I wrote a canon, to the changes of ‘All The Things You Are’ – I thought it might be a fun challenge, because its chord progression shifts to so many different tonal centres.
This is a strict imitative canon, at one bar’s remove, which means whatever I write for one bar has to fit over the chord of the next bar as well. This is not too hard for, say, Am7 – D7 – Gmaj7, but it’s a bit trickier for Dbmaj7 – G7 – Cmaj7.
Oh, and every bar has to harmonise prettily with the bar before it. I could have done much jazzier harmonies, but I set myself the challenge of lots of pretty thirds and sixths.
So far, I’ve looked at two kinds of musical theatre quodlibet. Just to reiterate, these are instances when melodies previously heard are reprised, but simultaneously. Quodlibets are a specific instance of counterpoint, and I’ve covered The Berlin Quodlibet, which has two or more different melodies written to the same chord progression, and The West Side Quodlibet, in which melodies that were written to different chord progressions are reprised, but some are altered enough to fit the chords of just one of them.
If you’re kind of mathsy, you may have already spotted the missing combination yourself: is there a quodlibet featuring melodies written to different chord progressions that are later combined without altering any notes?
Yes, Xanadu, which is on nobody’s list of great theatre scores, features the only example I know of, by John Farrar, who is on nobody’s list of great theatre songwriters. But he was – yay! – born in Australia.
Dancin‘ combines two characters’ vision of what a disused auditorium could become once renovated: Danny McGuire sees a ballroom with a ’40s style big band in tuxedos, while Sonny Malone imagines an ’80s nightclub with a synth/rock band in electric orange. Their two visions combine, visually and musically.
Normally, given this kind of writing assignment, a pop/rock writer like John Farrar would do a good job of the ’80s band, and utterly botch the ’40s swing. But instead I think he hits it out of the park. I’m using the original film version (because it’s better: the stage version truncates matters badly), and here’s the relevant part of Farrar’s Andrews Sisters-esque chord progression and melody. This is just the top sister, if you will – naturally, the underlying harmony sisters would have to change their tune if the chord progression changed:
All those ninths and thirteenths are exactly the right sort of harmonic flavour for the period being evoked (unlike the anachronistic grinding choreography in the clip I linked to: what a dirty-old-man’s vision that Danny McGuire is having). Here’s what the ’80s rock band sings, to a very pop/rock chord progression – no ninths or thirteenths here:
But look at this! Without needing to change a single note, the Andrews Sisters tune can be sung with the rock/pop progression:
Actually, there’s one tiny pick-up note that does need to change, by a mere semitone, but even so, this is very neat. I can’t really defend Farrar’s lyrics in the pop/rock verses – they just sound like threats of sexual assault – but musically, I’d rather listen to Dancin‘ than to many other quodlibets by bigger music theatre names. And please, tell me if there are other quodlibets like it that I’ve missed, because I don’t know of any.
Which leads me to …
Ideas for the Future
A word of warning for all of these ideas: since quodlibets link different songs together, they can really kick you in the teeth during rewrites. Sure, you’re cool with changing the big Act One finale, but dammit, now you have to go back and rewrite three other songs to be heard in counterpoint during the bloody thing. No wonder Claude-Michel Schönberg stuck to one of music’s most easygoing chord progressions.
1. The Double Dancin’ Quodlibet
Just like Dancin‘, except there are three tunes, written to three different chord progressions, and they still fit together later on. Hell, if I were attempting this, it might be fun to combine the three tunes over a fourth, as-yet-unheard chord progression.
As for why you’d do this, let’s see: three people who turn out to be related, maybe? Or one character, played by three different actors, at three different but related points in her life?
2. The Diminished/Augmented Quodlibet
Augmentation and diminution involve lengthening or shortening the rhythmic values of a melody, usually by a factor of two. They’re bread and butter techniques to a Baroque-era composer, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard them in musical theatre, and I think they could be fun in a quodlibet.
You’d need a dramatic justification, obviously, and you’d have to keep whatever rhythm you were playing recognisable, or the trick wouldn’t work. But pretend one character was very wound up at some earlier point, and sang a very wound-up melody. Then they had a night of passion, maybe, or took pills, or went on a spa retreat, so now we hear their melody again, over the top of their lover’s, or dealer’s, or massage therapist’s, but at half speed. Bonus points if the melody reveals hidden melodic depths at half speed, a la the delightful contrafactumSeventy-Six Trombones/Goodnight My Someone.
Change the pills, and maybe we hear the tune at double speed.
3. The One-Person Quodlibet
Here’s a snippet of a compound melody for cello, by a fellow named J. S. Bach:
Bach doesn’t present this as two separate melodies first, but he could have, since it’s a combination of:
Thus, a singer could sing one melody first, followed by the other, followed by a One-Person Quodlibet. For an added thrill, the two sets of lyrics could join up and make sense in a different way once combined. Even Bach never did that.
Reasons for this? J. Pierrepont Finch sings to himself in the mirror in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and his mirror self could sing back. Sid Sorokin sings a duet with his dictaphone in The Pajama Game. Guido tries, and nearly manages, to sing a duet with himself in Nine. A precedent is clearly established for men who are pretty full of themselves. Maybe it’s time to let a female character have a crack at it?
4. The Quodlibet That Doesn’t Happen
This one actually exists, but sort of by accident, in Hamilton. Dear Theodosia begins with Aaron Burr’s song to his daughter, followed by Hamilton’s different melody over the same chords to his son. Before the show moved to Broadway, those two melodies used to combine in a quodlibet, which – pace, Hamilton fans – you could hear coming a mile away, because Dear Theodosia is very pretty, but its chord progression is kinda hokey.
