gonzaga’s marriage to Margherita Farnese in 1581, and several dialogues by Vecchi for the 1587 nuptials of Marco Pio of Savoy and Clelia Farnese, one of which is a massive ‘Battaglia d’Amor e Dispetto’ for ten voices in four sections (Selva di varia ricreatione, 1590; ed. in RRMR, lxxii, 1987). Outside Italy H.L. Hassler set a pastoral dialogue for the wedding at Augsburg in 1589 of Christoph Fugger and Maria, Countess of Schwarzenburg, Donna de miei pensieri (ed. in DTB, xx, Jg.xi/1, 1910, no.30), in which the newly wedded couple are represented in the improbable guise of shepherds; and Schütz wrote an eight-voice dialogue, Vasto mar (1611), in praise of his patron, Moritz, Landgrave of Hesse. In Venice polychoral works in dialogue form were often commissioned for state occasions. Andrea Gabrieli’s eight-voice Felici d’Adria (1570), written for the visit to Venice in 1565 of Archduke Karl of Carinthia, his 12-voice Ecco Vineggia bella (RISM 158711) and Vincenzo Bellavere’s 12-voice Questo re glorioso (RISM 15844), composed for Henri III of France’s visit in 1574, exemplify the grand Venetian manner; this style culminated with Giovanni Gabrieli’s Udite, chiari e generosi figli, a dialogue between tritons and sirens welcoming the 17th century, scored for 15 voices and basso seguente.
From the 1560s Florentine intermedi made increasing use of textual dialogue between onstage singers to extend the episodes and to lend a degree of continuity to the action, which was otherwise nearly static (see Intermedio). Intermedio dialogues usually take the form of two or more separate compositions, performed successively as solo or ensemble pieces rather than in the rapid choral exchanges typical of the polychoral medium. An early example occurs in Striggio’s music for the first intermedio performed with La cofanaria at Florence in 1565, which consisted of an eight-voice madrigal sung by Venus and her attendants, A me, che fatta son negletta e sola (RISM 15844; ed. in Osthoff, 1969, ii, 122), answered by a five-voice madrigal performed by Cupid and his companions, Ecco, madre, andian noi. Structurally this dialogue is of the proposta–risposta type, containing only the barest elements of discourse, but it served as a prologue to the remaining five intermedi. An increasing trend towards multipartite episodes linked by dialogue is evident in later Florentine intermedi, most notably those performed with La vedova in 1569 and with L’amico fido in 1585, in which the alternation of stanzas between solo and chorus dominates the structure of each intermedio. The more traditional polychoral dialogue madrigal, with the possibility of separating the performers spatially (vertically or horizontally) on stage, was used occasionally to accommodate large groups of performers and to provide contrast and interplay enhanced by raising or lowering the performers with stage machinery. Notable examples include a ‘bellissima canzone in modo di dialogo’, Scendi, leggiadra schiera, performed by two vertically separated groups of deities who come together in a musical as well as a spatial sense to sing the final stanza in the sixth intermedio from La vedova, and Malvezzi’s six-voice Dolcissime sirene, a triple-choir dialogue sung by the Fates and sirens during the first intermedio from La pellegrina, performed at Florence in 1589. Other entertainments in which dialogue madrigals were performed include several for eight voices: one by Ascanio Marri was performed at Siena before 1575 with the anonymous Cantata pastorale; Vecchi’s eight-voice Ecco nuntio di gioia (1590) was pressed into service as the concluding item for the fourth intermedio performed with Illuminato Perazzoli’s pastorale Filleno, given at Lugo (near Ferrara) in 1594 (with Gesualdo in the audience); and Vecchi’s allegorical ten-voice ‘Mascherata della Melanconia et Allegrezza’ (Dialoghi, 1608; ed. in RRMR, lxxii, 1987) was performed by costumed singers and dancers in the streets of Modena in 1604.
