Recitative

Recitative, defined as a vocal passage of narrative text that a singer delivers with natural rhythms of speech, is actually quite hard to do.

It's a fine line between singing in a narrative way for the recitation, and doing an actual cantabile on it. The previous Easter Sunday Sequence was one such example, where the singing became too much, and lost some of the recitative form. Instead of like telling the story in a singing style, it became like singing the story.

Hard to describe, but the only analogy I can think of is the walking marathon. Where if you walk too fast, and legs somehow get lifted too much, a person can be automatically disqualified. It's not a running marathon per se, but more like a walking marathon. The question then becomes, to what degree is the fast pace walking considered running?