Now, forever enshrined on the Original Cast Recording, is a Quodlibet That Doesn’t Happen, and whoever had that idea, they were wise. We know Hamilton and Burr are joined by destiny, thanks to the first song in the show, and subsequent songs, and staging, and motifs, and word choices etc., so there’s no need for the two melodies to over-egg the pudding at this point. Instead, we get another musical bond between the two men, but implied rather than stated outright.
I admit it would take modesty and restraint to make one of these quodlibets on purpose, since one of the reasons you write a quodlibet in the first place is to show off a bit. And I’ll also admit you could probably only make one of these work in the audience’s mind if the two chord progressions were the same. Who knows, maybe it would only work if the progression’s kinda hokey?
[EDIT: One week after I posted this, another Quodlibet That Doesn’t Happen popped up and I’ve added it in the comments. These things may be all around us, people!]
5. The Ashman Quodlibet
There are two famous quodlibet opening numbers: Tradition, from Fiddler on the Roof, and All That Jazz, from Chicago. They’re both Berlin Quodlibets; Jerry Bock in particular has a ball inventing more and more tunes that can be played over Fiddler‘s fiddler’s leitmotif. They’re also sung by characters who are all in agreement, more or less, whether they’re detailing the traditions of life in Anatevka, or all the hi-jinks in store for Chicago’s town-painters.
But there’s a particular kind of opening number described by Jack Viertel in his Secret Life of the American Musical (a good read, by the way, if you’re interested in structure, and to be avoided if you think ‘secret’ means gossip), and he associates it with lyricist and book writer Howard Ashman. It’s the kind of opening number Ashman structured for Beauty and the Beast: the audience is introduced to the world of the musical, and in the middle of that world there is a main character who has a contrasting ‘I Want’ moment, as opposed to a separate ‘I Want’ song later.
Ashman’s not the only writer who likes this kind of opening: Marc Shaiman’s clearly a fan, having co-written structurally near-identical songs for the openings of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut and Hairspray. There’s also a proto-version at the start of Li’l Abner: A Typical Day introduces the audience to the citizens of Dogpatch, and briefly to Daisy Mae, who wants Abner. But Ashman seems a worthy man to name a quodlibet after, not least because what I’m proposing nearly – nearly – happens at the start of Little Shop of Horrors.
Little Shop has a Berlin Quodlibet moment towards the end of Skid Row, when Seymour starts up a new tune (“Someone show me a way to get outta here”), which turns out to be a countermelody to the song’s main refrain (“Downtown …” etc). By this point Seymour has already had his introduction as a main character (“Poor, all my life I’ve always been poor …”) and so has Audrey (“Downtown, where the guys are drips …”). As for the tunes of these introductory moments, Audrey’s is the same as everyone else’s, and Seymour’s is not used again.
So, I’m not advocating any rewrites to Skid Row, but what if instead, to use Little Shop as a hypothetical model, we got this?
A section. Skid Row and its lousiness introduced
B. Seymour and Audrey introduced in contrasting sections, with their own melodies and harmony, perhaps according to their I Wants.
A. More lousy Skid Row, building to …
A+B. Big finish: Seymour and Audrey sing their introductory parts at the same time as the A section. Surprise! It was a quodlibet all along.
All other ideas gratefully accepted. Also, any types of quodlibets I’ve missed, because nobody knows every score.
Two Different Melodies Written to the Same Chord Progression
This post is about
The West Side Quodlibet
… which works like this:
One Melody’s Chord Progression Calls the Shots; All Other Melodies Fall Into Line
I’ll admit that One Day More, from Les Miserables, is probably the best-known example of this type of quodlibet, but West Side Story came first, and One Day More has a guilty secret, which I’ll get to.
Tonight Quintet (Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, West Side Story)
The melody for Tonight has already been heard in its entirety earlier in Act One, as a balcony love duet between Tony and Maria (I’m using the stage score, not the film’s, by the way):
Bernstein begins the quintet version of Tonight with very different melodic shapes, accompanied by very different harmonies.
and, later:
As you can see, I’ve given up trying to reduce Bernstein’s harmonic accompaniment to a mere chord symbol. You can’t, really, because at this point the composer is doing some very jazzy things, naturals and sharps happily clashing, the bass line’s rhythm grouped in three against four. It doesn’t matter, though; all that matters is the harmonies are very different from those of the balcony duet. Keep your eyes on those punchy groups of notes I’ve highlighted in blue and red. They’ll be back.
Once the Riff/Jet and Bernardo/Shark motifs are established, Anita sings them in her own slinky way, before Tony pops up and reprises the melody heard earlier on the balcony with Maria. And he reprises it exactly – no quodlibet trickery yet – before Riff reminds him to turn up to the rumble, to the tune of the first melody in the quintet (the one above, with the blue notes).
Then the fun starts. It’s Maria’s turn to sing the balcony tune, but as she does, Tony and Riff keep singing the rumble motifs established earlier, but – and this the crucial ingredient of the West Side Quodlibet – their motifs are shifted up and down to fit the balcony tune’s chord progression:
That’s it. That’s all there is to the West Side Quodlibet.
Actually, no, I’m lying, that’s really the easy part. What Bernstein does, and does very well, is manipulate the rising tension and increasingly contrapuntal texture throughout the rest of the quintet, all while sticking to the one chord progression. He even gets away with this:
That’s Anita, singing an altered version of the blue-coloured motif Riff sang at the start of this quintet, right-side-up, and then again, with the ending upside down. It works because Bernstein understands an important element of jogging your memory with a previously-heard tune:
The Rhythm Matters More Than the Intervals
If you’re repeating material, you can change a minor third to a major third, or you can flatten this and sharpen that, and I probably won’t even notice. But if you mess with the rhythm too much, there’s a good chance I’ll no longer recognise the thing you’re counting on me to recognise. And without that feeling of recognition, a quodlibet isn’t doing its job.
