Word painting

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Word painting (also known as tone painting or text painting) is the musical technique of having the music mimic the literal meaning of a song. For example, ascending scales would accompany lyrics about going up; slow, dark music would accompany lyrics about death.

Composers began experimenting with word painting in Italian madrigals of the 16th and 17th centuries. Word painting 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 rough places" is sung over short, separate notes whereas 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, Princess Winnifred, belt a brash show tune about her shyness called Shy.

[edit] 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