Word painting

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Word painting, or tone painting is the musical technique of having the music mimic the literal meaning of the words of a song. For example, ascending scales would accompany lyrics about going up; slow, dark music would accompany lyrics about death. A common example is a falling line for descendit de caelis ("He came down from heaven.") The term is more usually applied to vocal music, although a programmatic instrumental piece might in some sense exploit the technique.

It is associated in particular with music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, although any music that seeks to represent rather than just present a text will probably include it to some degree, noticeably or not. The technique was standard, even conventional, in the 16th-century chanson and madrigal, often for witty effect; it became closely associated with the term madrigalism, but sacred music was not excluded. Word-painting devices range from onomatopoeia(for example, the imitation of the sounds of battle, birdsong or chattering washerwomen by Janequin) through figurative or pictorial melodic or contrapuntal gestures. Word-painting is often a matter of musical play, to be enjoyed by one or more of the composer, performer, and listener. It is also a question of tradition, as countless settings of descendit de caelis from the Credo of the Mass reveal. ^{[#endnote_grove-2]}

It flourished well into the Baroque music period. One well known example occurs in Handel's Messiah, where a tenor aria contains Handel's setting of the text:

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. (Isaiah 40:4)

In Handel's melody, the word "valley" ends on a low note, "exalted" is a rising figure; "mountain" forms a peak in the melody, and "hill" a smaller one, while "low" is another low note. "Crooked" is sung to a rapid figure of four different notes, while "straight" is sung on a single note, and in "the rough places plain," the final word "plain" is extended over several measures in a series of long notes. This can be seen in the following example:

A modern example of word painting from the late 20th century occurs in the song "Friends in Low Places" by Garth Brooks. During the chorus, Brooks sings the word "low" on a low note. Similarly, on The Who's album Tommy, the song "Smash the Mirror" contains the line

Can you hear me? Or do I surmise

That you feel me? Can you feel my temper

Rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise, rise....

Each repetition of 'rise' is a half-step higher than the last, making this a clear example of word-painting.

On occasion, a composer may employ the opposite technique for a humorous effect. In the Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress, Mary Rodgers has the lead character, Princes Winnifred, belt a brash show tune about her shyness called Shy.

Sources

↑ Sadie, Stanley. Word Painting. Carter, Tim. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Second edition, vol. 27.
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music, Part 1, Disc 6, Robert Greenberg, San Francisco Conservatory of Music

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