Music Encyclopedia

Patter song

 

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Patter song.

A comic song in which the humour derives from having the greatest number of words uttered in the shortest possible time. The technique was foreshadowed by such composers as Alessandro Scarlatti (the duet ‘Non ti voglio’ from Tiberio imperatore d´Oriente, 1702) but was not in common use until the second half of the 18th century, when composers often introduced the idea into buffo solos (e.g. Bartolo´s aria ‘La vendetta’ in Act 1 scene iii of Mozart´s Le nozze di Figaro). Other examples are found in the works of Logroscino, Piccinni, Paisiello, Haydn, Rossini (notably the ‘confusion’ ensemble in the Act 1 finale of Il barbiere di Siviglia), Donizetti and Sullivan (whose patter song in Ruddigore includes the lines: ‘this particularly rapid, unintelligible patter isn´t generally heard and if it is it doesn´t matter’).