Accompagnato
Accompanied recitative, known as accompagnato or stromentato, employs the orchestra as an accompanying body. As a result, it is less improvisational and declamatory than recitativo secco, and more song-like. This form is often employed where the orchestra can underscore a particularly dramatic text, as in Thus saith the Lord from Händel's Messiah; Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were also fond of it. A more inward intensification calls for an arioso; the opening of Comfort ye from the same work is a famous example, while the ending of it ("The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness") is accompagnato.
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