(Fr.).
A generic term used in France during the 17th and 18th centuries for fragments or entire compositions for solo voice and, by extension, for solo instrument. The term was borrowed from spoken tragedy (récit dramatique), where it usually referred to a long monologue that brought passions to their highest point at the close of a tragedy (Brown, 109). The terms ‘récit’ and ‘recitative’ are not synonymous. All recitatives are a type of récit, because they are sung by a solo voice, but not all récits are recitatives. The difference was well understood by Lalande: within a baritone récit in the ‘Juste judex ultionis’ of his Dies irae (1690) he gave the label ‘récitatif’ to passages that were particularly declamatory.
Antoine Furetière was perhaps too restrictive in claiming (Dictionnaire universel, 1690) that the term was reserved for music ‘sung by one solo voice and above all by a soprano’; he must have been thinking of the Versailles grand motet when he added that a ‘belle musique [occurs] when a récit is intermingled with a chorus’. As early as 1664 Lully used the term in his Miserere to differentiate solo from chorus; far from restricting récits to the soprano voice, he wrote several récits for two voices and one récit for five solo voices in the Miserere. Similarly, Pierre Robert combined first soprano, second soprano, haute-contre, tenor and baritone within 16 bars in the ‘ensembles de récits’ in the verse ‘Testimonium in Joseph’ from his Exultate Deo.
The récit in the grand motet is thus the equivalent of the air or air fragment in stage music. It may be a solo passage of a few bars’ duration or, in the case of some of the later grands motets of Lalande, a highly developed concert aria (see, for example, ‘Amplius lava me’ from his Miserere mei).
Récit had a more specialized meaning in the 17th-century ballet de cour closer to its original meaning in drama. At first declaimed and after 1605 generally sung by a solo voice, récits were usually placed at the beginning of each section of the ballet, where they served as a commentary on the action. Although rare in the operas of Lully or Rameau, they are found occasionally in the works of the generation of opera composers after Lully that included Campra. The dramatic function of the récit in lyric tragedy at times approaches its role in spoken tragedy (e.g. ‘Il me méprise’ from Campra's Hésione, 1700, which expresses the highpoint of Venus's jealous fury at Hésione).
The 18th century extended the meaning of the term to embrace solo instrumental sections in larger works; references to a récit de violon or récit de flûte are common. By mid-century the term ‘récit’ had fallen into disuse.
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L. de Jaucourt: ‘Récit dramatique’, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ed. D. Diderot and others (Paris, 1751–80)
J.-J. Rousseau: Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1768/R)
H. Prunières: Le ballet de cour en France avant Benserade et Lully (Paris, 1914/R)
H. Charnassé: ‘Quelques aspects des “ensembles de récits” chez l'abbé Pierre Robert’, RMFC, ii (1961–2), 61–70
A. Verchaly: ‘A propos du récit français au début du XVIIe siècle’, RMFC, xv (1975), 39–46
L.E. Brown: ‘The Récit in the Eighteenth-Century tragédie en musique’, MR, xlv (1984), 96–111
J.R. Anthony: ‘La structure musicale des récits de Michel-Richard Delalande’, Le grand motet français: Paris 1984, 119–27
JAMES R. ANTHONY