Bernstein also has fun introducing completely new material, including my favourite bit, which happens at the same time as Anita’s part above:
One last point that might seem pedantic, but I think it’s important: by having Anita sing these motifs on her own near the beginning of the piece, Bernstein and Sondheim give her musical permission to join in on those motifs later. As you’ll see, in One Day More from Les Miserables, Claude-Michel Schönberg isn’t quite so scrupulous.
One Day More (Claude-Michel Schönberg, Alain Boublil, Herbert Kretzmer etc etc etc, Les Miserables)
Here’s a bass line built from a descending major scale, and one set of chords you could choose to put over the top:
When a bass line descends like this over just the first four notes, and is given a chord for every note, it’s often called a lament bass, and there are many famous examples. Since the minor key version of this is called a minor lament, from now on, even though it doesn’t strictly have a chord for every note, I’m going to call the above major key version a major lament.
Several of the songs in Les Miserables are … wait for it … major laments. The bass line and chord progression are first heard, almost completely, as the instrumental introduction to At the End of the Day, and the first time they accompany a song is in Fantine’s I Dreamed a Dream:
I Dreamed a Dream also has a B section, or bridge (“But the tigers come at night …”), which features a different chord progression and melody. Schönberg will use this B section in One Day More, and add some pretty answering phrases for Marius and Cosette, but he won’t do any quodlibetting with it.
The major lament next turns up in Jean Valjean’s Who Am I? (strictly, Cart Crash, but seriously, who calls it that?):
You may notice, in this different key, that the chords aren’t strictly identical, but trust me, this is the same chord progression and bass line. Anyone who tells you there’s a fundamental difference in pop/rock between, say, B and B6, needs to get out more. Also, like I Dreamed a Dream, Who Am I? has an extra section, a tag at the end (“He gave me hope when hope was gone …”), which Schönberg will use right at the end of One Day More, but again, he won’t do any quodlibetting with it.
A brief reprise of the major lament occurs when Marius meets Cosette – his first words to her are to the tune of I Dreamed a Dream – and then a few minutes later, Javert sings Stars, which is an almost identical major lament. But Stars isn’t used in One Day More, so I’ll skip it for now.
Then, at last, it’s quodlibet time in One Day More. It should come as no surprise that all these tunes, written to the same chord progression, can be played (according to the rules of the Berlin Quodlibet) at the same time.
Jean Valjean begins with the tune he sang earlier in Who Am I? Marius and Cosette join in with the tune of I Dreamed a Dream – remember, Marius was given access to it earlier? – and from here on the chord progression becomes that of I Dreamed a Dream, with key changes, until the very last bars.
Next, Eponine sings the B section of I Dreamed a Dream, while Marius and Cosette sing those pretty answering phrases I mentioned. Now, I have no idea how Eponine knows the bridge to I Dreamed a Dream, but it doesn’t matter, because now Enjolras bursts on to the stage and he sings the B section of I Dreamed a Dream as well! It’s thrilling and dramatic, and musically it makes no sense. Where did he pick it up? We’ll never know.
After a thumping good key change, Javert gets a crack at things, but he doesn’t sing Stars; instead he sings a leitmotif that is by now associated with him, the police and the law. It was first sung by the constables who arrested Valjean when he nicked the silver from the Bishop of Digne, and also by Monsieur Bamatabois, the prissy bastard who had his face scratched by Fantine. Javert’s first rendition of it:
is altered to fit the major lament (otherwise this might all be an enormous Berlin Quodlibet, but at this point it becomes a West Side Quodlibet). Schönberg even shifts Javert to a different beat of the bar, but it still works a treat because, like Bernstein, Schönberg knows that rhythm matters more than intervals:
And the Thenardiers join in, too, with a chunk of the chorus from their signature tune, Master of the House, which needs no altering.
Now it’s time for the bridge from I Dreamed a Dream again, and by now all of Paris knows it. But there are still no quodlibet moments within this section! The quodlibet moments have, so far, been reserved exclusively for the major lament. By now, even if all of this is new to you, you have probably guessed One Day More‘s guilty secret. It is this:
Thousands of Tunes Fit This Chord Progression
So, as we approach another key change, and Marius chooses his bros over a girl, the major lament kicks in again, and everyone repeats their bits, except for Eponine, who gets this, which is frankly piss-weak:
This strikes me as an opportunity missed. Javert could sing Stars. Eponine could start singing On My Own, with a couple of tweaks, even though it’s from Act Two, and even though the song hadn’t been written yet when One Day More was composed (the tune was Fantine’s – it’s complicated).
I’ll go further: Javerts of the world! Eponines all! Next time you’re at this bar, rehearsal letter F in your scores, I want to hear this:
Marius: My place is here, I fight with yoooooooouuuuuuuu …
Jean Valjean: One-
Eponine: ON MY –
Javert: THEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRREEE!
Eponine: OOOOOOOWWWNNNNNN!
Yes, it’s in a high belty key, but you’ll enjoy that. And think what a fun surprise it will be for your musical director.
Terminology first: in music, generally, a quodlibet (from the Latin, meaning “what pleases”, and it’s pronounced just as it looks) occurs any time previously-heard melodies are played at the same time. In musical theatre, specifically, the word has come to mean the practice of laying out one vocal melody first, followed by another vocal melody later, only to reveal, finally, that these melodies work when sung together.
As for my use of that key word – that the melodies ‘work’ – I desire much from a musical theatre quodlibet. I desire that:
The melodies please, individually.
The melodies please even more when combined.
I can’t hear it coming.
The revelation has some dramatic function.
A quick note: we’re not talking here about little moments of counterpoint, because while all quodlibets employ counterpoint, not all instances of counterpoint qualify as a quodlibet. We’re also not talking about leitmotifs, although – as you’ll see in the later Les Misérables example – leitmotifs are sometimes used in quodlibets, as if to announce “Hey, remember this person’s tune? It fits over this other one!”
