noun
definition
An orchestral interlude between arias, scenes, or acts in seventeenth-century opera.
definition
A tutti section in a concerto grosso, aria, etc.
Examples of ritornello in a Sentence
For example, after the customary second ritornello in the dominant a long unstable area weaves around a wide variety of keys.
Bach contrives to give this anti-climax a definite artistic value; all the more from the fact that his Crucifixus and Resurrexit, and the contrast between them, are among the most sublime and directly impressive things in all music. To the end of his Resurrexit chorus he appends an orchestral ritornello, summing up the material of the chorus in the most formal possible way, and thereby utterly destroying all sense of finality as a member of a large group, while at the same time not in the least impairing the force and contrast of the whole - that contrast having ineffaceably asserted itself at the moment when it occurred.
While the movement generally follows the Vivaldian model of ritornello form, Zani develops strategies of his own.