Operas: Relationship Between Words And Music
2. Discuss the relationship between words and music in the operas of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Words and music have been playing an important role in the human culture, people express themselves and communicate with each other through words and music. Different styles and techniques in music and the link between words and music are found in operas. Opera was born in Italy around the year 1600, and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in music history until now.
Music and language are related in so many ways. In operas, words that are not always audible are more easily interpreted by music therefore music can illustrate the words with different tempos, textures, dynamics in order to help the audience understand the opera better. A tremolo effect used on different instruments creates …show more content…
Word painting is the musical technique of writing music that reflects the meaning of certain words in a song. For example, ascending scales would accompany lyrics about going up; slow, dark music would accompany lyrics about death. (1) Word painting occurs when the music is composed to symbolize the ideas in the words. Word painting generally appears on words that express emotions, for example, L’Orfeo (1607) by Claudio Monteverdi, a recitatives opera, it is a Greek mythology about Orpheus, a god who’s able to move people with his music and poetry. In this story, his wife, Eurydice died from snakebite. Orpheus was so distraught he went to the Underworld wanted to retrieve his wife back from Hades with his music. Monteverdi used word painting on ‘morta’ (‘death’), the musical pitch here is lower; ‘più profondi abissì (‘the deepest abysses’) in a low pitch; and ‘riveder le stelle’ (’see the stars again’) in higher pitch. Example 1: Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Recitative: "Tu se ' morta" from L 'Orfeo (1607) (Naxos: OP30439, track
Words and music have been playing an important role in the human culture, people express themselves and communicate with each other through words and music. Different styles and techniques in music and the link between words and music are found in operas. Opera was born in Italy around the year 1600, and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in music history until now.
Music and language are related in so many ways. In operas, words that are not always audible are more easily interpreted by music therefore music can illustrate the words with different tempos, textures, dynamics in order to help the audience understand the opera better. A tremolo effect used on different instruments creates …show more content…
Word painting is the musical technique of writing music that reflects the meaning of certain words in a song. For example, ascending scales would accompany lyrics about going up; slow, dark music would accompany lyrics about death. (1) Word painting occurs when the music is composed to symbolize the ideas in the words. Word painting generally appears on words that express emotions, for example, L’Orfeo (1607) by Claudio Monteverdi, a recitatives opera, it is a Greek mythology about Orpheus, a god who’s able to move people with his music and poetry. In this story, his wife, Eurydice died from snakebite. Orpheus was so distraught he went to the Underworld wanted to retrieve his wife back from Hades with his music. Monteverdi used word painting on ‘morta’ (‘death’), the musical pitch here is lower; ‘più profondi abissì (‘the deepest abysses’) in a low pitch; and ‘riveder le stelle’ (’see the stars again’) in higher pitch. Example 1: Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Recitative: "Tu se ' morta" from L 'Orfeo (1607) (Naxos: OP30439, track