Word painting
Photograph by Benjamin Rabeon Flickr.
This can be seen in painting the following example: A modern example of word painting from the Word painting late 20th century occurs in the song Friends in Low Places by Garth Brooks. For example, ascending scales would accompany lyrics about going up; slow, History painting dark music would accompany lyrics about death. Tone painting of words goes at least as far back as Gregorian chant.
The lyrics descend Word painting an octave and then return back to the upper octave. In the chorus of Up Where We Belong, the melody rises during the words Love lift us up where we belong. In Johnny Cash s Ring of Fire, there is an inverse word painting where down, down, down Word painting is sung to the notes rising, and higher is sung dropping from a higher to a lower note. On occasion, a composer may employ the opposite technique for a humorous effect. introit for Sexagesima Sunday) it signifies that Christ liberates us from sin through His death and resurrection. Composers also Word painting experimented with word painting in Italian madrigals of the 16th and 17th centuries.
One famous, well known example occurs in Handel s Messiah, where a tenor aria contains Handel s setting of the text: 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. In the Broadway musical Once Upon a Mattress, Mary Rodgers has the lead character, Princess Winnifred, belt a brash show tune about her shyness called Shy. .
Word painting (also known as tone painting or text painting) is the musical technique of writing music which reflects the literal meaning of a song. For instance, the pattern FA-MI-SOL-LA signifies the humiliation and death of Christ and His resurrection into glory.
During the chorus, Brooks sings the word low on a low note. Little musical patterns are musical words that express not only emotive ideas such as joy but theological meanings as well in the Gregorian.
Similarly, on The Who s album Tommy, the song Smash the Mirror contains the line Each repetition of rise is a half-step higher than the last, making this a clear example of word-painting. Justin Timberlake s song What goes around is another popular example of text painting. 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 rough places is sung over short, separate notes whereas the final word plain is extended over several measures in a series of long notes.
Such musical words are placed on words from the Biblical Latin text; for instance when FA-MI-SOL-LA is placed on et libera (e.g.
