A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Air

by John Hullah

AIR (Ital. aria; Fr. air; Germ. Arie, from the Latin aer, the lower atmosphere; or œra, a given number, an epoch, or period of time). In a general sense air, from the element whose vibration is the cause of music, has come to mean that particular kind of music which is independent of harmony. In common parlance air is rhythmical melody—any melody or kind of melody of which the feet are of the same duration, and the phrases bear some recognisable proportion one to another. In the 16th and 17th centuries air represented popularly a cheerful strain. The English word glee, now exclusively applied to a particular kind of musical composition, is derived from the A.S. [gligge], in its primitive sense simply music. Technically an air is a composition for a single voice or any monophonous instrument, acccompanied by other voices or by instruments. About the beginning of the 17th century many part-songs were written, differing from those of the preceding century in many important particulars, but chiefly in the fact of their interest being thrown into one, generally the upper, part; the other parts being subordinate. These other parts were generally so contrived as to admit of being either sung or played. The first book of Ford's 'Musike of sundrie kinds' (1607) is of this class. Subsequently to its invention, arias were for a considerable time commonly published with the accompaniment only of a 'figured bass.' The aria grande, great or more extended air, has taken a vast variety of forms. These however may be classed under two heads, the aria with 'da capo' and the aria without. The invention of the former and older form has been long attributed to Alessandro Scarlatti (1659-1725); but an aria printed in the present writer's 'Lectures on the Transition Period of Musical History,' shows that it was used as early as 1655, i.e. four years before A. Scarlatti was born, by the Venetian, Francesco Cavalli, a master in whose opera 'Giasone' (1649) the line which divides air from recitative seems to have been marked more distinctly than in any preceding music. The so-called 'aria' of Monteverde and his contemporaries (c. 1600) is hardly distinguishable from their 'musica parlante,' a very slight advance on the 'plain-song' of the middle ages. The aria without 'da capo' is but a more extended and interesting form than that of its predecessor. In the former the first section or division is also the last; a section, always in another key and generally shorter, being interposed between the first and its repetition. In the latter the first section is repeated, often several times, the sections interposed being in different keys from one another as well as from the first, which, on its last repetition, is generally more or less developed into a 'coda.' The aria grande has assumed, under the hands of the great masters of the modern school, a scope and a splendour which raise it to all but symphonic dignity. As specimens of these qualities we may cite Beethoven's 'Ah, perfido,' and Mendelssohn's 'Infelice.' The limits of the human voice forbid, however, save in rare instances, to the aria, however extended, that repetition of the same strains in different though related keys, by which the symphonic 'form' is distinguished from every other. But compositions of this class, especially those interspersed with recitative, though nominally sometimes arie belong rather to the class 'scena.'

[ J. H. ]