Esordio

What it means

Esordio is the Italian word for beginning or opening; it goes back to the rhetorical term exordium, which in ancient rhetoric designates the introductory part of a speech. In music the expression is met above all where musical form is described on the model of rhetoric — an approach that was widespread in the music theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Musical use

The transfer of rhetorical terms to music was more than a comparison: composers and theorists of that time thought of musical movements as speeches, with introduction, exposition, elaboration, climax, and conclusion. The beginning has a particular task in this view — it is to win attention and attune the listener to the subject. From this the peculiarities of many openings are explained: a striking first sound, a gesture of address, a pause after the first entry. Whoever knows this way of thinking reads beginnings differently and shapes them more convincingly.

The term comes from rhetoric, where exordium means the introduction of a speech. Baroque theorists transferred it to music.

Performance practice

Treat the beginning as a statement and not as warming up: character, tempo, and sound must stand from the first note. Give the first sound time to take effect and hold rests after an opening gesture. Avoid beginning too full so that the intensification remains possible. In an ensemble, agree entry and breath exactly, because beginnings offer no chance of correction. The use of the term varies by source; check in the individual case what is meant.

Bear in mind that the rhetorical approach is attested for the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and helps there, while its transfer to later music remains an interpretation: check whether a source supports it. For performance, what results from this is above all an attitude: a beginning is an address and needs clarity.

Check in sources of the eighteenth century whether the term is meant musically there at all.