Carpenters' Christmas Portrait

I didn't listen to the Carpenters' Christmas Portrait until later this year, so this post about a couple songs on it is going up after Christmas.

"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"

I heard this on the radio (which reminded me that I hadn't listened to the album yet this year), and I noticed three things that I wanted to write about, but after looking into them, only one turned out to be viable:  the "star" in "Hang your shining star above the highest bough" is just a half-step above the "bough," so pitch-wise, the "star" is "above the highest bough."  The "star" is sung to an A, and the "bough" to a G#.

"I'll Be Home for Christmas"

The Carpenters' version starts with a couplet that I haven't heard in any other version.  It's:

I’m dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually do
And although I know it's a long road back, I promise you

and then it goes into "I'll be home for Christmas / You can count on me...."

There's a grammatical ambiguity with "even more than I usually do," specifically what it's referring to.  It could be either "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually [dream about it]" or "I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love even more than I usually [love it]."  Either parsing is valid, and it could be understood either way.

"White Christmas"

Last year, I figured out how to play "White Christmas," and I discovered that there's a five-note chromatic phrase corresponding to "of a white Christmas."  I was thinking about that again this year when I realized the whole first phrase is made up of half-steps:

(click the image to enlarge it)

After I realized that, I started thinking about the lyrics for that phrase:  "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas."  Because the music there is made up entirely of half-steps, there's a sort of tension.  It sort of portrays either the desperation or the earnestness of the singer/speaker's wish for a white Christmas.

"It Came upon the Midnight Clear"

Since July, I've been slowly working my way through the book I used in my beginner's piano class in college (James Bastien's The Older Beginner Piano Course).  At the end of October, I re-learned how to turn the thumb under or cross the hand over in order to play a scale with one hand.  To demonstrate this, the book provides a few phrases from some Christmas songs that are built on scales.  One of these is the third line in "It Came upon the Midnight Clear":

After practicing this for a few days, I started thinking about that octave drop that accompanies "Peace on the earth."  I realized that it retains a distinction from the Luke 2 text that the lyrics are based on: "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!'" (Luke 2:13-14).  There's the highness of God and the lowness of those on the earth.  While the lyrics here don't include "Glory to God in the highest," they still have that same idea of the difference of levels by setting the "peace" and "the earth" on the same note an octave apart.

For what it's worth, both Handel (in the Messiah: No. 17 - Glory to God in the Highest) and Saint-Saëns (in his Christmas Oratorio: II. Recit et chœur) do similar things with the same text.  They set the "highest" with higher voices and the "on earth" with lower ones.  I hadn't noticed until writing this, but Handel has an octave drop for "peace on earth" too, between A notes in the bass voice:

(notation found here)

The Beach Boys' "Blue Christmas"

A few days ago, I listened to a Beach Boys Christmas album, and I noticed something about their version of "Blue Christmas."  At about 2:00, some brass instruments (I think French horns) quote a phrase from George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  I can't find a score of the Rhapsody in Blue in order to look up the notation, and the phrase is too complex for my novice notation skills, but in "Blue Christmas," the phrase is D, Eb, F, and then an F an octave lower.  In the Rhapsody in Blue, it's G#, A, B, and then a B an octave lower.  (In the recording of Rhapsody in Blue I have by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, it's at about 11:31.)  It's the same phrase, just transposed down for "Blue Christmas."  (For what it's worth, it's also the phrase that starts "Rhapsody in Blue (Reprise)" on Brian Wilson's Reimagines Gershwin album, although that's E, F, G, and then a G an octave lower).

I did some research and discovered (in the entry for 18 June 1964 in Keith Badman's The Beach Boys: The Definitive Diary of America's Greatest Band on Stage and in the Studio) that the Beach Boys' version of "Blue Christmas" was arranged by Dick Reynolds.  While Wilson didn't arrange it himself, he probably had a hand in putting in that quotation because he's acknowledged Gershwin's influence and mentioned Rhapsody in Blue in particular.  The Reimagines Gershwin album provides ample evidence.

Purely as a reference, it's also interesting because "blue" is in the title of both works (and in the lyrics of "Blue Christmas").  To some degree, quoting Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue gives more depth to "Blue Christmas."  There's the feeling of "Blue Christmas" itself, but then - because of that quotation - there's an injection of the feeling of the Rhapsody in Blue too.

