Word painting is a musical composition technique in which the notes’ tones, tempos, and dynamics reflect the song’s subject matter. Tone painting or text painting are other terms for this type of music styling. Word painting can be traced back to 10th-century church music, which included chants in rising tones to describe Jesus’ resurrection. Experimentation with word painting in music continued into the 1700s, with some of George Frideric Handel’s works serving as good examples. The use of low notes to describe grim topics and higher notes to convey optimistic ones is one of the most common characteristics of tone painting.
Writing notes that correspond to the feelings that a certain word evokes in listeners is a common part of the process of composing music with text painting. Lyrics about death and darkness are frequently set to low-toned, even dissonant notes. Depending on the meanings and connotations of the words, certain phrases can be written with long and even notes or with short rapid notes.
When the baroque era gave way to the classical in the late 1700s, many composers dismissed word painting as a musical cliche. A minor word painting renaissance occurred in some popular music genres in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. When combining their lyrics with melodies and harmonies, some artists began experimenting with creative ways of incorporating text painting. Many of their efforts resulted in songs that were remembered by listeners because of these sound patterns.
Mickey mousing is a visual application of tone painting to film that was popular in early animated films from the Walt Disney Company during the 1920s and 1930s. This musical technique combines the rhythms and notes of an accompanying instrumental score with gestures or movements on the screen. Mickey mousing was originally intended for comic effect and emphasis, but due to overuse, it fell out of favor with the majority of audiences and critics. After the adoption of spoken dialogue in both animated and live action films, the use of purely instrumental scores in Mickey Mouse films began to decline.
Additional examples of word painting can be found in musica reservata, a type of a cappella singing that rose to prominence in the 16th century. Extra tonal embellishments were added to this vocal music to emphasize specific words and phrases. Composing music for the human voice solely with tone painting was once thought to be just as difficult as doing so for musical instruments.