Dialogo
A composition for two or more voices led in alternation and combination like a conversation.
What it means
The term dialogo (Italian for dialogue) describes a musical form in which two or more voices or groups of voices are handled so that their interplay resembles a spoken conversation. One voice presents a musical question, motif, or statement, and a second voice answers, takes up the idea, develops it, or contradicts it in sound. Out of this alternation of proposal and response grows a conversation in tones, carried at times in alternating sections and at other times in combined, simultaneous sound.
The term is closely associated with vocal music of the Renaissance and early Baroque, where it was often used for polychoral or dialogue-structured sacred works featuring two spatially separated ensembles that answered one another. The underlying idea, however, also applies to instrumental music and later periods whenever a work is clearly built from two opposing, mutually responsive voices or groups.
Musical use
In practice, the dialogo principle appears in sacred concertos where a solo voice and choir, two choirs, or a solo voice and instrumental group alternate. It also appears in secular genres such as the madrigal and, later, opera and cantata, where it serves to set a text dialogically, for instance when two characters actually speak to one another within the work. Typical is the alternation between short, answering sections and passages in which the participating voices join into a shared sound.
Dialogo differs from mere imitation, where one voice simply echoes another, in that the voices act as independent partners who respond to one another in content and sound rather than repeating the same melody after a delay.