declamation

Previous Lincoln scholars have treated the Lyceum Speech more as an outburst than an oration, at best the overwrought declamation of a gifted tyro.

He stretched language and banality to operatic extremes, exalting discarded bits of life as if they were cosmic, in stylized declamation that is every bit as musical as Mozart.

As this druid high priestess, caught in a forbidden love triangle with a Roman soldier and a fellow priestess, Yoncheva can be forceful in declamation — the singing that’s more like speechifying.

At Weill, it emerged with earth-rumbling intensity, as Tines wrapped his luscious voice around its punishing declamations with athletic fervor.

The English songwriter and producer Sipho Ndhlovu revels in drama and desperation, with a voice that regularly leaps between grainy declamation and a tearful falsetto.