In the second half of the 16th century an increasing interest in sonority for its own sake is apparent in the many dialogue madrigals composed for multiple choirs of contrasting ranges and asymmetrical voice groupings. The intent in these works was to furnish an essentially decorative setting of the text with little concern for its dramatic potential. This purely formal, constructive aspect of musical dialogue is epitomized in a number of Giovanni Gabrieli’s dialogue madrigals, several of which, marked ‘aria da sonar’, take the form of the instrumental canzona francese. Of more seminal importance were settings of the newly fashionable erotic pastorale, mixing dialogue and narrative in the epigrammatic style popularized by Tasso, Guarini and Marino. By far the best known was Guarini’s Tirsi morir volea, which received fine settings by Wert (1581) and Andrea Gabrieli (1587). Apart from distinguishing between the words of the nymph and Thyrsis in the usual double-choir manner, and setting the opening narrative in the rhythms of the anecdotal French chanson, Wert’s largely homophonic setting assigns both the narrative and the role of Thyrsis to the lower choir. The problem of realistically distinguishing between narrative and dialogue was solved only in the early 17th century, when, with the addition of continuo to the polyphonic madrigal, it became possible to extract solo voices from the choir for the dialogue portions, leaving the narrative to be performed by the entire choir. Monteverdi’s splendid seven-voice setting of Marino’s Presso a un fiume tranquillo (1614), constructed in this manner, is only one of a number of pieces that mark at once the end of the polyphonic tradition and the first step towards the sectionalized, highly dramatic style of the cantata.
The adoption of the basso continuo as the basis of accompanied solo song provided 17th-century composers with the technical means to bring greater realism and expressive flexibility to their dialogue settings; and many of the volumes of monodies and concertato madrigals published in Italy during the first half of the century contain dialogues in which the roles are assigned to accompanied solo voices. In the main, these settings are for voices with continuo only. Some, however, such as Stefano Bernardi’s Bellezze amant’oimè (1619) and Biagio Marini’s Ninfa, non m’ami? (1649), include obbligato instrumental parts. The musical forms of early 17th-century settings parallel those of contemporary solo song. Most are through-composed madrigalian settings resembling short operatic scenes. Strophic dialogues are also found, however, such as Antonio Brunelli’s Bella Licori, i tuoi dolori (1616) in which the two characters Drusilla and Licoris complain of the hardness of their lovers, singing two arias in alternation before joining in a final duet. A few settings, such as Nicolò Fontei’s L’uccellatrice (Bizzarrie poetiche poste in musica, 1635), a dialogue between three wildfowlers, are cast in the form of strophic variations.
The earliest recitative-dialogues were published in Italy by D.M. Melli, who included two – Cara e vezzosa Filli (Thyrsis and Phyllis) and E quando cessarai? (Daphnis and Eurilla) – in his Le seconde musiche of 1602 (both represent amorous encounters between nymph and shepherd). Melli’s settings, written in a style closer to Caccini’s solo madrigals than to Peri’s operatic recitative, comprise a series of alternating solos culminating in a short ensemble, a closed musical form characteristic of many early recitative-dialogues. His later setting of Marino’s popular dialogue text Poich’a baciar n’invita (1609) exemplifies a different type, in which there is no ensemble writing. Such differences in musical approach were largely dictated by the form of the text, but occasionally a single text can be found set in both ways. Chiabrera’s scherzo, Chi nudrisce tua speme, cor mio? (also incorporated into his libretto Polifemo geloso, 1615), for example, was set by Piero Benedetti (1611) as a series of alternating solos, but both Marco da Gagliano (1615) and D’India (1615) set the conclusion of the text as a duet. On a larger scale, Giovanni Valentini published in 1622 a setting of Act 2 scene vi, lines 1–136, of Guarini’s Il pastor fido, in which he set lines 133–6 for six-part chorus, providing also an alternative two-part setting. Tarquinio Merula’s rival setting of lines 1–169 (Satiro e Corisca, dialogo musicale, 1626), however, contains no ensembles.
During the first two decades of the 17th century, recitative-dialogues were published mainly by composers – among them Barbarino, Ghizzolo and Alessandro Grandi (i) – who worked outside Florence. The first volume devoted entirely to dialogues was, however, published by a Tuscan composer, Francesco Rasi, who issued his Dialoghi rappresentativi in 1620. The volume comprises four extended settings, all to texts by the composer himself and each involving three pastoral characters. For Rasi the ‘representative style’ did not simply mean declamatory recitative. His settings are varied by the introduction of duets (in dialogues nos.2 and 4) and passages of melodious arioso writing. Indeed, in the first and third dialogues he linked the opening speeches by arioso refrains. Each setting concludes with a strophic ensemble, that of the first dialogue being marked ‘aria alla francese’.
