Spiritual Dialogue

SPIRITUAL DIALOGUE. - A compositional technique of vocal music, in use from the Middle Ages to the 16th century and beyond.

Toward the sixteenth century the dialogue procedure is sometimes found in the lauda, the frottola and the madrigal (Willaert etc.). The dialogued style, which gives greater dramatic force to vocal music, lies at the origins of the sacred drama (v. TEATRO), of the oratorio, and even of seventeenth-century melodrama (Monteverdi etc.).

The original forms of this genre are especially the dialogued tropes of the 12th century and the dramatic and dialogued laudi from the 13th to the 14th century. Such compositions were ordinarily written for 2 voices that sang alternately ("a botta e risposta": the style of the frottola). This technique then spread particularly in the cantatas, bringing with it the liveliness of the madrigals and the cacce. Collections of spiritual dialogues are found especially in the 13th and 17th centuries with D. Schütz (Dialoghi per la Pasqua, Dresden 1631), O. Vecchi (Dialoghi..., Venice 1608), G. F. Capello (Mottetti e dialoghi, ibid. 1615), A. Hammerschmidt (Dialoghi oder Gespräche zwischen Gott u. einer gläubigen Seele, Dresden 1645), R. Ahle (Geistliche Dialoge, Erfurt 1648).

Famous examples of the genre are also found in the Passione secondo s. Matteo, by G. S. Bach (contralto aria Schön Jesus hat die Hand, and agitated questionings of the choir).

Luisa Cervelli