So, I’m going to lay out the main types of musical theatre quodlibets and how they work. After that, I’m going to suggest some types I haven’t heard yet, and hope everyone gets to work writing them.
The Berlin Quodlibet
(aka Double Song, or Counterpoint Song) – Two Different Melodies Written to the Same Chord Progression
This is probably, in most people’s minds, the classic form of the musical theatre quodlibet: You’re Just in Love, from Call Me Madam is a witty and graceful example. Irving Berlin writes to this chord progression:
If you know your harmony, you’ll recognise right away that this is simply a long stretch of tonic, moving away to the dominant. After this, the next eight bars sit on the dominant, before returning to the tonic. If this is technobabble to you, don’t worry: the most important thing to know is that Berlin has given himself, with these chord choices, a vast range of options for melody-writing.
Over this chord progression, Berlin writes two complementary melodies – longer phrases with a wide range for the lovesick Kenneth Gibson, and shorter, syncopated phrases with a smaller range for Kenneth’s brash boss Sally Adams. Here’s an excerpt of the full 32 bars:
Students of strict Renaissance polyphony might look at these two melodies and wonder: are those seconds and ninths between D and E a problem? Are those diminished fifths and augmented fourths displeasing to the ear?
No, they’re not. Apart from their regular use in almost every form of music for the last hundred years (you’ll probably hear them a dozen times today), those little dissonances – by Renaissance standards – simply don’t register as long as they’re not exposed, and as long as the rhythm of the melody carries the listener’s ear forward. Trust me, you can get away with things that would have killed Fux if your two tunes fit the underlying chord progression.
Hallmarks of the Berlin Approach
Berlin was especially good at these kinds of quodlibets, which is why I think we should name them after him. There’s a comprehensive list of his output here, including several he composed over tunes not his own. If you’re planning to write a Berlin quodlibet, you could do a lot worse than follow the kind of example he sets in You’re Just In Love, because:
1. The chord progression allows for melodic freedom. With the exception of Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil, which is pretty bluesy, Berlin used the same chords for all his most famous quodlibets (I, ii, IV, V, I7, II7, and the occasional passing diminished chord). These chords might seem like, as the lyrics for Play a Simple Melody put it, good old-fashioned harmony, but they allowed Berlin the freedom to write two thumping good tunes.
2. The melodies have individual character, before they’re combined. In You’re Just In Love, Sally sounds like Sally, even without her lyrics, and Kenneth sounds like Kenneth. You couldn’t sensibly swap their tunes. Then, with their lyrics added, their characters are even further enhanced. Sally gets most of the consonants, in “pitter-patter” and “pleasant ache”, and Kenneth gets most of the open vowel endings, in “trees are bare” and “I wonder why”. Berlin combined similarly romantic and jazzy melodies earlier, with Play a Simple Melody, and again later, with An Old-Fashioned Wedding.
3. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Look at how beautifully the two melodies in You’re Just In Love give each other room, rhythmically and harmonically. The phrases start and end on different beats, and when longer notes are held, the other melody uses different degrees of the accompanying chord (for example, while a bar of G to G6 is happening, Kenneth holds a long b, while Sally sings e, d and g). Thus, to hear these two tunes together is to hear more than just two tunes piled one of top of the other.
4. There’s a dramatic point to the quodlibet. You’re Just in Love doesn’t represent a major turning point in its parent musical (the song was a late addition to the show), but nevertheless, Kenneth poses a question, Sally answers it, and their friendship is strengthened, all through song.
Even in 1914’s Play a Simple Melody, when a dramatic point was not the point, the ingenue (Ernesta Hardacre – no, really) yearns for songs of the past, before Algy Cuffs (true, I promise) demands up-to-date ragtime; the quodlibet then points out that we can all have both, at the same time, and harmoniously.
In 1966’s revival of Annie Get Your Gun, Frank Butler predicts, in An Old-Fashioned Wedding, that he’ll vow to love Annie Oakley forever, while she’ll “vow to love and honor and obey”. When his part is combined with Annie’s their two sets of lyrics match up: her line “love and honor, yes, but not obey” follows immediately after Frank’s. They’re arguing, good-naturedly, in song, and Berlin must have planned this beforehand, musically and lyrically. It seems effortless; it’s kind of wonderful.
Some Other Berlin Quodlibets, Not Necessarily By Irving Berlin
The two individual melodies in this number are fun, but the second has, I think, a weak moment:
Nothin’ on his mind but a couple of horns
Satan is waitin’ with his jazz band
And
His
Band
Came from Alabam’ with a melody hot …
On its own, that part doesn’t hang together for me. It sounds like a mere counter-melody, and its purpose isn’t revealed until the two melodies are combined. When combined, since both tunes are pretty busy, they really tumble over one another, except for in this section I’ve cited, where they interlock nicely. The effect of the whole number is that of a patter song, with the point being to dazzle the audience by reprising the two melodies at lightning speed. As for surprise, I didn’t hear the quodlibet coming the first time I heard the song. Dramatic function? Not really applicable, since this song is from a revue. The two singers express the same sentiment: Hell is a pretty jazzy place.
Schwartz, only in his early 20s when he wrote this gem, had clearly been paying attention. The two melodies have great individual character, and the surprise of the quodlibet is heightened by presenting the first tune, on its first outing, colla voce – it’s in tempo only when reprised. That’s clever stuff, and it really got me the first time I heard it. When combined, the two vocal lines sit on different parts of the accompanying chords, and are rhythmically complementary as well. As if all this were not sufficiently impressive, the two singers express different attitudes (Jesus sings about heaven as the ultimate reward, while Judas rails against earthly inequality), during a number that itself functions as a major turning point in Godspell. In any story of the Christ, there’s got to be a point where the tone darkens. After this song, we reach that point.
I know, it’s heresy to criticise anything in the score for this show, but I’m going for it: I’ve never really cared for this quodlibet. There, I said it.
