Patterns & Metaphors
Song
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Almost all music produced by the human voice takes the form of songs. They contain and vocalize lyrics, that is, meaningful sentences and phrases, which give expression to a particular subject. Vocal music that is not song includes humming, singing the scales, and meaningless sounds. Ululation or ritual wailing, and chanting of incomprehensible religious formulas also do not constitute the art of song. Songs originate in ritual; as prayers of supplication or of praise. They also appear almost instinctively as an accompaniment to physical work, making it more rhythmic. Folk songs and ballads narrate simple stories connected with real life, and the folk genre in its antiquity reaches back often to a mythic content and to the circumstances of communal life. The evolution of song which led to the forms and techniques of lieder, operatic arias, bel canto, etc has apparently ended. The twentieth century's contribution to song recently has been mainly a musical retrogression towards the irrational, pre-literate tribal world where the objective to be attained is a state of frenzy.