The 1620s may be regarded as a watershed in the stylistic development of Italian dialogue settings, for while dialogues in a mainly declamatory style continued to appear (e.g. the two large-scale settings of texts from Virgil’s Aeneid in Domenico Mazzocchi’s Dialoghi, e sonetti, 1638), many of the settings written during the mid-17th century include extended passages of arioso writing. This stylistic development can be traced in the work of composers such as Luigi Rossi, Carissimi, Caproli and Cesti, whose dialogues are found in manuscript sources, but it is also evident in the through-composed dialogues published from 1629 by composers working at or near Venice. These Venetian dialogues are of particular interest since their composers – Rovetta, Sances, Fontei, Benedetto Ferrari and Filiberto Laurenzi – were among those who also contributed to the literature of early Venetian opera. For the most part these composers introduced arioso passages either for purposes of word-painting or as a response to more introspective passages in the text; and they drew for the style of their arioso writing on the new triple-time arias popularized at Venice by Grandi and Berti. In his dialogues Oh Dio, Tirsi and Lilla, se amor non fugga (both 1639) Fontei also used arioso passages to build rondo structures; and in the latter he also incorporated two independent canzonettas in duple time. Rovetta’s large-scale pastoral dialogue La gelosia placata (1629), to a text by Giulio Strozzi depicting a lovers’ quarrel, provides perhaps the most fascinating stylistic study of this group of settings. In addition to triple-time arioso, Rovetta drew on the ‘walking-bass’ idiom of the strophic-bass cantata; and his lively and varied recitative includes several passages in the genere concitato.
The problem of narration in dialogues received a variety of solutions in the 17th century. Like Monteverdi in the dialogues A Dio, Florida bella and Presso a un fiume tranquillo of his sixth book of madrigals (1614), Rovetta combined recitative dialogue with the traditions of the polyphonic madrigal, using a three-voice chorus for the narration at the opening and conclusion of La gelosia placata. Fontei, on the other hand, set the opening narration of his Dicea Clori a Fileno (1636) as a duet for the two singers who then take the roles of Chloris and Filenus. The latter solution was favoured by Carissimi, who used it in his most famous dialogue, I filosofi (written before 1650; ed. in L. Landshoff, Alte Meister des Bel Canto, i–ii, 1912), in which the contrast between laughter and weeping in a debate between the philosophers Democritus and Heraclitus is depicted by major and minor modes. Yet another solution was to use a third singer as narrator, as in Sances’s setting of Tirsi morir volea (1633), where the narrator is given the name Festaurus. Use of a solo narrator was the usual approach adopted for settings of texts from epic verse. Mazzocchi called the narrator of his dialogue Poi chè il crudo Alandin (1638, from La Gerusalemme liberata) ‘Tasso’, thus acknowledging the author of the text. Monteverdi, however, in Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (1624) and Sances in his dialogue between Angelica and Ruggiero, Già dell’horrido mostro (1649), chose the more neutral designation testo from the contemporary usage in sacred dialogues. This designation is also found in other secular dialogues, for example in Marazzoli’s Nel più fiorito April (in I-Rvat Q.VIII.179), for Lascivia, Virtù, Ercole and testo.
Most dialogue texts set during the early and mid-17th century were pastoral love-lyrics; but they also embraced subjects as diverse as reflective debates between a man and his soul (e.g. G.P. Bucchianti’s Alma, che fai? Gioisco), commedia scenes (e.g. the settings of Il carro di Madama Lucia, 1628, and La Luciata, 1636, by G.B. Fasolo and Francesco Manelli respectively) and topical matters – for example, Rossi’s Rugge quasi leon (I-Bc Q50), for Mustafà, Baiazet and testo, appears to deal with the murder in 1635 of Orchan and Baiazet, the brothers of Amurath IV of Turkey. Mythological characters also feature in a few settings: the infernal boatman Charon appears in Barbarino’s Ferma, ferma, Caronte (1611); Grandi’s O dolcissima morte (1615) is an amorous dialogue between Venus and Adonis with a shepherd as onlooker and commentator; Merula’s La Tognada (1642) is a parody of the judgment of Paris.
