More Chords of Life
Herewith, some quick hits on pieces that draw me in on the strength of their uniquely beguiling harmonies (in line with a previous post).
Erich Maria Korngold would go on to become one of Hollywood's greatest composers, but he started his career as a Mozart-like prodigy in pre-WWI Austria, in part on the strength of his stunning Piano Trio in D, written when he just 12 years old, published when he was 13. The entire first movement is a keeper but there's nothing quite like the jaunty, woozy piano opener, which spins out a series of chords over a kind of 3/4 (I have trouble counting it that way, honestly) that are somehow both ear-bending and utterly pleasing. I read this roughly as D, D(b5), Bb7, D, and then Gmaj7, Em, Gdim7, C:
It only gets more interesting from there, pushing tonal harmony not quite to its breaking point, but in the vicinity of the Czechs' stretchy intensity. It would be great music by anyone at any age, but a tween wrote this? Alas if Korngold were alive today he'd probably be coding.
My wife contributed the wide-ranging anthology Devotion: Spiritual Music of the Indian Subcontinent to our household collection, and it's all gold, but my standout favorite is an upbeat number by Purna das Baul, "Agun Pani Akosh Matya." I think you'll be able to hear why from the first sung notes—my attempts at notation are imprecise (as are my attempts at the lyrics), but what I hear, over an F bass, is an E-natural, an ear-snagging interval in any hemisphere:
The Bauls are Bengali minstrels who combine elements of Sufism and Sahaja, and I hear distinct echos of the great Sufi qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan in the song's pentatonic-ish modes throughout.
Pete Townshend does a lot with a limited harmonic palette—he's a composer on the guitar who, like many songwriters on that instrument, doesn't deviate much from standard chord shapes, but he makes up for that with pretty adventurous use of pedal tones and progressions. The opening chords of the Who's "Amazing Journey" are a great example, a vertiginous series of I-V changes that aren't so much a circle of fifths as a kind of swirl of fifths, and played in a rhythm that tripwires our sense of the downbeat. The result, even without the whistling backward-masking sound effect, evokes the sudden rigid turns of a mechanized car in a theme-park ride, an association strengthened by my memory of the way it was brilliantly staged in the Broadway show:
Erich Maria Korngold would go on to become one of Hollywood's greatest composers, but he started his career as a Mozart-like prodigy in pre-WWI Austria, in part on the strength of his stunning Piano Trio in D, written when he just 12 years old, published when he was 13. The entire first movement is a keeper but there's nothing quite like the jaunty, woozy piano opener, which spins out a series of chords over a kind of 3/4 (I have trouble counting it that way, honestly) that are somehow both ear-bending and utterly pleasing. I read this roughly as D, D(b5), Bb7, D, and then Gmaj7, Em, Gdim7, C:
My wife contributed the wide-ranging anthology Devotion: Spiritual Music of the Indian Subcontinent to our household collection, and it's all gold, but my standout favorite is an upbeat number by Purna das Baul, "Agun Pani Akosh Matya." I think you'll be able to hear why from the first sung notes—my attempts at notation are imprecise (as are my attempts at the lyrics), but what I hear, over an F bass, is an E-natural, an ear-snagging interval in any hemisphere:
Pete Townshend does a lot with a limited harmonic palette—he's a composer on the guitar who, like many songwriters on that instrument, doesn't deviate much from standard chord shapes, but he makes up for that with pretty adventurous use of pedal tones and progressions. The opening chords of the Who's "Amazing Journey" are a great example, a vertiginous series of I-V changes that aren't so much a circle of fifths as a kind of swirl of fifths, and played in a rhythm that tripwires our sense of the downbeat. The result, even without the whistling backward-masking sound effect, evokes the sudden rigid turns of a mechanized car in a theme-park ride, an association strengthened by my memory of the way it was brilliantly staged in the Broadway show:
There's no shortage of discourse and dispute about variations in the lyrics for the spooky old Appalachian murder ballad "In the Pines," known more popularly as "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" Is it about a girl found in the woods after a crime of passion? Was there a train involved? A decapitation? Depends which version you've heard. What I've seen no one talk about is the big difference in the chords among the various versions. The influential Bill Monroe version follows a very standard I-I-IV-I, I-V-I-I progression, and many follow his lead, even the often adventurous Dave Van Ronk. But Lead Belly's seminal 1939 version, which first grabbed me on a friend's dad's folk collection, does something much more haunting and sharp-angled: His chords are I-I-IV-III, V-V-I-I, or EEAG, BBEE. It's that G, the major III, and the G-natural accidental note over it, leading to the bright glare of the B, the V, that cinches it:
It's that version that Kurt Cobain and Nirvana made famous nearly 30 years ago. Under the title "Black Girl," it was a Top 20 U.K. hit in 1964 for a band called the Four Pennies, who retained that haunting major III but inexplicably followed it with a deadening return to the I chord. Another intriguing variation comes courtesy of the Kossoy Sisters, whose 1956 rendition, called "In the Pines," adds a subtle minor, for a progression that runs I-I-IV-iv, I-V-I-I.
Finally, I'm not sure I can name exactly why this particular instance of the so-called '50s progression—the "Heart and Soul" I-iv-IV-V—rips my heart out like countless other instances of it just don't (the Chordettes' "Lollipop" almost does the trick, but not quite). It could be the way the Dell Vikings's "Come and Go With Me" hammers the sixth chords—those haunting majors-haunted-by-their-minor-cousins chords—by putting a Bb and C over a Db and Eb chord, respectively:
And rubbing in that Db6 for the final cadence, on the "woa" triplets:
It could be the way the bridge leans into a few juicy harmonies—"Yes, I need you" making a pungent dominant 7th chord, a Cb note over the Db chord, or the piercing major 9th formed by the falsetto "Aaaah" at the end of the bridge:
Or could it be the sincerity of feeling, even as they're singing vocables and clichés? The casually rocking instrumental sax break? It may be as simple as the age this song hit me: In the mid-'80s, when I was 18, and it appeared on the soundtrack of Stand By Me. Whatever the case, hit it did, and it stuck.
And rubbing in that Db6 for the final cadence, on the "woa" triplets:
It could be the way the bridge leans into a few juicy harmonies—"Yes, I need you" making a pungent dominant 7th chord, a Cb note over the Db chord, or the piercing major 9th formed by the falsetto "Aaaah" at the end of the bridge:
Or could it be the sincerity of feeling, even as they're singing vocables and clichés? The casually rocking instrumental sax break? It may be as simple as the age this song hit me: In the mid-'80s, when I was 18, and it appeared on the soundtrack of Stand By Me. Whatever the case, hit it did, and it stuck.
Comments
Post a Comment