Melodeclamation was a chiefly 19th century practice of reciting poetry while accompanied by concert music. It is also described as "a type of rhythmic vocal writing that bears a resemblance to Sprechstimme."

It combines the principles of melodrama

Melodrama

The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

 with a kind of extended technique

Extended technique

Extended techniques are performance techniques used in music to describe unconventional, unorthodox, or non-traditional techniques of singing, or of playing musical instruments to obtain unusual sounds or instrumental timbres....

.

Examples can be found in the music of Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....

, Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...

, Anton Arensky

Anton Arensky

Anton Stepanovich Arensky -Biography:Arensky was born in Novgorod, Russia. He was musically precocious and had composed a number of songs and piano pieces by the age of nine...

, Vladimir Rebikov

Vladimir Rebikov

Vladimir Ivanovich Rebikov was a late romantic 20th century Russian composer and pianist.-Biography:Rebikov began studying the piano with his mother. His sisters also were pianists. He graduated from the Moscow University faculty of philology. He studied at the Moscow Conservatory with N....

, Isaak Dunayevsky

Isaak Dunayevsky

Isaak Osipovich Dunayevsky was the biggest Soviet film composer and conductor of the 1930s and 1940s, who achieved huge success in music for operetta and film comedies, frequently working with the film director Grigori Aleksandrov...

, Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Shostakovich

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....

, etc.

Particular poems might be associated with particular composers; the works of Frederic Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

 were often accompanied by the poem cycle of Kornel Ujejski

Kornel Ujejski

Kornel Ujejski , also known as Cornelius Ujejski, was a Polish poet, patriot and political writer.He was named "last of the greatest Polish poets of Romanticism"....

that he called Tłumaczenia Szopena (Translations of Chopin). The cycle was widely circulated in several European languages, and some became particularly associated with specific preludes.