Clay painting
As a tone painting is called a replica of natural or cultural phenomena with musical means. Easily recognizable examples of musical onomatopoeia are the descending minor third as a cuckoo call or bass tremolo or drum roll as a rumble of thunder. The reproduction of "warmth" (for example through vibrato ) or "brightness" (for example through the major chord ) with sounds is also counted as tone painting.
Frequent motifs in tone painting are natural events ( echoes , thunderstorms with wind, thunder, rain), animal noises (bird calls, meowing or horse whining), impressions of country life (tools, shawms , hunting or alphorns , folk dances ), echoes of church music (bells, Mass chants) and military sounds ( fanfares , marching music , cannon thunder and other sounds of war).
history
Until the 18th century
middle Ages
Tonal melodies were used as early as the Middle Ages. In Gregorian chant this occurs only sporadically, but there are some examples where the pitches, their course or the length of the tone are intended to reinforce and underline the message of the text sung. Early examples of tone painting are, for example, ascending and descending melody lines to the words "(ascending) rising" and "falling". In late medieval music, tone painting was considered a means of imitatio naturae (imitation of nature).
Analogies and "eye music"
The Aristotelian imitation of nature ( mimesis ) has been an undisputed requirement of all arts since modern times . Musical symbols are common. The extent to which this is eye music , however, i.e. a correspondence between text and musical notation without an imitated third, is not always clear , especially during the Renaissance .
Until the end of the Baroque era, music and poetry could meet with the intention of creating analogies without being dependent on one another: Antonio Vivaldi added the corresponding sonnets to his Four Seasons (1725) . There was not yet a need for music to “express” the mood of a text (or vice versa).
18th century
Appreciation of "nature"
Clay painting took off in the 18th century. The aesthetician Charles Batteux explained in 1747 that music and dance should no longer “hit the right notes, the decent positions and gestures”, but “should be brought back to imitation”. This view was directed against the courtly code of conduct and, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau , pleaded for a general understanding of the dance gestures and musical clay figures. The iconic signs (similar to today's pictograms ) were preferred to the conventional symbols (the meaning of which is only understood if one has learned them). This led to an increased emphasis on pantomime in dance (see Jean-Georges Noverre ) and to an increase in vivid tone paintings such as thunderstorm representations in music.
Expression as overcoming imitation
After the middle of the 18th century, when imitation of nature was no longer the undisputed task of music and attempts were made to overcome baroque musical figures and the technique of imitation , the attitude towards tone painting changed. It is true that, following the example of Rousseau, people increasingly turned to “nature”, but the true nature was not that which was faithfully copied, but rather that which was individually felt (a conception that had developed out of sensitivity ). The so-called expression was given a higher priority than onomatopoeia (as Johann Georg Sulzer put it in his General Theory of Fine Arts in 1771).
For example, it was no longer a challenge for a composer to imitate a bird's voice in a deceptively similar manner, but rather to express one's own feelings while listening to the bird in a very specific situation. The theorist Johann Jakob Engel said that the musician should "rather paint sensations than objects of sensations" ( On musical painting , 1780). Beethoven noted for his 6th symphony (1808) that it was “more an expression of emotion than Mahlerey”. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy noted in a letter dated August 7, 1829 as a comment on a sketch of his overture The Hebrides : "To make it clear to you how strange I have become in the Hebrides ."
19./20. century
Program music
Program music , too , that depicts not just individual impressions but entire actions, is modeled on an extra-musical event. She often quotes music that plays a role in this event, such as a military band marching past the scene (this corresponds to the diegetic music in the film music).
Programmed music , however, not only reproduces extra -musical things like tone painting, but also their perception from a subjective perspective: In Hector Berlioz 's Symphonie fantastique (1830), the experience of the artist in love, as the main character of the narrative, is contrasted with the cited ball music, rural music or church music, with which the scenes of the event are characterized. His infatuation cannot be described directly, but it can be described as a distance to the music cited (such as ball music, which continues to sound happily despite his disappointment).
Music that describes actions is often referred to as "Mahlerey" or tone painting around 1800 .
Simple tone painting in popular music
Clay painting, which no longer served to convey the feelings of an individual (or a folk spirit or zeitgeist ), has since been avoided. The music in the 19th century was divided into a popular one, in which the older close connection with tone painting remained, as was often the case in opera or salon music , and a "serious" one, which was only used to a very limited extent in tone painting. Whether only those tone paintings are strung together in a character piece, which meanwhile had the reputation of being superficial like local color , or whether it reflects an inner experience, is not always easy to decide. Tonmalerei has a tradition in orchestral light music to this day. This can be seen in Richard Eilenberg's “Petersburg Sleigh Ride” (with imitated sleigh bells or whip cracks) or in Leroy Anderson's “Sleigh Ride” (which ends with a horse whining imitated by the trombone).
Turning away from tone painting
The first university musicologist Eduard Hanslick, with his definition of music as "sounding moving forms", denied any internal connection with tone painting ( Vom Musikalisch-Schönen , 1854). In retrospect, an attempt was made to establish that tone painting hardly occurs in the music of the Viennese Classic , which, according to today's knowledge, is not the case. Tonmalerei was often accused of being unable to create internal musical contexts, but of allowing music to break down into a series of associations if it became its main principle.
So-called absolute music does not contain tone painting. The twelve-tone technique since Arnold Schönberg also tried to avoid all remembered connections in music and thus any approach to tone painting.
Newer equivalents
Arthur Honegger described in his orchestral piece Pacific 231 (1923) the starting of a steam locomotive, but avoided exactly imitating its noises.
In the musique concrète of the 20th century, the distance between “pure” music and everyday events is again dissolved by considering (known) noises as musical events. This style can be seen as a return to "objective" tone painting and thus as a countermovement to the romantic portrayal of a subjective experience. But it can also be an invitation to hear everyday sounds anew as purely musical events (as with Luc Ferrari ). - On the other hand, the electroacoustic atmosphere is supposed to awaken memories of familiar things and thus put their listeners in a certain atmosphere .
see also Mickey Mousing
literature
- Paul Mies: About tone painting. Deutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1912 (Bonn, Phil. Diss. 1912).
- Carl Dahlhaus : Classical and Romantic Music Aesthetics. Verlag Laaber, Laaber 1988, ISBN 3-89007-142-2 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Word-melody relationships in Gregorian chant
- ^ Charles Batteux: Les Beaux-Arts réduits à un même principe Paris 1747, German by Johann Adolf Schlegel as a limitation of the fine arts to a single principle , Leipzig: Weidmann 1751, p. 13