I detta arbete har jag undersökt hur musik kan återspegla och förstärka berättelser och budskap i fyra låttexter skrivna av fyra personer. Efter analys och tolkning av låttexterna, där färgmarkeringar baserat på olika tekniker och verktyg har använts, har musik skapats till de fyra texterna. Arbetet har kombinerat metoder som word-painting och prosodi, samt hämtat inspiration från musikparametrar tagna ur Musical Emotions Explained av Patrik N. Juslin. Arbetet har även inkluderat att pröva vilken utav tre utgångspunkter för komposition som lämpar sig bäst att starta från för respektive låt: melodi, ackord eller instrumentering/sound. Slutsatsen för arbetet är att både texternas övergripande struktur och själva innehållet i berättelserna påverkar den musikaliskt kreativa processen. Låttexterna har gett olika mycket inspiration och idéer, vilket har resulterat i unika skapandeprocesser och låtar, där jag anser att två utav låtarna har uppnått ett bättre resultat än de övriga två. Arbetet har gett en bättre och djupare förståelse för hur text och musik hänger ihop, och vidare har resultatet av undersökningen visat att text går att återspegla och förstärka i musik på såväl detaljnivå i enskilda ord, som på ett övergripande plan genom att lyfta textens djupgående tema, känslor och berättelser. Att återspegla och förstärka text i musik behöver däremot inte nödvändigtvis resultera i bättre låtar eller att åhörare blir mer berörda av texterna.

”The singer is always working through a text that in some way or another inspired the vocal line and its texture,” wrote American pianist, pedagogue, and author Thomas Grubb. But exactly how does a text inspire a composer to create this synergy between words and music? During the course of my studies at the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, I gradually began to deepen my knowledge and awareness of Henry Purcell and Franz Schubert. I was at once astounded by their ability to seemlessly amalgamate the chosen texts to their music, and decided that this connection required greater research. The purpose of this study was thus to gain a deeper understanding of how Purcell and Schubert approached the relationship between text and music by studying the two pieces Music for a while and Erlkönig. I also wished to discover any similarities and differences between the composers’ approaches to word painting, in addition to discerning the role of the accompaniment to further illustrate the narrative. I began by reading literature about the two composers as well as John Dryden and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the poets whose texts were set to music. Once a greater understanding of them had been attained, I proceeded to analyze the texts and music for a greater comprehension of Purcell’s and Schubert’s methods. For early inspiration, I listened to numerous versions of the pieces by different musicians on YouTube. Both Purcell and Schubert used various tools in their compositional arsenals to accomplish their effortless combination of text and music. Amongst others, Purcell employed tonal ambiguity, unexpected harmonies, and repetition, while Schubert made use of vivid imagery, inventive treatment of chromaticism, and unmistakable rhythmic motifs. The analysis demonstrated that, while both composers painted lively and dramatic pictures in their compositions, their methods were strikingly different. The role of the accompaniment in Music for a while leaves much to the individual taste and ability of the instrumentalist(s) performing to assist the singer in setting the scene. In contrast, Schubert instructs the pianist in Erlkönig explicitly how they are to play, while additionally the piano personifies the fifth character in the story, the horse. Indeed, the role of the singer in the two pieces is equally at variance with the other. With Purcell, the singer portrays a priest, while the singer in Erlkönig personifies four different voices, each with their own melody, character, and tessitura. I hope this study will inspire others to delve deeper into the material with which they work to offer a more profound understanding to themselves and, ultimately, the listener.

The purpose of this study is to reveal the evolutionary and revolutionary aspects of using computers to word- and tone-paint in choral-electroacoustic (CEA) works. An extended account is made of word- and tone-painting's history in selected works from the Renaissance through the Twentieth Century to establish their use as a choral music tradition, followed by an examination of three recent CEA works: Scott Wyatt's A Time of Being, Scott Miller's Dies Sanctificatus, and Reginald Bain's When I Consider the Heavens. In all instances, word- and tone-painting are identified and assigned meaning utilizing Irving Godt's "Systematic Classification of Semantic Text Influences." A chapter outlining the challenges of programming CEA works is included, along with suggestions for how conductors can meet those challenges. In addition to Godt's "Classification," a brief history of the development of computers as a musical resource and information regarding Reginald Bain's work appear in the appendices.Among the results of this study are: a confirmation of word- and tone-painting as a vital, continuing tradition in choral music; a clarification of the distinctions and overlap between word-painting, tone-painting, and rhetoric; an affirmation of Irving Godt's classification system's usefulness; and an identification of the computer's capabilities that make the machine's use evolutionary and revolutionary. The computer's most revolutionary capability is its virtually limitless ability to create, shape, and manipulate sound. As the examination of the three CEA works in this study illustrates, the computer's revolutionary potential has only begun to be utilized, and the possibilities of creating compositionally mature CEA works only begun to be realized.

TITLE: THE LANGUAGE OF MUSIC: Claudio Monteverdi as an innovator in the field of dealing with text in music. SUMMARY: The main topic of this Thesis is Claudio Monteverdi's work and its importance for the development of dealing with text in music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque period. In Monteverdi's compositions we can follow the evolution of counterpoint techniques reaching from the traditional 16th century vocal polyphony to the purely monodic approach to composition that is typical of Baroque music. The text works as a creative element that affects the author's way of working, leading him from the first experiments with the musical representation of each word in the madrigal to a dramatic expression of the text in the style of opera. In his work Monteverdi uses wordpainting to an unprecedented extent. He invents new musical expression for words that contain a strong emotional charge, like subtle rhythmic figures for joyful words, or sharp dissonances for words conveying pain. He is the first composer to achieve excellence in combining flawless technical skill with the dramatic line of the composition. His work forms an imaginary bridge between music of two periods: in the first period text is perceived as a mere "servant" of music but becomes the "ruler" of it in the later one. The Thesis...