I transcribed "Blue Christmas" when I listened to the album a second time, and I found something interesting about the song itself, not just the Beach Boys' version.  The lines in the first verse all have line-ending rhymes ("without you" rhymes with "about you," and "tree" rhymes with "me"), but that same structure isn't in the second verse.  The first two lines rhyme ("certain" with "hurtin'"), but not "You'll be doin' alright with your Christmas of white / But I'll have a blue, blue Christmas."  Instead of line-ending rhymes, there's internal rhyme in the third line ("alright" and "white") and no rhyme at all in the fourth line, either within the line itself or with any other line.  That surfeit of rhyme in the third line and the lack of rhyme in the fourth poetically mirror the lyrics themselves.  "You'll be doin' alright" with internal rhyme, "But I'll have a blue, blue Christmas" with no rhyme at all.

Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues

A couple years ago, I noticed that Innisfree is mentioned in a couple songs on Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues.  I'd wondered if it was related to Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," but until recently, I'd never really looked into it.  In doing so, I found some other interesting things too.

I should note that I took the lyrics from the gatefold of the vinyl version:

However, they're not exactly what's on the album itself.  There are some differences between what's written and what's sung, and some of the line breaks occur in weird places.  The songs on the album are also in a different order than that in the gatefold, but that might be just because of the space the lyrics require when written out.

"Bedouin Dress"

At "return" in the line "Everything I took I’d soon return," more instruments come in, and the dynamics increase, as if to reflect the returning.  Similarly, once the next line starts ("Just to be at Innisfree again") there's a harmony vocal that continues throughout the rest of the song.

In the gatefold, the second half of the last verse is rendered as:

Gleaming white, just as I recalled
Old as I get,
I would never forget it at all.

 Standardized and following what's actually on the album, it's more like:

Gleaming white, just as I recall
Old as I get, I would never forget it at all
Gleaming white, just as I recall
Old as I get, I could never forget it at all

The printed lyrics have only "I would never forget it," but on the album, there's also "I could never forget it."

This is the first track on the album that mentions Innisfree, but there's not that much in common between this and Yeats' poem.  Both narrators want to go to Innisfree (Yeats' poem starts with "I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree," and here there's "Everything I took I’d soon return / Just to be at Innisfree again"), and both are looking for peace (there's "And I shall have some peace there..." in Yeats, and "Everything I took I’d soon return / Just to be at Innisfree again" from "Bedouin Dress" seems to hint at the same feeling).

"Sim Sala Bim"

When the "Then the earth shook..." verse starts, violin tremolos begin, providing a sense of trembling.

I think it's fairly obvious, but the couplet at the end ("Remember when you had me cut your hair? / Call me 'Delilah' then I wouldn’t care") is an allusion to Samson and Delilah in Judges 16.

"The Plains/Bitter Dancer"

The second verse starts and ends with the line "You took a room and you settled in."  While the next verse does the same thing (with "I should have known one day you would come"), repeating the line with "you settled in" emphasizes the certainty of the settling in.  It implies that the "you" will be there for a rather long time.

At the end, the line "At arm's length I will hold you there, there" is repeated, but it's not present in the gatefold lyrics, which actually mirrors the sentiment pretty well.  There's a cautiousness in holding someone "at arm's length," just as there is in not including those lyrics in the gatefold.

"Helplessness Blues"

There's an interesting feature here with doubles.  The song starts with the lines "I was raised up believin’ I was somehow unique / Like a snowflake, distinct among snowflakes / Unique in each way you’d conceive," and there's one voice and one guitar.  But after the lines "I’d rather be / A functioning cog in some great machinery / Serving something beyond me," a second voice, a second guitar, and harmonium come in (during the line "But I don’t, I don’t know what that will be").

Later, there's the opposite effect:  at the "know" in "If I know only one thing," the second guitar drops out.  There are still two voices, but now there's only one guitar and one harmonium, so there's an exclusivity to match the "one thing" in the lyric.

For both, the strumming pattern of the guitar(s) matches the number.  If there's only one guitar, the strums are all (or at least mostly) downward, but if there are two, the strums are upward and downward.

"Lorelei"

To some degree, the repeated "you" in the line "You, you were like glue" gives a sense of the adhesiveness of glue.  It's almost as if the word stuck to itself when it was put into the song.

The parallelism in the line "Call out to nobody, call out to me" equates "nobody" with "me," which is the same idea in "I was like trash on the sidewalk" and "I was old news to you."