Dramatically, the song is everything you could ask for: the two young couples make predictions about their rosy futures together, futures that we in the audience know will be distinctly thorny. Sally, part of one young couple, is really in love with Ben, who’s part of the other couple, so there’s a good reason for the tunes to intertwine with one another in this love square.
Lyrically, both refrains are wordy, nifty pastiches expressing similar, cheery sentiments. Rhythmically, when they combine, it’s chaotic, but this is the start of a section in the show where everyone loses their minds, so that’s an apt choice.
Musically, the accompaniment is identical, and in the same key. This is not a quodlibet that’s trying to surprise you, and the first time I heard it, I thought “Ah, here we go. These’ll be in counterpoint later.”
So where’s the problem? I even like the two individual melodies well enough, individually. The problem, for me, is when they’re combined.
Here’s the melody for the refrain of ‘You’re Gonna Love Tomorrow’:
Sondheim’s accompanying harmonies for these eight bars are Gbmaj9 for four bars, followed by two bars each of Ab13 and Db9, with the occasional passing chord. If this means nothing to you, remember only this: the above melody sits mostly on the major seventh and sixth of the first chord, the root of the second, and the root and ninth of the third.
Here’s the melody for ‘Love Will See Us Through’:
Now, where does this second melody sit, predominately, on those same chords? The major seventh and sixth of the first chord! Then the ninth of the second, followed by a phrase ending on the ninth of the third. This is the effect, to my ear, of combining these two melodies:
SAME SAME SAME SAME NEEDLESS CLASH BRIEF INTEREST SAME.
“But Peter,” your inner dramaturg might object, “this is the genius of that song! The tunes are too similar, just as the couples’ woes are too similar! The tunes needlessly clash just as these couples needlessly clash!”
Nah. Sondheim is too well-schooled a musician not to have intended the effect, but I don’t think it works, melodically. Melodically, this quodlibet deprives its audience of one of the chief pleasures of a quodlibet: a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Instead, it’s two tunes piled one on top of the other. I can appreciate the mechanics of the effort, but I feel no thrill.
Whereas the equivalent moment in this number, from earlier in the very same musical, has always thrilled me. The two tunes (the second might be titled ‘Mirror, Mirror’) don’t work together as a quodlibet for their entire respective lengths, and upon their reprise the singers revert to ‘Whose That Woman’ wherever the combination would come a melodic cropper.
But before that happens, there’s a full refrain of ‘Who’s That Woman’, after which ‘Mirror, Mirror’ is introduced in a different tempo and key – a deft way of hiding its quodlibet potential. A long dance break follows, and in Michael Bennett’s original staging, the older female ensemble are mirrored by their ghostly younger selves. It builds, and builds, (honestly, if you’ve not seen the reconstructed video and audio I’ve linked to in the title above, watch it, it’s glorious) and builds, until the lead singer Stella is mirrored by her past self, and the two female groups have combined, and the two tunes finally emerge in counterpoint, in a musical equivalent of the staging. Best of all, this is a song about growing older, showing past and present merging, within a whole show about growing older, and about reconciling your present self with the in/decisions of your youth. Two good tunes – tick. Whole greater than parts – tick. Surprise – tick. Dramatic function – tick.
Honourable Mentions
The Inch Worm (Frank Loesser, Hans Christian Anderson)
This song isn’t presented in typical musical-theatre-quodlibet style, since the second tune (“Inch worm, inch worm …”) appears over the first (“Two and two are four …”) without having been heard on its own earlier. My favourite thing about Loesser’s achievement – and I haven’t heard it in any other quodlibet – is that Hans’s tune stays firmly inside the tonic scale, while the children’s tune enjoys all the flattened notes made possible by the chord progression. This is exceptionally good musicianship, from a songwriter with better technique than most of us realise.
People tend to get pretty worked up about how Besoyan combines not two but three separate tunes in this quodlibet, which is itself an affectionate parody of other quodlibets. Personally, I find it laboured. It’s a looooong time to spend in the company of the same generic chord progression.
One (Reprise)(Marvin Hamlisch, Ed Kleban, A Chorus Line)
This is the first quodlibet I’ve mentioned that is not by a single composer/lyricist; you can see why these things might be a challenge to write with another person.
One, ostensibly a real showtune from the musical everyone in A Chorus Line is auditioning for, has been half-heard earlier in the show; in its reprise, which functions as both A Chorus Line‘s finale and bows, One is presented again, followed by its counter-melody, and then by the quodlibet moment.
If you’re not a musician, you may not appreciate how distinctive the chord progression for One is. There’s no other I know quite like it:
That’s like the chords to a bebop tune. Little wonder that, while Hamlisch’s main tune is a cracker, his counter-melody is like a clever student’s exam answer, with too many chromatic runs, and a flabby loss of verve in bars 9-16. Even if you’re not a sight-reader, I reckon you can see it:
Meanwhile, Kleban, the lyricist, is having a field day:
She walks into a room and you know
She’s uncommonly rare, very unique,
Peripatetic, poetic and chic …
Very unique? How unique can something be? By the last bars of the section above, Kleban is essaying:
Loaded with charisma is ma
Jauntily sauntering, ambling shambler.
… which no-one ever hears, because the women of the cast are taking their bows. The following video is grainy – and, fair warning, it cuts out just before the end – but you can see what I mean:
I wonder, did Kleban know, as he sweated over each syllable, that they’d be drowned out nightly? One is a helluva number overall, but as a quodlibet, it’s all about the dancing. Oh, that Michael Bennett.
Here’s how it works. The two of you are fighting. Then one of you starts singing something. The other resists at first, but eventually joins in. Now you’re both singing, and damned if you don’t go into an ol’ soft-shoe together! Magically, once you reach the song’s button, whatever you were arguing about has gone away.
