Chords of Life

I've written a fair amount about the harmonies that sustain me, and as I think more about this, I realize there are songs I love mainly if not exclusively for one chord—indeed in some cases it's almost all I like about them.

Take the opening harmony of Billy Joel's "Goodnight Saigon." I don't have much use for this bathetic Vietnam War elegy, but I have to admit that the appoggiatura/suspensions of its opening lines snag me every time. You've got a B natural over an F chord, a C over of a G7, an A over a C. But it's that first one that really sticks:

Led Zeppelin's faux-reggae "D'yer Maker" is a lovely jam but the harmony that shines out whenever I think of it is the sweet whine of a C7 chord Robert Plant makes with this crescendo-ing "Ooh" on a high B-flat, just before the fadeout, around 4:10: 

Left Banke's "Pretty Ballerina" is exquisite all the way through (I prefer it to their more popular "Walk Away, Renee"), but it's the chord under the title line that really is the song, a teasingly dissonant E-flat with a flat 5:

Likewise I'm in love with every bit of this Midlake deep cut, even if I would admit that its curious power emanates almost entirely from its long-held opening chord, a sort of F-diminished whorl that sets us up for a tense and lively ride. It starts at 0:09 and really never lets go its mesmeric grip on the song:


Another piece indelibly defined by one big chord (arguably two) is Bernard Herrmann's Wagnerian "Scene d'Amour" from Vertigo:

While we're in film score territory, my mind turns happily to Elmer Bernstein's aching To Kill a Mockingbird theme, which takes flight courtesy of a similar chord—a major with a sharp fourth (or flat fifth). Whereas in Herrmann it evokes thwarted erotic yearning bursting forth, here it perfectly suggests youthful curiosity. Funny how chords can do such different things in different contexts. It shows up first on the flute, with that G# over the D major:

Later it opens up with the full orchestra, same thing over A:

I'll close this slightly random survey with a piece that deserves fuller exploration, and whose opening chord really doesn't have much to do with what follows it in the piece in question, but which is so pungent and memorable it regularly pops into my head unbidden, like a bent reveille awakening me from a bad dream. It's the stark opening of Revueltas's Homenaje a Federico García Lorca, a Stravinsky-esque polychord that may be most easily spelled as an A6add9 over an A-flat, though I'm not sure that even captures what's going on here. Just try to get it out of your head once you hear it: