Arioso

As Printed on a Score

Two uses on the page. As a heading (Arioso, Arioso dolente) it names a section, often after a recitative, and signals a return to measured, sung time; as a direction inside a part it simply asks for a singing style. A heading lasts until the next section title or tempo word.

How Composers Use It

An arioso sits between speech and song: freer and more declamatory than an aria, but measured and melodic where recitative is not, and usually short, with no formal repeat. In Bach’s St John Passion the bass arioso “Betrachte, meine Seel” leads into an aria; Beethoven carried the idea to the piano in Op. 110. As a direction in instrumental music it asks a player to shape the line the way a singer would, with breath and speech-like inflection.

Example

Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat major, Op. 110, third movement, m. 12: “Arioso dolente”, glossed “(Klagender Gesang)”; the lament returns inside the fourth-movement fugue as “L’istesso tempo di Arioso”.

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