Egregious example: Grey Gardens (“Two Peas In a Pod”)
Edith has just had a big fight with her father, Major Bouvier, in which her daughter Edie firmly took the Major’s side. As a peace offering, young Edie starts singing an old song to her mother, the first song her mother ever taught her. They’re soon singing it together, with Edith’s accompanist George Gould Strong lending two helping hands at the piano. Problem solved.
But not really. After the song, it’s their next bit of dialogue that establishes a truce.
Ingenious subversion: Merrily We Roll Along (“Old Friends”)
Charlie, Frank and Mary are arguing about – well, pretty much everything. Mary starts up an old bit of schtick with the words “Here’s to us …”. Soon, they’re all singing together, but – and this is neat – the song breaks down into an argument midway, before pulling it together for the final button. Also, since the show’s chronology is in reverse, we in the audience have already seen this friendship group break up: no matter how chummy they might be at the end of this song, dramatic irony dangles overhead.
Why this trope needs to die: it’s bogus. And I don’t mean that it’s bogus in the way that all musicals are, by any realistic measure, bogus. No, it’s bogus on its face. If these characters are to resemble real, motivated people (and ever since Show Boat, that’s what the best writers have been trying to achieve, from high drama to low comedy), then it’s the quintessence of bullshit to have characters’ desires and fears allayed, however briefly, by a tune. On the other hand, if the argument were actually resolved in the course of the song, that’d be different. And much better.
2. The “I’m Happy To Be a Slut” Song
She’s brassy, she’s leggy. She likes men and she wants you to know it. Also, she’s … no, that’s it. There’s nothing more to this dame, and she won’t do much in the show to follow. She’ll either be conquered by domestic love or die helping the hero.
In The Producers, Ulla turns up at Max and Leo’s office to audition with a song she’s written. She performs it for Max and Leo’s pleasure, they lust after her, and then they compete for her. Her job is to be dumb, and lusted after. I could write – nay, will write – an entire post about the wasted opportunity that is Ulla in this show.
In Steel Pier, the MC of a dance marathon is trying to drum up interest in the competition, so he spruiks the additional talents of some of his contestants. One of these is Shelby, who is pretty fast, as they used to say. She sings a song about how fast she is. It is meant to be ghastly, bursting with second-rate, second-hand jokes; and it is ghastly, since there’s no subtext or other aspects of Shelby’s character to alleviate the ghastliness. Later, Shelby falls in unfulfilling love with a younger man.
On paper, this is a come-on from the ladies of the Fan-Dango Ballroom. But as performed it’s clear they don’t mean a word of it, instantly adding layers to their characters. Brilliant. This was in 1964, more than thirty years before my two egregious examples.
Why this trope needs to die: Sure, it’s sexist (where are the male slut songs?), and yes, its time has passed (a female character can now simply say “I like sex”, so why should we sit through an entire song of sniggering jokes about it?), but most importantly, it’s dramatically inert. If you’re going to write a one-joke song, you’d better be Cole Porter. In the 1930s.
3. The Mad Scene Made of Dissonant Reprises
We’re near the end of the show, and a person, or possibly the world itself, is going insane. How to depict this musically? Maybe we’ll use a bunch of tunes we heard earlier in the night, but chopped up and layered over one another, with no concern for dissonance. In fact, dissonance is wanted: we’ll put long, wrong notes under previously pleasant tunes. If the tune’s in C, shove a loud F sharp or an A flat in the bass. (Composer’s confession: these are really easy to write. With some decent notation software, you can whip one up while the kettle boils.)
Norma just shot Joe dead. The cops have come to take her away, but a journalist helpfully tells the audience that Norma’s “in a state of complete mental shock”. In lyrical terms, what is Norma given to work with? This:
This was dawn.
I don’t know why I’m frightened.
Silent music starts to play.
Happy new year, darling.
If you’re with me, next year will be…
Next year will be…
They bring in his head on a silver tray.
She kisses his mouth…
She kisses his mouth…
Mad about the boy!
They’ll say Norma’s back at last!
To be fair, there’s no dissonant accompaniment to this, which is a series of lines from a bunch of earlier songs, all spliced together. It’s even less work than the sort of thing I’m complaining about.
Ingenious subversion: Cabaret (“Finale Ultimo”)
This is one of the earliest examples I can think of, and it works a treat by undermining the traditional appeal of reprises. Clifford Bradshaw, supposed novelist, hasn’t written anything as far as we in the audience can tell; then, as he takes the train out of Berlin, he starts reading from his latest effort. Songs are heard in reprise, and this is justified as Cliff sorts through his memories. His later experiences of rising Nazism and soured romance justify the dissonances. There’s so much scope for directors in this part of the show that it keeps developing, from mirrors wherein the audience see themselves, to the cast being led off to concentration camps. It’s almost impossible for later writers to repeat this fine achievement, so why bother trying?
Why this trope needs to die: If anything should be personal, and distinctive, it’s madness. But if all madness sounds the same, how mad is it? This trope is almost always an example of writing that mimics other writers’ writing, instead of coming up with something unique to a particular character, at a particular time. Write a brand new song, folks. The Cray Cray Megamix is lazy.
Semi-Final 2. Here’s how the refrains worked out, in terms of tonic chords and otherwise.
Serbia – Nije ljubav stvar
Not in verse-chorus form, which makes a nice change. But the tonic chord happens at the start of the refrain.
Macedonia – Crno i belo
Tonic chorus.
Netherlands – You and Me
Tonic chorus.
Malta – This Is the Night
Tonic on the refrain. I had a brief ethical dilemma with this one – after all, the verses are minor, but the chorus hits the tonic major. So how come major key Malta gets a pass, but Switzerland’s major verse/minor chorus qualified as a key change, with a non-tonic chord at the top?
I reason thus: Switzerland used an interrupted cadence, and the start of the chorus felt like a break, like a fresh idea. Malta have used a perfect cadence, and the chorus feels like coming home, as though the song was really in a major key all along.
