ARIA, a musical term, equivalent to the English "air," signi fying a melody apart from the harmony, but especially a musical composition for a single voice or instrument, with an accompani ment of other voices or instruments.
The classical aria developed from the expansion of a single vocal melody, generally on the lines of what is known as binary form (see SONATA and SONATA FORMS). Accordingly, while the germs of aria form may be traceable in advanced examples of folk-song, the aria as a definite art-form could not exist before the middle of the 17th century; because the polyphony of the 16th century left no room for the development of melody for melody's sake. When at the beginning of the 17th century the Monodists (see HARMONY and MONTEVERDE) dimly conceived the enormous possibilities latent in their new art of accompanying single voices by instruments, it was natural that for many years the mere suggestiveness and variety of their experiments should suffice, without coherent forms, to retain the attention of con temporary listeners. But, even at the outset, the most novel harmonies used with the most poignant rhetoric, were not enough in themselves to satisfy the pioneers. Accordingly, Monteverde's famous lament of the deserted Ariadne is one of many early examples that appeal to a rudimentary sense of form by making the last phrase identical with the first.
As instrumental music grew, and the classical sense of key became strong and consistent (in the hands of Alessandro Scar latti, q.v.) composers were driven to appeal to that sense of harmonically-solid melody which had asserted itself in folk-music before the history of harmonic music may be said to have begun.
By Scarlatti's time it was thoroughly established that an ex tended melody should normally modulate to the dominant after establishing its own key, and that the subsequent modulations should work through other related keys back to the tonic. Intro duce the voice by an instrumental ritornello, containing the gist of the melody and recurring, in part or in whole, at every full close ; and you have a form which can expand a melody so as to give ample scope both to the singer and to the accompanying players. The aria became the prototype of the CONCERTO (q.v.).
The addition of a middle section with a da capo results in the universal 18th century da capo form of aria. The possibilities of variety are greater than the description might suggest. The voice may enter with a different theme from that of the ritornello; the ritornello may be stated in separate portions ; the ritornello may have its own contrast between solo and tutti instruments; the vocal material may combine with it contrapuntally, etc., etc. All the arias and duets in Bach's B minor Mass and Christmas oratorio differ in these matters, and the differences well repay analysis, being often subtly suggested by the sense of the words. The middle section generally contributes no new element, except that it avoids the tonic. Gluck, who swept away the whole method as inherently anti-dramatic, points out, in the preface to Alceste, that the middle section is generally perfunctory, and that the sole object of the da capo is to enable the singer to display new ornaments. Nevertheless, the classical (or Neapolitan) aria is a composition of considerable length, in a form which cannot fail to be effective and coherent ; and there is little cause for wonder in the extent to which it dominated i8-century music.
The aria forms are profoundly influenced by the difference between the sonata style and the style of Bach and Handel. But the scale of the form is inevitably small, and in any opera an aria is hardly possible except in a situation which is a tableau rather than an action. Consequently there is no such difference between the form of the classical operatic aria of Mozart and that of the Handelian type as there is between sonata and suite music. The scale, however, has become too large for the da capo, which was in any case too rigid to survive in music designed to intensify a dramatic situation instead of to distract attention from it. The necessary change of style was so successfully achieved that, until Wagner succeeded in devising music that moved absolutely pari passu with his drama, the aria remained as the central formal principle in dramatic music ; and few things in artistic evolution are more interesting than the extent to which Mozart's predeces sor, the great dramatic reformer Gluck, profited by the essential resources of his pet aversion the aria style, when he had not only purged it of what had become the stereotyped ideas of ritornellos and vocal flourishes, but animated it by the new sense of dramatic climax to which the sonata style appealed.
In modern opera the aria is almost always out of place, and the forms in which definite melodies nowadays appear are rather those of the song in its limited sense as that of a poem in formal stanzas all set to the same music. In other words, a song in a modern opera tends to be something that would be sung even if the drama had to be performed as a play without music ; whereas a classical aria would in non-musical drama be a soliloquy.
In the later works of Wagner those passages in which we can successfully detach complete melodies from their context have, one and all, dramatically the aspect of songs and not of solilo quies. Siegmund sings the song of Spring to his sister-bride ; Mime teaches Siegfried lessons of gratitude in nursery rhymes ; and the whole story of the Meistersinger is a series of opportuni ties for song-singing. The distinctions and gradations between aria and song are of great aesthetic importance, but their history would carry us too far. The main distinction is obviously of the same importance as that between dramatic and lyric poetry.
The term aria form is applied, generally most inaccurately, to all kinds of slow cantabile instrumental music of which the general design can be traced to the operatic aria. Mozart, for example, is very fond of slow movements in large binary form without development, and this is constantly called aria-form, though the term ought certainly to be restricted to such examples as have some traits of the aria style, such as the first slow movement in the great serenade in B flat. At all events, until writers on music have agreed to give the term some more accurate use, it is as well to avoid it and its cognate version, Lied-form, altogether in speaking of instrumental music.
The air or aria in Bach's suites is a short binary movement in a flowing rhythm in not very slow common or duple time.
(D. F. T.)