B.Mus (Hons), L.G.S.M., Q.T.S.
Trombonist, conductor, teacher and arranger.
Site updated 5/5/2024
Adding lyrics to classical melodies
Listen to "O Sole Mio". This is a Neapolitan Song written in 1898 with lyrics by Giovanni Capurro and music composed by Eduardo di Capua and Alfredo Mazzucchi.
Elvis Presley used this music for his hit "It's Now or Never", which was his best-selling single (20 million copies) and one of the best-selling singles of all time! In 1960, "It's Now or Never" was a number-one record in the U.S. for Elvis Presley, spending five weeks at number one and the UK, where it spent eight weeks at the top in 1960 and an additional week at number one in 2005 as a re-issue, and numerous other countries, selling in excess of 25 million copies worldwide, Elvis Presley's biggest international single ever.
Incidentally, his same music was used for a series of adverts for Cornetto ice cream (with different words added). These adverts were so successful that there are probably more people who associate this music with Cornetto ice cream than with Elvis's song or the original one!
Next, I'm going to show you is a comic song from 1963 by Allan Sherman and Lou Busch, based on letters of complaint Allan received from his son Robert while Robert attended Camp Champlain, a summer camp in Westport, New York. The music (Dance of the Hours) was composed by Ponchielli and comes from his opera La Gioconda, which was first performed in 1876. Walt Disney also used this music in his animation Fantasia (see below right).
Now have a listen to the Rondo from Mozart's 4th Horn Concerto and see how Flanders and Swann have added lyrics to this famous piece.
Creating new words to classical music themes
Some of you will have seen on the wall in my room at The Hollies this poster about the consequences of children playing their instruments at inappropriate times during the lesson. The words fit (more or less) to the melody of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and so when this was first introduced to the class we sang it to this tune. It also fits (more of less) to the melody of Beethoven's Ode To Joy.
I say "more or less" because the original tunes don't quite have enough notes for the number of syllables in the sentence so slight modifications to the rhythms of the original melodies are necessary to accommodate this.
Notice in the example above from my classroom that the statement rhymes.
If you play before I say,
I will take your instrument away.
So (this fits to the music of Twinkle, Twinkle by the way so have a go at singing it!):
When you add some words can you,
Make them rhyme just like I do.
At the end of every line,
Just the last words need to rhyme.
Rhyming pairs of lines are good
Just like Shakespeare if you could!
If you have more notes in the melody than syllables you need to continue singing a syllable over more than one note. In the example below see how the word "say" uses both the notes E and D (that are slurred together).
If you have more syllables in your words than the number of notes in the song you will need to adjust the rhythm by changing a long note into a number of shorter ones. See how "instrument away" is 5 syllables long but with only 3 notes in the original the rhythm has to be changed to add 2 more notes. Notice that the added notes stay on the same pitch. This helps to keep it sounding like the original melody.
This top line is the original melody.
Observe the small changes to make the syllables fit.