Belarus – We Are the Heroes
Tonic chorus.
Portugal – Vida minha
It’s nearly the tonic chord at the top of the chorus, but it takes a bar to resolve.
Ukraine – Be My Guest
Another song with the same chord progression throughout (I-bIII-bVII-IV). Tonic right at the top.
Bulgaria – Love Unlimited
Tonic chorus.
Slovenia – Verjamem
Tonic chorus.
Croatia – Nebo
Damn, but all these songs sound the same tonight. Non-tonic chorus, however.
Sweden – Euphoria
Tricky, this one. It feels like the tonic minor when the chorus starts, but then the chorus itself moves to, and stays on, the relative major (at the “uh-uh-uh-uh” bit). It finishes in the major too, so I have to call this a non-tonic chorus.
Georgia – I’m a Joker
Another song that isn’t in verse-chorus form. Tonic on the refrain. If it were up to me, this sort of thing would win a lot more often than it does. Which is pretty much never.
Turkey – Love Me Back
Such a tease on the dominant the first time, before the chorus happens! Tonic chord when it does.
Estonia – Kuula
Ah, my old friend! Can’t Smile Without You, Last Christmas, Cuts Both Ways, Why God Why?, how I have missed you. Tonic on the first chord of the refrain. Nice extension of the form after that, but tonic on the refrain.
Slovakia – Don’t Close Your Eyes
Tonic on the refrain.
Norway – Stay
Depends what you call the chorus. It probably has to be the “I don’t know what I’m doing tonight” section, which would qualify as a non-tonic chorus. More songs with flattened ninths, please.
Bosnia and Herzegovina – Korake ti znam
Tonic chord on the refrain. Pretty extensions on the tonic chord the first time, but still the tonic chord.
Lithuania – Love Is Blind
Tonic refrain.
Of the ten qualifying songs, eight tonic chord refrains. And two non-tonic refrains, obviously.
Of the eight non-qualifying songs, two non-tonic refrains – there were only four non-tonic refrains in the entire night.
But this means that the twenty songs in the final (so far – The Big Five and host country are yet to be heard) will feature four non-tonic refrains, from a possible ten, and sixteen tonic refrains, from a possible twenty-six.
40% chance of qualifying for a non-tonic chorus, 61.5% for tonic. If the favourites, Sweden, win (and they may have already done so, but faithful Australians won’t watch the final until Sunday night, our time), they’ll have the first non-tonic winning refrain since the hat-trick of Latvia’s “I Wanna” in 2002, Turkey’s “Everyway That I Can” in 2003, and Ukraine’s “Wild Dances” in 2004.
For those who’ve not heard me bang on about this in the past, a little preamble.
I contend (and I’ve crunched the numbers) that a Eurovision entry has a better chance of winning if the song’s chord progression hits the tonic chord at the top of the refrain. There was a time when I thought the song had to be in a major key, too, but several recent minor key winners have shaken my faith there.
No doubts about the tonic chord at the top of the refrain, though. For non-musicians, the tonic chord is the home chord of a song’s key. If the song is in the key of D major, D major is the tonic chord. If the song is in F minor, F minor is the tonic chord. The refrain is usually the chorus, but even in songs that aren’t in verse-chorus form, the refrain is the part that’s heard the most.
The tonic chord makes a progression sound as though it’s arrived somewhere, like it’s come home. Here’s an example, for a song in D major:
Verse: |D |E |A G |A |
|D |E |A G |A |
|Bm |Bm |Bm |E7 |
|A |A7 |
Chorus: |D |D |G |G |
|A |A |D |A |
That’s the progression for ABBA’s Waterloo. Think about how that chorus lands right at its beginning (“always repeating itseeeeeeeeeelf … Waterloo”). Boom. That’s how you win Eurovision.
I’m not saying there aren’t magnificent songs with refrains that start on something other than the tonic chord. All The Things You Are famously holds off on the tonic chord until its very end, and it’s gorgeous. Kylie Minogue’s I Should Be So Lucky, to pick a pop song example, saves the tonic chord until the final bar of the chorus, and it sold a truckload of singles. But a chorus that sounds restless, or that sounds forward-moving is, I think, not a Eurochorus. The Eurochorus feels like this:
This. Here. This is the chorus. Now.
Last night, for Aussie viewers, was Eurovision’s first Semi-Final. Here’s how the entries, in tonic refrain terms, played out:
Montenegro – Euro Neuro
Like a lot of – ahem – rap, this song has a one-chord funk groove for the verses. The chorus shifts to a different chord, effectively functioning as a movement away from the tonic. Plus it’s dreadful.
Iceland – Never Forget
Minor key verse, which resolves to the tonic. Pre-chorus, or climb, that works itself up to a big fat dominant chord (that’s the fifth chord of the scale, and it longs to resolve to the tonic). Then, sure enough, tonic minor chord, right at the top of the chorus. The third chorus has the vocals-only-breakdown-at-the-key-change trick. Worthy of Broadway. Not good Broadway, but still.
Greece – Aphrodisiac
Minor key verse, which works up to the dominant. Minor key chorus, starting on the tonic. Vocals-only breakdown on the third chorus, but without the key change.
Latvia – Beautiful Song
Minor key verse, which resolves to the tonic. Chorus finishes on the tonic, but doesn’t start there. Oh, and a vocals-only breakdown for the third chorus.
Albania – Suus
Minor key verses, the second of which resolves to the tonic. The chorus (quite pretty, these chords) starts away from the tonic, and gets back there by the end. Someone did a jazzy, trained-musician chord progression like this last year, and they didn’t win either.
Major key verse, working up to the dominant. Then an interrupted cadence! Relative minor chord at the top of the chorus! This becomes the new tonic, and the songs resolves in the minor key. Emo madness!
