A lament or lamentation is a passionate expression of grief , often in music , poetry , or song form. The grief is most often born of regret , or mourning . Laments can also be expressed in a verbal manner in which participants lament about something that they regret or someone that they have lost, and they are usually accompanied by wailing, moaning and/or crying . Laments constitute some of the oldest forms of writing, and examples exist across human cultures.
34-463: Oddrúnargrátr ( Oddrún's lament ) or Oddrúnarkviða ( Oddrún's poem ) is an Eddic poem , found in the Codex Regius manuscript where it follows Guðrúnarkviða III and precedes Atlakviða . The main content of the poem is the lament of Oddrún, sister of Atli , for Gunnarr , her lost and forbidden love. The poem is well preserved and thought to be a relatively late composition, perhaps from
68-501: A scena . There might also be opportunities for participation by orchestra or chorus. An example is Casta diva from the opera Norma of Vincenzo Bellini . After around 1850, aria forms in Italian opera began to show more variety – many of the operas of Giuseppe Verdi offer extended narrative arias for leading roles that enable, in their scope, intensification of drama and characterisation. Examples include Rigoletto 's condemnation of
102-570: A Spanish trading vessel. Poet and writer Angus Peter Campbell , quoting poet Sorley MacLean , has called it "one of the great artistic glories of all Europe". Author Bridget MacKenzie, in Piping Traditions of Argyll , suggests that it refers to the slaughter of the MacLeod's fighting Cromwell's forces at the Battle of Worcester. It may have been inspired by both. Other Scottish laments from outside of
136-467: A fixture in romantic opera, and the Marschallin's monologue in act 1 of Der Rosenkavalier can be understood as a penetrating psychological lament. In modernity, discourses about melancholia and trauma take the functional place ritual laments hold in premodern societies. This entails a shift from a focus on community and convention to individuality and authenticity. The purely instrumental lament
170-407: A heroine), aria buffa (aria of a comic type, typically given to a bass or bass-baritone ), and so on. M. F. Robinson describes the standard aria in opera seria in the period 1720 to 1760 as follows: The first section normally began with an orchestral ritornello after which the singer entered and sang the words of the first stanza in their entirety. By the end of this first vocal paragraph
204-403: A major role in grand opera , and in Italian opera through the 19th century. A favoured form of aria in the first half of the 19th century in Italian opera was the cabaletta , in which a songlike cantabile section is followed by a more animated section, the cabaletta proper, repeated in whole or in part. Typically such arias would be preceded by recitative , the whole sequence being termed
238-539: A musico-dramatic high point. In the context of opera buffa , the Countess's lament, " Dove sono ", comes as a surprise to the audience of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 's The Marriage of Figaro , and in Gioachino Rossini 's Barber of Seville , Rosina's plaintive words at her apparent abandonment are followed, not by the expected lament aria, but by a vivid orchestral interlude of storm music. The heroine's lament remained
272-649: Is a common form in piobaireachd music for the Scottish bagpipes . "MacCrimmon's Lament" dates to the Jacobite uprising of 1745. The tune is held to have been written by Donald Ban MacCrimmon, piper to the MacLeods of Dunvegan, who supported the Hanoverians. It is said that Donald Ban, who was killed at Moy in 1746, had an intimation that he would not return. A well-known Gaelic lullaby is " Griogal Cridhe " ("Beloved Gregor"). It
306-444: Is a self-contained piece for one voice, with or without instrumental or orchestral accompaniment , normally part of a larger work. The typical context for arias is opera , but vocal arias also feature in oratorios and cantatas , or they can be stand-alone concert arias . The term was originally used to refer to any expressive melody , usually, but not always, performed by a singer. The Italian term aria , which derives from
340-728: The Life of Christ in art , showing Jesus' dead body being mourned after the Crucifixion . Jesus himself lamented over the prospective fall of Jerusalem as he and his disciples entered the city ahead of his passion . A lament in the Book of Lamentations or in the Psalms , in particular in the Lament/Complaint Psalms of the Tanakh , may be looked at as "a cry of need in a context of crisis when Israel lacks
374-626: The Hindu Vedas , and in ancient Near Eastern religious texts. They are included in the Mesopotamian City Laments such as the Lament for Ur and the Jewish Tanakh , or Christian Old Testament . In many oral traditions, both early and modern, the lament has been a genre usually performed by women: Batya Weinbaum made a case for the spontaneous lament of women chanters in the creation of
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#1733092790271408-856: The piobaireachd tradition include "Lowlands Away" , "MacPherson's Rant", and "Hector the Hero". There is a short, free musical form appearing in the Baroque and then again in the Romantic periods, called lament. It is typically a set of harmonic variations in homophonic texture, wherein the bass ( Lament bass ) descends through a tetrachord, usually one suggesting a minor mode . Aria In music, an aria ( Italian: [ˈaːrja] ; pl. : arie , Italian: [ˈaːrje] ; arias in common usage; diminutive form: arietta , Italian: [aˈrjetta] ; pl. : ariette ; in English simply air )