The dialogues of Carissimi and Stradella seem to be among the last settings of Italian texts to be designated ‘dialogo’ in musical sources, for by the late 17th century the term had largely been displaced by the all-embracing designation ‘cantata’. Nevertheless, a continuing tradition of Italian dialogue settings can be traced during the late 17th and early 18th centuries in the work of composers such as Perti and Alessandro Scarlatti, and it includes Handel’s pastoral and mythological dialogue-cantatas, of which La terra è liberata (Apollo and Daphne) is perhaps the finest example.
In France and England, the dialogue was an important vehicle of stylistic change during the early 17th century. Guédron’s polyphonic setting of Berger, que pensez vous faire? (1617), for example, contains the earliest evidence of continuo writing in France, while in their airs de cour composers such as Antoine Boësset and François Richard (probably the elder) adopted a quasi-operatic manner for dialogue settings. Richard’s Cloris, attends un peu (1637), for example, is a short series of exchanges culminating in a duet. In England, similar examples can be found in the Ayres (1609) of Alfonso Ferrabosco (ii) (ed. in EL, xvi, 1927, nos.26–8). Although the accompaniment is in tablature and not yet a genuine continuo, the declamatory nature of the vocal line and the irregular alternation of the voices give the effect of recitative.
The later development of dialogue settings in France can be traced in the work of composers such as Michel de La Barre, Michel Lambert and Charpentier (e.g. Orphée descendant aux enfers) and in the collections of airs sérieux and cantatas that survive from the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Montéclair’s Adieu de Tircis à Climène (RISM 16953) already shows the clear division between recitative and air typical of the dialogue-cantata, while his Pyrame et Thisbé, published in his second book of cantatas (before 1728), is one of the most extended early 18th-century French dialogues. It is scored for soprano, countertenor, baritone (the ‘historien’, or narrator), violin and continuo and comprises four airs, two ariettes, ten recitatives and three duets. Among other subjects treated by French composers, the contrast of temperaments in Héraclite et Démocrite (1711) by the Italian-born composer J.-B. Stuck is worthy of note for its affinities with Carissimi’s I filosofi. A similar subject, but with pastoral characters, was treated by Rameau in his cantata Les amants trahis (1721).
In England, composers such as Nicholas Lanier (ii), John Jenkins and Henry Lawes (see MB, xxxiii, 1971, nos.11, 19, 60) established a tradition of dialogue composition in the new recitative style which flourished until the death of Purcell. For the most part they chose texts that explore the conventional amorous exchanges between nymph and shepherd, but their settings lack the expressive flexibility of Italian recitative. The tradition of English pastoral dialogues, however, also includes such fine examples as Locke’s setting of Marvell’s When death shall part us (RISM 16797). Two composers who worked outside court circles in the early 17th century, Robert Ramsey and John Hilton (ii), chose a more ambitious range of subjects. Ramsey’s Howl not, you ghosts (ed. in MB, xxxiii, no.15), for example, depicts Orpheus’s plea to Pluto and Proserpine for the release of Eurydice; Hilton’s Rise, princely shepherd treats the judgment of Paris.
A popular subject in 17th-century England was the dialogue in which Charon (invariably a bass) is asked to ferry a soul across the Styx (see Chan, 1979). Examples include William Lawes’s Charon, O Charon, hear a wretch oppressed (ed. in MB, xxxiii, no.86); Hilton’s Charon, come hither, Charon (GB-Ob Don.c.57), a dialogue between Charon and Hobson, the Cambridge carrier who died in 1631; and Purcell’s Haste, gentle Charon (ed. in Works, xxii), in which the soul is characterized as Orpheus. Purcell’s output of independent dialogues includes some six other settings (all ed. in Works, xxii), all scored for soprano and bass. They range in style from the declamatory, as in Hence, fond deceiver (Despair and Love) and While you for me alone had charms (a dialogue between the poet and Lydia, based on the ninth ode of Horace), to the purely tuneful, as in Sit down, my dear Sylvia (Alexis and Sylvia). Purcell also wrote a number of dialogues intended as incidental music for plays, for example ‘Behold the man’ (ed. in Works, xxi) for Act 2 of The Richmond Heiress.
