Arioso

What it means

Arioso denotes a vocal style standing between the speaking recitative and the fully formed aria. The melody is more songful and more regular than in the recitative but not built up into a fixed form with repetitions as in the aria; the accompaniment is usually worked through rather than merely chordally supported. The expression can designate a whole section or stand as an instruction over a passage that is to be performed especially songfully.

In the notation

An arioso is recognisable by the joining of a written-out, flowing melody with a running accompaniment figure, often over a striding bass. If the word stands as an instruction, it holds for the following section until a new marking. In scores of the eighteenth century, recitative, arioso and aria at times alternate within a few bars.

Musical use

The arioso serves where the text needs more weight than a recitative can give it, without a full aria construction being appropriate — for instance at a reflection, an exclamation or a transition. In Baroque passions and cantatas it often stands immediately before an aria and prepares it. In the opera of the nineteenth century too, in which the strict separation of recitative and aria recedes, the arioso tone persists as a means. The boundary is fluid, and the designations were never strictly handled.

Performance practice

Shape an arioso from the text, but with a continuous vocal line: unlike in the recitative, the pace does not follow speech freely but stays bound. Keep the sound even and work with sparing ornamentation. In the continuo watch for a calm, carrying pace and take care not to press the singer. Clarify in rehearsal where the transition to recitative or aria lies, and shape it deliberately, so that the changes become audible as parts of the form.

Ariosos are often short and therefore leave no time for gradually settling in: character and pace must stand from the first note. Check whether the section leads into a following movement or stands on its own, for on that depends the shaping of the close. In the continuo a somewhat fuller realisation than in the recitative is advisable, so that the vocal line is carried. Ornaments stay sparing; here the line itself carries, and excessive decoration takes its calm from it.