The "Old news, old news to you then" line is interesting in that - through its repetitions - it itself becomes old news.  Furthermore, there's a sort of motif in the melody to which it's sung:

(click the image to enlarge it)
(I'm fairly confident in this notation, although I might have the key wrong)

For the first three words ("Old news, old..."), each word lasts one measure and is comprised of two eighth notes and a half note.  The first eighth note and the half note are the same pitch, and the second eighth note is one step above the other two notes (sometimes a half-step, sometimes a whole-step).  For the last "news," there are two quarter notes (continuing downward like the rest of the phrase) instead of a half note.

Almost every "Old news, old news" section has this melody, so there's the repetition of the phrase as a whole, and there's the repetition of that three-note motif within the phrase.  The only one that doesn't have this melody is the one that's after the line "Fell for the ruse with you then."  Instead, it becomes:

That line ("Fell for the ruse...") has its place in the narrative of the song, but it also affects the "Old news..." section that follows it.  The melody itself "fell for the ruse," was deceived, and changed.

"Someone You'd Admire"

Like the second voice in "Helplessness Blues," a second voice comes in for the line "I walk with others."

The phrase "gnash their teeth" seems to be a Biblical reference.  It's actually in a few places in Matthew where Jesus explains some parables, but Matthew 13:41-42 is probably the most easily quotable:  "The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace.  In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

The strumming pattern emphasizes "Claw" and "gnash" in the line "Claw at my skin and gnash their teeth and shout."  They both occur on the first beat of the bar, and that first beat is a quarter note where the other beats are eighth notes, so that first beat (and the impact of those words) stands out:

(click the image to enlarge it)

I should note that my notation is accurate only as far as the guitar strumming, not the tonality.  I used B notes just because they're in the middle of the staff.

"The Shrine/An Argument"

I think the first pair of lines in these verses are really long, rhyming "dawn" with "gone" and "shrine" with "fine."  In the gatefold lyrics though, there are some really interesting line breaks that seem to have some extra meaning.

The gatefold renders a section from the first verse as:

Underneath were all these pennies
Fallen from the hands of
Children they were there and
Then were gone.

The line breaks occur at places of separation: the pennies from the hands, and the children's being there and being gone.  The second verse, as renders in the gatefold lyrics, has something similar:

But that day, you know, I left
My money and I thought of you only

Here, there's the separation of the speaker/singer from his money.

There's a weird metrical strain in the line "In the driveway, pulling away, putting on your coat."  I don't understand meter enough to be able to diagram or illustrate this, but the "away" is stressed on the first syllable instead of the second.  The resulting strain seems to betray the speaker/singer's frisson.

In the line "In the ocean washin’ off my name from your throat," there's a similar sound in the "c" of "ocean" and the "sh" of "washin'."  Purely poetically, this is just consonance, but it also suggests scouring or scraping something clean, which is more explicitly present in the "washin'" itself.

There are two features here that seem to connect this song with "Helplessness Blues."  First, there's "I left my money, and I thought of you only, all that copper glowin’ fine."  It's kind of ambiguous whether the "copper glowin' fine" is a literal description of the money or a figurative description of "you" (that is, the person's hair).  If it's the second, it's similar to "Gold hair in the sunlight" in "Helplessness Blues."  Second, both mention apples.  There's the line "Green apples hang from my tree" near the end of "The Shrine/An Argument," and "Helplessness Blues" has a number of lines beginning with "If I had an orchard...."  In looking through the album's lyrics, I noticed quite a lot of similar descriptions in various songs.  I'm still not sure what to make of some of the others, but this one seemed to be one of the most connected, which is why I'm mentioning it.

This is the second song on the album that mentions Innisfree, and there's more that would seem to connect this to Yeats' poem than there is in "Bedouin Dress," but still not enough to say that it was intentional.  Both use a lot of natural imagery, but there's only one that they have in common.  The last few lines of "The Shrine/An Argument" are:

And if I just stay a while here, starin' at the sea
And the waves break ever closer, ever near to me
I will lay down in the sand and let the ocean lead
Carry me to Innisfree like pollen on the breeze

There are image of water (the sea, the waves, and the ocean), which is somewhat similar to the tenth line of "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" - "I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore."

Between this and "Bedouin Dress," there really isn't anything that specifically references Yeats' poem.  If anything, Innisfree is used just in the same general sense of a peaceful, natural place.