In Germany, a number of dialogues were printed in 17th-century song publications such as Heinrich Albert’s Arien (1638; see GMB, no.193b). These are often simple strophic settings in which two singers perform alternate stanzas. Adam Krieger’s posthumous Neue Arien (1667, enlarged 2/1676) includes a number of pastoral dialogues with interspersed ritornellos (ed. in DDT, xix, 1905, pp.35, 45, 89, 105).
Although the mainstream of Baroque dialogues involved dramatized settings for two or more voices, several examples survive from the 17th century of dialogue texts set for a solo voice with continuo. Two such are Giacomo Fornaci’s Tirsi morir volea (1617) and Barbara Strozzi’s Timore, e che sarà godremo? (1651), the latter actually being called ‘dialogo a voce sola’. The tradition of setting dialogue texts for a solo singer can be traced down to the present day and includes such works as Schubert’s Erlkönig, Brahms’s Vergebliches Ständchen and, in the sphere of sacred music, Stravinsky’s Abraham and Isaac.
Dialogue texts drawn from biblical sources or representing dramatized spiritual discourses were also set to music during the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, using techniques similar to those of secular dialogues. Indeed, a few sacred dialogues are contrafacta of secular models: for instance Stefano Bernardi’s O quam suavis (1621) is modelled on his own dialogue Bellezze amant’oimè (1619). In Italy, the settings of both Latin and vernacular texts included in collections of motets, laude spirituali and spiritual madrigals played an important part in the early history of the oratorio as a musical form not only in Rome but also in Florence (see Hill, 1979). Among the comparatively few intended for performance at oratories are the dialogues in Animuccia’s first and second books of laude (1563 and 1570), in the five collections of laude all apparently edited by Francisco Soto de Langa (1577 to 1598) and in the Tempio armonico of Giovenale Ancina (RISM 15996 and 16005). (The text of Anima mia, che pensi? in Soto’s first collection was later incorporated into Act 1 scene iv of the libretto of Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo, 1600.) The dramatic and narrative-dramatic laude in these early volumes are simple strophic settings in three or four parts in which no attempt is made to differentiate musically between the characters of the dialogue. During the 17th century, however, vernacular settings using the new monodic styles were issued in volumes of spiritual madrigals intended for private devotions and in publications, such as G.F. Anerio’s Teatro armonico spirituale (1619), intended for use in oratories. Anerio’s imposing volume (examples ed. in Smither, 1985) includes dialogues that treat the stories of Adam and Eve, the prodigal son and the conversion of St Paul. This last is an extended setting calling for four soloists (including a testo) as well as an eight-part chorus and instrumentalists.
The Latin recitative-dialogues included in early 17th-century collections of motets and other liturgical music represent a different, though not wholly independent, line of development, leading to Carissimi’s oratorios. The earliest setting of this kind was published in 1600, when Gabriele Fattorini included a dialogue for two voices, Dic nobis Maria, depicting the discovery of the empty tomb (John, xx.1–18) in his Sacri concerti a due voci (ed. in Smither, 1985). Later examples include Viadana’s three-voice Fili, quid fecisti?, depicting the finding of Jesus in the temple (Luke ii.48–9) in his Cento concerti ecclesiastici (1602; ed. in Smither, 1985) and G.F. Capello’s Abraham (1615; ed. in GMB, no.180), one of four dialogues in Capello’s book to include sinfonias, ritornellos and instrumental accompaniment to the solo voices. In this latter dialogue, the solo sections for Abraham (bass), an angel (tenor) and Isaac (soprano) are rounded off by a chorus, a device commonly used in dramatic and narrative-dramatic Latin dialogues. Like Viadana’s dialogue, Capello’s is based on a biblical text (Genesis xxii.1–13); in common with most early 17th-century Latin dialogues, neither has a narrator.
