Word-tone relationship
The term word-tone relationship in vocal music describes the extent to which the text content has an influence on the musical design of a composition.
Historical overview
Since the early Middle Ages there have been isolated text passages in Gregorian chant , the meaning of which is reflected in the melodies.
In the polyphonic vocal music of the Renaissance , the text played a subordinate role. Claudio Monteverdi is considered to be the composer who did the most to bring the text back to the fore. This happened not least through the creation of a new musical genre, the opera . In his fifth book of madrigals, Monteverdi turned away from the existing form of music, the so-called prima pratica , and thus founded the seconda pratica . He wrote the sentence: " L'orazione sia padrona e non servo della musica ", translated: " The text should be the ruler and not the servant of music. "
In the 18th century, among others, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Antonio Salieri campaigned to give music more independence again. Meanwhile, Christoph Willibald Gluck carried out his opera reform. Within the Italian opera buffa , the text content had steadily lost its importance over decades, and the arias performed ultimately only served to enable the singers to demonstrate their talent. Gluck therefore tried to combine the opera buffa with the opera seria and thus do justice to the original ideal of the opera again.