Concitato

What it means

Concitato means “agitated, stirred up” and designates a performance of tense excitement. The term is familiar above all as stile concitato — as the name for a way of writing that Claudio Monteverdi described and justified in a preface in the early seventeenth century.

Characteristic of this way of writing are rapid note repetitions: a note is repeated many times in small values, so that an urgent, vibrating movement arises. Monteverdi understood this as a depiction of the warlike and the wrathful and set it against the calmer ways of writing that he provided for other affects.

From this root the string tremolo has emerged, which still serves today for the depiction of agitation. As a general performance direction, concitato stands close to the words for agitation and wrath, such as furioso.

In the notation

The way of writing is recognizable by long sequences of repeated notes in small values, written out instead of with tremolo signs. As a performance direction the word is written in italics above the staff and applies until a new marking.

Musical use

This way of writing belongs to the music of the Seicento and to the conception according to which music should depict particular affects. It appears in dramatic works in scenes of combat and wrath. Its effect has reached far beyond its time: repeated notes and tremolos remained fixed means for the depiction of agitation in the opera of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Monteverdi described the stile concitato in the preface to his book of madrigals of war and love of 1638 as a depiction of wrath and combat through rapid note repetitions in sixteenth-note values. He counted it among the three basic affects alongside the moderate and the soft style. Later, concitato was used as a general performance marking for agitated sections.

Performance practice

Keep the note repetitions even and rhythmically exact; their effect rests on regularity. Play them with a distinct attack but without harshness so that the surface does not seem chopped up. Take care that the volume stays constant. And keep the tempo stable — the agitation lies in the notation, not in rushing.