There is no evidence to suggest that Latin dialogues of the early 17th century were intended specifically for performance at oratories; indeed, it has been argued that some traditions of dialogue performance remained independent of the oratorian movement (see Kendrick, 1992). Although Latin dialogues present biblical and reflective texts in a dramatized form, they are essentially the descendants of Renaissance motets treating similar subjects; some, indeed, are settings of texts that had long been used for motets. In 1609, for example, Severo Bonini published a setting for two soloists and five-part chorus of Missus est Gabriel angelus (Il primo libro de motetti a 3 voci), a paraphrase of the Annunciation scene (Luke i.26–38). In its original form this text (which includes narrative) and dialogue between Mary and the Angel Gabriel, had been set twice by Josquin (ed. in Werke: Motetten, i, 82, and ii, 89), with no particular attempt to depict the dialogue, and as a six-part motet by Lassus (Sämtliche Werke, vii, 16). Lassus’s setting, while not attempting character differentiation, separates passages of narrative from direct speech by clear cadences. Like the motets from which they were descended, most early 17th-century Latin dialogues probably had a semi-liturgical function in church services, though Lorenzo Ratti’s four dialogues published in Sacrae modulationes (1628) are known to have served a specific function, as offertory substitutes, and two dialogues published by Milanuzzi in his Hortus sacer deliciarum (1636) are entitled ‘Introductio ad Vesperas’ for the feasts of S Stefano and S Carlo respectively.
Latin dialogues were the forerunners in form, though not in function, of Carissimi’s Latin oratorios; and Carissimi’s Jephte was itself described as a dialogue by Kircher (1650). Carissimi in turn influenced the development of the sacred dialogue in the second half of the 17th century, not only in Italy but also in France, Germany and, possibly, Denmark through the work of Kaspar Förster. Among the works of his pupil M.A. Charpentier are six dialogues for two characters, represented either by groups of voices or, as in the case of the Dialogus inter Magdalenam et Jesum (ed. in HAM, ii, no.226), by soloists. The expressive, yet rather stiff recitative of this setting is reminiscent of Carissimi’s style.
In Germany, sacred dialogues were an important element in the development of the church cantata before Bach, and they served a similar liturgical function. There are numerous sacred dialogues by Schütz, Schein and Scheidt, including a setting by Scheidt of Kommt her, ihr Gesegneten (1634; ed. in Werke, ix, 20), a dialogue between Christ (bass), the Elect (soprano and bass) and the Damned (tenor and bass), in which the composer adopted a falsobordone style of declamation in his recitative writing. Bach used the term dialogus for several of his cantatas (e.g. bwv49, 57, 58, 60) and used dialogue techniques in many more. The tradition of sacred dialogue settings in German-speaking countries can be traced in the mid-17th century through works such as Hammerschmidt’s Dialogi, oder Gespräche zwischen Gott und einer gläubigen Seelen, i (1645), J.R. Ahle’s Geistlicher Dialogen, i (1648) and Bernhard’s Geistliche Harmonien, i (1665). Most of Hammerschmidt’s settings are reflective rather than dramatic in their presentation (see DTÖ, xvi, Jg.viii/1, 1901/R, and HAM, ii, no.213). Among the dialogues in Ahle’s collection (DDT, v, 1901/R) is one (no.3) between Christ (bass) and Doubting Thomas (tenor), showing, as yet, no division of the music into the clearcut sections found in later works such as Bernhard’s Easter dialogue between the Virgin Mary (soprano) and Christ (bass) (see EDM, 1st ser., lxv, 1972, no.15) or Matthias Weckmann’s Annunciation dialogue Gegrüsset seyst du, holdselige (DDT, vi, 1901/R, no.5).
Some sacred dialogues from the first half of the 17th century by English composers survive in manuscript, among them The Judgment of Solomon by John Hilton (ii) and Saul and the Witch of Endor by Robert Ramsey (see EECM, vii, 1967, no.10). The popularity of the latter work in the 17th century may reflect its association with anti-Catholic sentiment. The same text (‘In guilty night’) was later set by Purcell; his work was published by Henry Playford in Harmonia sacra, ii (1693). Following a narrative three-voice ‘chorus’ to introduce the work, Saul (alto), the Witch (soprano) and the Ghost of Samuel (bass) vividly enact the biblical scene, singing in recitative throughout. There is also a moving envoi, in which, in contrast to the opening of the work, the three singers sustain their dramatic roles.
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