Belgium – Would You
Major key verse, which works up to the dominant. Chorus starts on the tonic.
Finland – Nar Jag Blundar
Nice chord progression, this one. You can’t tell if the song’s major or minor, until it hits the chorus. Turns out it’s minor, but the chorus doesn’t start on the tonic.
Israel – Time
Major key verse, working its way to the dominant. A major key chorus, with the tonic firmly at the top.
San Marino – The Social Network Song
Minor key verse, ends on the dominant. Minor key chorus, with the tonic at the start. Also dreadful.
Cyprus – La La Love
Minor key verse, which resolves to the tonic. Pre-chorus resolves to the tonic too. Chorus starts away from the tonic. Vocals-only breakdown on the third chorus!
Denmark – Should’ve Known Better
One of those songs with the same chord progression throughout, and it’s one that starts on the tonic minor: i – III – bVII – IV, a faithful standby heard most often in the verses to Wonderwall, by Oasis.
Russia – Party For Everybody
Tonic minor for the verse? Wait, it wasn’t a verse. OK, that’s the verse, with a tonic minor. Pre-chorus works its way to the dominant, then boom – tonic minor on the chorus.
Hungary – Sound of Our Hearts
Minor key verse, resolving on the tonic. Then the chorus starts on the tonic too, which is a bit of a snooze, harmonically. Later, the second verse introduces a little pre-chorus, ending on the bVII. Tonic at the top of the chorus.
Austria – Woki Mit Deim Popo
Minor key verse, with “rapped” vocals, ending on the bVII. Minor key chorus, with the tonic at the top. Horrendous.
Moldova – Lautar
Minor key verse, dominant at the end, and tonic minor at the top of the chorus. Key change for the final choruses. Easily my favourite song of the night, which is never a guarantee of success.
Ireland – Waterline
Major key verse, pre-chorus takes it up to the dominant. Then the chorus is in a new key! But it starts on that new key’s tonic major chord. Reminds me, structurally, of Westlife’s When You’re Looking Like That. Vocals-only breakdown on the third chorus. Naturally.
Iceland, Greece, Albania, Romania, Cyprus, Denmark, Russia, Hungary, Moldova and Ireland made it into the final. Of these ten songs, eight began their choruses on the tonic.
Montenegro, Latvia, Switzerland, Belgium, Finland, Israel, San Marino and Austria were eliminated. Of these eight songs, four began their choruses on a chord other than the tonic.
We’ll see how it all pans out in the final, of course.
According to my major key, tonic chorus theory, the first semi-final of Eurovision 2011 should have eliminated Albania, Turkey, Russia, Portugal and Serbia (non-tonic choruses).
The contest is in a rut of minor key choruses at the moment (the last five winners), so Poland, Georgia, Malta and Hungary (minor choruses, started on the tonic) should have been in with a chance. Greece had a chorus starting on the tonic minor, and with a big fat key change towards the end, so that’s good odds.
The countries that ought to have done even better, according to the theory, are Lithuania, Armenia, (minor key, but major key tonic chorus), Azerbaijan, Iceland, San Marino, Finland, Switzerland, and Norway (major key, major chorus starting on the tonic), with Croatia doing particularly well (major key, major chorus starting on the tonic and a big fat Eurokey change).
In reality, the eliminated countries were Poland, Norway, Albania, Armenia, Turkey, Malta, San Marino, Croatia and Portugal.
So my theory predicted three out of five eliminees purely on the basis of a non-tonic chorus. And I was really, really wrong about Croatia.
Of course, if one actually listens to the songs, and sees the performances, Serbia’s non-tonic chorus is overidden by its Bacharach-esque charm. It’ll do well.
Also, I think the songs are getting shorter (no data, just a hunch), and that makes the big Euro key change harder to pull off. A grand institution is under threat, folks.
So it turns out I can orchestrate a bit. No need for a ticker-tape parade just yet, but I can orchestrate a bit.
Not that the point of all this is to make me feel good about myself. The point of this is for me to learn the sort of minute detail that makes the difference between a terrific orchestra call and a painful one.
To wit, the French Horn player (relax, she was just lovely to me), who asked:
“Would you like da da-da? That is, should I re-articulate the second note, to match the singer?”
“Yes,” I say. “Is that what I’ve written?”
“No, this is more da-ah-ah …”
“Oh, well, no, the first, to match the singer would be better.”
“OK.”
And there it could have rested, but curiosity got the better of me.
“For future reference,” I said, coming over, “how should I notate that so it’s clearer? How would I write it so that you automatically re-articulate the second note?”
“Like this. Remove this, and add this.”
Here’s a visual. We’re talking about the difference between this:
And this:
See? One has the phrase mark over all the notes, and the other just between the first two. If French Horns weren’t so damn great when they’re well-orchestrated and well-played, you might be tempted not to care, but French Horns are damn great when they’re well-orchestrated and well-played.
Incidentally, it has taken me twenty years to learn this about orchestration:
Instruments sound best playing what those instruments should play.
That’s it. Don’t give an oboe a line that rightly belongs to a trumpet. Get a trumpet. Or write an oboe line. Also, don’t take instruments out of their best range so that triads remain triads. Put the instruments in their best registers, and you’ll get the same impact as the original triads, even if it’s now spaced over more than an octave.
I will learn this again and again before I really learn it, though.
A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK A SCRAPBOOK
Sondheim’s accompanying harmonies for these eight bars are Gbmaj9 for four bars, followed by two bars each of Ab13 and Db9, with the occasional passing chord. If this means nothing to you, remember only this: the above melody sits mostly on the major seventh and sixth of the first chord, the root of the second, and the root and ninth of the third.
Now, where does this second melody sit, predominately, on those same chords? The major seventh and sixth of the first chord! Then the ninth of the second, followed by a phrase ending on the ninth of the third. This is the effect, to my ear, of combining these two melodies:
major to minor 