"Grown Ocean"

It doesn't really make a difference to the meaning of the line, but "Kept like jewelry kept with devotion" could be parsed in two different ways.  As it is in the gatefold rendering, because there's no comma, "kept with devotion" is modifying the "jewelry."  With a comma, both "kept like jewelry" and "kept with devotion" modify the "children grown on the edge of the ocean" from the previous line.

This song ends with:

Wide-eyed walker, don’t betray me
I will wake one day, don’t delay me
Wide-eyed leaver, always going

The "wide-eyed walker" appears earlier on the album in "Battery Kinzie":

Wide-eyed walker
Do not wander
Do not wander through the dawn

Like the features that seem to tie together "Helplessness Blues" and "The Shrine/An Argument," this was one of the stronger inter-song connections I found on the album.

The Byrds' Sweetheart of the Rodeo

Since 20 January (the 50th anniversary of their first studio session on 20 January 1965), I've been reading Christopher Hjort's So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star: The Byrds Day-by-Day 1965-1973.  A month or two ago, I reached August 1968, when Sweetheart of the Rodeo was released (on 30 August according to Hjort and the liner notes of my CD reissue).  It's probably my favorite Byrds album (although I've heard only the first six so far), so after reading about it, I listened to it a few times and found a few interesting things.

"I Am a Pilgrim"

I'm surprised I didn't realize this earlier, but there are two Biblical stories mentioned in the lyrics.

"I’m going down to the River of Jordan / Just to bathe my wearisome soul" is a reference to Naaman in the Old Testament.  In 2 Kings 5, the prophet Elisha tells Naaman to dip himself in the Jordan River seven times to be cured of his leprosy.

The other reference is in the lines "If I can just touch the hem of His garment, good Lord / Then I’d know He’d take me home."  Recounted in three different books of the New Testament (Matthew 9, Mark 5, and Luke 8), a woman is healed from a discharge of blood after touching only the fringe of Jesus' garment.

(I feel it's also worth mentioning that last September I wrote about some similarities between "I Am a Pilgrim" and "Wayfaring Stranger" as part of my Collection Audit project.)

"The Christian Life"

The CD version I have of Sweetheart of the Rodeo includes bonus tracks, one of which is a rehearsal of "The Christian Life."  After listening to both, I discovered that the two versions flip the first line of the two verses.  In the version on the final album, the first verse starts with "My buddies tell me that I should have waited" and the second with "My buddies shun me since I turned to Jesus," but in the other version, the first verse starts with "My buddies shun me since I turned to Jesus" and the second with "My buddies tell me that I should have waited."

In both versions, there seems to be a discrepancy between the lead and backing vocals during the line "For what is a friend who'd want you to fall."  The lead vocals seem to have "who'd want" where the backing vocals have "who wants."

"You're Still on My Mind"

Lately, I've been really interested in melismas that add meaning to the lyric.  "You're Still on My Mind" has some of them with the "heart" in the line "An empty bottle, a broken heart, and you’re still on my mind" that ends each verse.  Where "heart" would normally have only one syllable, it has two here, so it sounds "broken."  Oddly, though, that melisma isn't present in every verse.  It's in the first verse and the repeated line in the third verse.  In the rehearsal version (included as a bonus track), it's in the second verse and that repeated line in the third verse.

"You Got a Reputation" [Bonus Track]

Like the melismas on "heart" in "You're Still on My Mind," there are some interesting melismas on "down" in a few of the various "You’re just tearin’ your own reputation down" lines.  They're slight, but some of those "down"s have multiple syllables, and later syllables are at a lower pitch than earlier ones.  So the word "down" is falling, pitch-wise.

Smokey Robinson & the Miracles' Cookin' with the Miracles

A few months ago, I listened to a two-CD set of Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, and recently I listened to it a second time so I could write about it.  It includes their first two albums, Hi... We're the Miracles and Cookin' with the Miracles, with some bonus tracks.  I noticed some interesting things about a few songs on Cookin' with the Miracles.

"Everybody's Gotta Pay Some Dues"

The opening part of this has a rhythm that's very similar to that in Ravel's Boléro (or, apparently, any boléro).  A month or so before I discovered it in this Miracles song, I also found it in a Jacques Brel song, so I just re-purposed the diagram I made for that:

(click the image to enlarge it)

(notation for Ravel's Boléro found here)

I'll include the same disclaimer from that Brel post:  it's entirely possible that I've done the notation wrong.  Also, I didn't mean to indicate B notes, but I couldn't format my notation like it should be for percussion (with only one line).