442-410: The tonic for the final vocal cadence after which the orchestra rounded the section off with a final ritornello. The nature and allocation of the arias to the different roles in opera seria was highly formalized. According to the playwright and librettist Carlo Goldoni , in his autobiography, The three principal personages of the drama ought to sing five arias each; two in the first act, two in
476-632: The 11th century. The metre is fornyrðislag . Lament Many of the oldest and most lasting poems in human history have been laments. The Lament for Sumer and Ur dates back at least 4000 years to ancient Sumer , the world's first urban civilization. Laments are present in both the Iliad and the Odyssey , and laments continued to be sung in elegiacs accompanied by the aulos in classical and Hellenistic Greece. Elements of laments appear in Beowulf , in
510-450: The French term, airs ) are frequently in extended binary form (ABB') or sometimes in rondeau form (ABACA), (a shape which is analogous to the instrumental rondo ). In the work of Italian composers of the late 17th and early 18th century, the da capo aria came to be include the ritornello (literally, 'little return'), a recurring instrumental episode which featured certain phrases of
544-536: The Greek ἀήρ and Latin aer (air), first appeared in relation to music in the 14th century when it simply signified a manner or style of singing or playing. By the end of the 16th century, the term 'aria' refers to an instrumental form (cf. Santino Garsi da Parma lute works, ('Aria del Gran Duca'). By the early 16th century it was in common use as meaning a simple setting of strophic poetry; melodic madrigals , free of complex polyphony , were known as madrigale arioso . In
578-401: The aria proper and provided, in early operas, the opportunity for dancing or entries of characters. Da capo aria with ritornelli became a typifying feature of European opera throughout the 18th century and is thought by some writers to be a direct antecedent of sonata form . The ritornelli became essential to the structure of the aria – "while the words determine the character of a melody
612-588: The context of staged works and concert works, arias evolved from simple melodies into structured forms. In such works, the sung, melodic, and structured aria differed from the speech-like ( parlando ) recitative – the latter tending to carry the story-line, the former used to convey emotional content and serve as an opportunity for singers to display their vocal talent. By the late 17th century operatic arias came to be written in one of two forms. Binary form arias were in two sections (A–B); arias in ternary form (A–B–A) were known as da capo arias (literally 'from
646-538: The court, "Cortigiani, vil razza dannata!" (1851). Later in the century, the post-1850 operas of Wagner were through-composed , with fewer elements being readily identifiable as self-contained arias; whilst the Italian genre of verismo opera also sought to integrate arioso elements although still allowing some 'show-pieces'. Concert arias , which are not part of any larger work, (or were sometimes written to replace or insert arias in their own operas or operas of other composers) were written by composers to provide
680-572: The emotional pathos of their operatic contexts. An early example is Ariadne's "Lasciatemi morire", which is the only survivor of Claudio Monteverdi 's lost Arianna . Francesco Cavalli 's operas extended the lamento formula, in numerous exemplars, of which Ciro's "Negatemi respiri" from Ciro is notable. Other examples include Dido's Lament ("When I am laid in earth") ( Henry Purcell , Dido and Aeneas ), " Lascia ch'io pianga " ( George Frideric Handel , Rinaldo ), "Caro mio ben" ( Tomaso or Giuseppe Giordani ). The lament continued to represent
714-431: The head', i.e. with the opening section repeated, often in a highly decorated manner). In the da capo aria the 'B' episode would typically be in a different key – the dominant or relative major key. Other variants of these forms are found in the French operas of the late 17th century such as those of Jean-Baptiste Lully which dominated the period of the French baroque. Vocal solos in his operas (known of course as
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#1733092790271748-783: The lack thereof, a vow corresponding to an expected divine response, and lastly, a song of thanksgiving. Examples of a general format of this, both in the individual and communal laments, can be seen in Psalm 3 and Psalm 44 respectively. The Lament of Edward II , if it is actually written by Edward II of England , is the sole surviving composition of his. A heroine's lament is a conventional fixture of baroque opera seria , accompanied usually by strings alone, in descending tetrachords . Because of their plangent cantabile melodic lines, evocatively free, non- strophic construction and adagio pace, operatic laments have remained vividly memorable soprano or mezzo-soprano arias even when separated from
782-588: The later works of Mozart ; the arias now become far more expressive of the individual emotions of the characters and are both more firmly anchored in, and advance, the storyline. Richard Wagner was to praise Gluck's innovations in his 1850 essay " Opera and Drama ": " The musical composer revolted against the wilfulness of the singer"; rather than "unfold[ing] the purely sensuous contents of the Aria to their highest, rankest, pitch", Gluck sought "to put shackles on Caprice's execution of that Aria, by himself endeavouring to give
