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Thursday, January 31, 2008

One Hand, One Heart

Roman Numeral Analysis: (one chord per measure) I, IV^6, V^6, I, vi, iii, bVII, IV^6, I^6/4, IV, V^6, IV^6, bVII^6, bVI, ii, V^7, I. Bernstein only uses the bVII mixture chord in measure 7 and 13, and the bVI chord in measure 14. These are the only mixture chords that he uses in the first 17 measures of the song. Instead of using the mixed chord names, the popular-music symbols simplifies the notation to read by simply telling what chord it is in a way that ignores do. For example: when in measure 7 there is a bVII chord, the popular-music notation says that it is an E Major chord completely changing the relationship. This makes it appear to have changed keys when really it has only borrowed one chord. The text of the piece with the most mode mixture is where the text reads "Only death will..." This small part of the entire text is good place to put this modal mixture because of the change from happy, almost holy context to a more morose tone. It could be inferred to be musical foreshadowing of what is about to take place in the musical. In this case, the two seeing this song are separated by death when Tony is killed at the end of the musical.  

1 comment:

Scott said...

In m. 14 it is bIII6, not bVI. And then the ii is in first inversion.

See my comment in Nick's post on another view of the bVII in m. 7.

Think of some performance implications.