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Accompanied recitations of poetry or dramatic texts, most often for spoken voice and piano, became very popular in the nineteenth century as an after-dinner entertainment. Jacqueline Waeber has explored how, during the 19th century and particularly in Germany, poetic recitation became increasingly 'musicalized' by the addition of musical accompaniments for the Lied and the musical melodrama, as part of a search for new declamatory styles.Jacqueline Waeber. Speaking German Musically: Poetic Recitation in Central Europe, 1760-1820 (2025)
The genre was often looked down on as something for authors and composers of lesser stature, though there are examples by Robert Schumann ( Ballads for Declamation, 1850s)' 3 Ballads for Declamation, Opp.106, 122 (Schumann, Robert)', score at IMSLP and Richard Strauss ( Enoch Arden (1897). Jeremy Siepmann, The Piano (1998), p. 28 The English composer Stanley Hawley made many such settings, some of which were performed at the first season (1895) of the BBC Proms in London. BBC Proms performance archive His friend Lena Ashwell was often the performer.Margaret Leask. Lena Ashwell: Actress, Patriot, Pioneer (2012)
In popular music, especially country music, a recitation song or "recitation" as it is more commonly called, is a spoken narrative of a song, generally with a sentimental (or at times, religious) theme. Such numbers were quite popular from the 1930s into the 1960s, although there were only few in number. While they almost disappeared in the 1970s, that decade saw several of the biggest recitation songs of all time: Red Sovine's sentimental ode to an ill child "Teddy Bear" and C. W. McCall's truck-driving saga "Convoy", both songs hitting number one on the country charts and even crossing over into the pop market. McCall, who did not sing, became a popular country star in the 1970s with a string of recitations, most of them comic, although his last hit, 1977's "Roses for Mama" was a sentimental tale in the best Sovine tradition. A number of Elvis Presley's and Johnny Cash's songs, as well as a number of songs from other genres of popular music and a number of gospel songs, also featured recitations.
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