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Word painting, also known as tone painting or text painting, is the musical technique of composing music that reflects the literal meaning of a song's lyrics or story elements in programmatic music.
Word painting developed especially in the late 16th century among Italian and English composers of madrigals, to such an extent that word painting devices came to be called madrigalisms. While it originated in secular music, it made its way into other vocal music of the period. While this mannerism became a prominent feature of madrigals of the late 16th century, including both Italian and English, it encountered sharp criticism from some composers. Thomas Campion, writing in the preface to his first book of in 1601, said of it: "... where the nature of everie word is precisely expresst in the Note … such childish observing of words is altogether ridiculous."Thomas Campion, First Booke of Ayres (1601), quoted in von Fischer, Grove online
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:
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:
"Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen includes another example of word painting. In the line "It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift, the baffled king composing hallelujah," the lyrics signify the song's chord progression.
In recordings of George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away from Me," Ella Fitzgerald and others intentionally sing the wrong note on the word "key" in the phrase "the way you sing off-key".
Queen use word through music recording technology in their song "Killer Queen" where a flanger effect is placed on the vocals during the word "laser-beam" in bar 17.
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