816-639: The minuets and rondeaus. He must, above all things, avoid giving impassioned arias, bravura arias, or rondeaus, to inferior characters. By contrast, arias in opera buffa (comic opera) were often specific in character to the nature of the character being portrayed (for example the cheeky servant-girl or the irascible elderly suitor or guardian). By later in the century it was clear that these formats were becoming fossilized. Christoph Willibald Gluck thought that both opera buffa and opera seria had strayed too far from what opera should really be, and seemed unnatural. The jokes of opera buffa were threadbare and
850-433: The music, if it were in a major key as it usually was, had modulated to the dominant . The orchestra then played a second ritornello usually shorter than the first. The singer re-entered and sang the same words through a second time. The music of this second paragraph was often slightly more elaborate than that of the first. There were more repeats of words and perhaps more florid vocalisations. The key worked its way back to
884-445: The normal to be exploited with telling effect." In the early years of the century, arias in the Italian style began to take over in French opera, giving rise eventually to the French genre of ariette , normally in a relatively simple ternary form. Types of operatic aria became known by a variety of terms according to their character – e.g. aria parlante ('speaking-style', narrative in nature), aria di bravura (typically given to
918-562: The opportunity for vocal display for concert singers; examples are Ah! perfido , Op. 65, by Beethoven , and a number of concert arias by Mozart , including Conservati fedele . The term 'aria' was frequently used in the 17th and 18th centuries for instrumental music modelled on vocal music. For example, J. S. Bach 's so-called " Goldberg Variations " were titled at their 1741 publication "Clavier Ubung bestehend in einer ARIA mit verschiedenen Verænderungen" ("Keyboard exercise, consisting of one ARIA with diverse variations.") The word
952-571: The oral tradition that resulted in the Iliad The material of lament, the "sound of trauma" is as much an element in the Book of Job as in the genre of pastoral elegy , such as Shelley 's "Adonais" or Matthew Arnold 's "Thyrsis". The Book of Lamentations or Lamentations of Jeremiah figures in the Old Testament. The Lamentation of Christ (under many closely variant terms) is a common subject from
986-580: The repetition of the same characters made them seem no more than stereotypes. In opera seria the singing was devoted to superficial effects and the content was uninteresting and stale. As in opera buffa , the singers were often masters of the stage and the music, decorating the vocal lines so floridly that audiences could no longer recognise the original melody. Gluck wanted to return opera to its origins, focusing on human drama and passions and making words and music of equal importance. The effects of these Gluckist reforms were seen not only in his own operas but in
1020-411: The resources to fend for itself". Another way of looking at it is all the more basic: laments simply being "appeals for divine help in distress". These laments, too, often have a set format: an address to God, description of the suffering/anguish from which one seeks relief, a petition for help and deliverance, a curse towards one's enemies, an expression of the belief of ones innocence or a confession of
1054-419: The ritornello instruments often decided in what terms it shall be presented." By the early 18th century, composers such as Alessandro Scarlatti had established the aria form, and especially its da capo version with ritornelli, as the key element of opera seria . "It offered balance and continuity, and yet gave scope for contrast. [...] The very regularity of its conventional features enabled deviations from
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1088-410: The second, and one in the third. The second actress and the second soprano can only have three, and the inferior characters must be satisfied with a single aria each, or two at the most. The author of the words must [...] take care that two pathetic [i.e. melancholy] arias do not succeed one another. He must distribute with the same precaution the bravura arias, the arias of action, the inferior arias, and
1122-518: The tune [...] an expression answering to the underlying Word-text". This attitude was to underlie Wagner's would-be deconstruction of aria in his concept of Gesamtkunstwerk . Despite the ideals of Gluck, and the trend to organise libretti so that arias had a more organic part in the drama rather than merely interrupting its flow, in the operas of the early 19th century, (for example those of Gioachino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti ), bravura arias remained focal attractions, and they continued to play
1156-545: Was composed in 1570 after the execution of Gregor MacGregor by the Campbells. The grief-stricken widow, Marion Campbell, describes what happened as she sings to her child. " Cumhadh na Cloinne " ("Lament for the Children") is a pìobaireachd composed by Padruig Mór MacCrimmon in the early 1650s. It is generally held to be based on the loss of seven of MacCrimmon's eight sons within a year to smallpox , possibly brought to Skye by
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