Concert Aria

A solo scene belonging to no opera, recitative running into an aria

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A concert aria is an independent aria for solo voice and orchestra, attached to no opera and able to be sung on its own in a concert.

Origins and era

In the seventeenth century the Italian solo cantata alternated recitative and aria for aristocratic salons. In the eighteenth century Mozart wrote concert arias for singers visiting Vienna, ranging from a single da capo aria to a long scene with recitative. In the nineteenth century the French scène and the German concert aria continued the practice. After 1900 the genre gave way to operatic excerpts on concert programmes.

What you hear

A single piece with no surrounding plot, opening with a recitative that sets the situation before the aria begins. The shape is usually da capo, an A section stated, a B section in a new key, then A again with ornamentation. The orchestra is smaller than an opera's, typically strings with a few winds, the voice always on top and the bass a mere harmonic support. Notice that the orchestra offers only chords under the recitative and opens out once the aria starts, and that the return is where the singer displays. In orchestral versions, listen for the voice answering an oboe. The ornaments of the return are not random, since singers breathe across long notes and add a run before the cadence, making the same melody carry different weight the second time. Mozart's arias for different singers differ widely in range and coloratura, and a piece often had to be transposed when it changed hands.

Key figures

Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel wrote quantities of solo cantatas, Mozart tailored concert arias to individual singers, and Viardot's concert scenes carried the genre into the nineteenth century.

Lineage

It comes from the Italian solo cantata and the operatic aria and leads to the nineteenth-century concert scene and the twentieth-century song cycle with orchestra.

Common misunderstandings

A concert aria is not an opera excerpt, since it never belonged to a drama. Nor is it an art song, because the scoring is an orchestra or small ensemble rather than a piano, and both length and drama are larger.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Concert Aria, 用于核对体裁边界
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 2, 用于核对十八世纪独唱场景的演出语境

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.