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Thursday, March 06, 2008

I dream of Theory

I dream of Jeanie chords, Eb major, m. 13 - 17. New chords (from this chapter) in bold:

13: V7... V9#5 (Bb aug add 9...?)
14: I
15: I V65 vi
16: V/V Iadd6 IV
17: V64 V7 I

This piece is in quaternary form, with the structure a a' b a''. Foster creates contrast in the bridge section (m. 9-12) by starting on the beat rather than using an anacrusis like the other sections. He also starts lower in the singer's tessitura, on F (re) rather than on C (la), and stays fairly close to this melodically, rather than leaping as much as a sixth, as in the other sections. In fact the largest jump in the bridge is a fourth (m. 11, 'the blithe', Eb-Bb).

In a performance of this piece, I would use dynamics to express this section change, as well as the change in mood. The tessitura helps, but I think the bridge works best at a dynamic much softer than the a sections. It makes the words stand out more, too; giving them a color change and increasing the intensity. The softer dynamic in the bridge would also lend itself well to a crescendo on the 'ah!' in m. 13, and then returning to mf or so on the return of the a.

1 comment:

Scott said...

m. 16 the second chord should be either V13, or I64 with the C as an embellishing tone. Good performance ideas.