"You Never Miss a Good Thing"

I noticed the lines "I know you might miss your water / When the well runs dry," which I think might be a reference to an-other song, but I'm not sure which one.  I have two other songs in my collection that have titles (and lines) similar to those lines: Ray Charles' "(You'll Never Miss the Water) Until the Well Runs Dry" and the Byrds' "You Don't Miss Your Water" from Sweetheart of the Rodeo (with the line "You don’t miss your water til your well runs dry").  Obviously the Byrds' version (from 1968) post-dates this Miracles song, but as a song, "You Don't Miss Your Water" was apparently first released in 1961 - the same year as Cookin' with the Miracles.  If nothing else, all three songs use the same imagery.

"Embraceable You"

The Gershwins' "Embraceable You" is probably the most-performed song in my collection, but after hearing the Miracles' version I understood a different sense of the line "I love all the many charms about you."  I think the Miracles' slow tempo had something to do with perceiving it differently.  I'd always understood that line relatively plainly, where "about" has the sense of "pertaining to."  But it could also have the sense of "surrounding" - the same sense that it has in the next line:  "Above all, I want my arms about you."

With that "surrounding" sense, it becomes similar to a line earlier in the song: "Just one look at you, my heart goes tipsy in me."  In the same way that a look can make the speaker/singer tipsy, there's almost an intoxicating cloud of charm around the titular "you" that also affects the speaker/singer.

Mendelssohn: Concerto in A minor for piano and strings

For the last three days, I've listened to Mendelssohn's Concerto in A minor for my CMQ project (I was reading a Mendelssohn biography last February, which is why that piece was in the queue so much).  The first time I listened to it for the CMQ (which was only the second time I'd ever listened to it), I noticed a phrase in the strings near the beginning of the first movement (it's also near the end of the movement).  It took a few minutes to place, but I eventually remembered that Mozart's "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" (Serenade No. 13 in G major K. 525) starts with a similar phrase.

I looked up the scores for both so I could compare them.  I had a bit of trouble with the Mendelssohn concerto in that the only notation I could find is apparently the original manuscript.  Mendelssohn wrote it when he was pretty young, and I don't think it was actually printed.  Because it was hand-written, there's a greater likelihood that I miscounted my measures.

In any case, when I looked up the notation and found the part I'd heard, I was surprised by how similar it is to Mozart's phrase.  While they're an octave lower, the first six pitches are the same, and the first five note values are the same.

(click the image to enlarge it)
(notation found here [Mozart's Serenade] and here [Mendelssohn's Concerto])

The middle line is my standardized rendering of the two violin parts in Mendelssohn's Concerto; at the beginning of that line, there are two treble clefs, and I'm assuming that it means that the two violin parts there are the same.  I was going to do the same for the viola and bass parts, but I had some difficulties with my program.  I found the original manuscript a bit difficult to read, but I think those other string parts match Mozart's too.

I went back and referenced the Mendelssohn biography I'd read (R. Larry Todd's Mendelssohn: A Life in Music) to see if I could find anything about this Mozart quotation.  Todd mentions Mendelssohn's being "thoroughly captivated" by Johann Hummel's A minor piano concerto and that Hummel was a student of Mozart, and he also says that Mendelssohn's concerto "marks an impressive achievement of an apprentice, who anticipated elements of his own mature style while he assimilated the legacy of Mozart's concerti and tested Hummel's innovations in piano technique."  There isn't anything there about that quotation of Mozart's serenade, but clearly Mozart was an influence.

Mendelssohn: A Midsummer Night's Dream Overture, Op. 21

For the last two days, the classical piece I've listened to as part of my Classical Music Queue project has been Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream music.  I became curious about a particular phrase in the overture, so I looked up the notation and followed along when I listened to it yester-day.  What I heard wasn't what I thought, but in looking through the notation, I found something else that I found interesting.

The overture starts and ends with a four-note phrase in the flutes.  The second flute part in the opening is different, but the two flute parts at the end form progressively larger intervals.

(notation found here)

First, there's a third (E, G#), then a fourth (F#, B), a fifth (A, E), and finally a sixth (B, G#).

I don't have anything extra-musical to say about this; I just thought it was a really interesting feature.

Delicious Pastries' Pretty Please

I got Delicious Pastries' album Pretty Please shortly after it came out, and even though they're not that famous of a band, that album became my favorite new album at the time.  I hadn't listened to it for a while, but I recently got back into it and noticed lots of things I'd been oblivious to.

"safe & sound"

The couplet "and I will do all those things / that I would have done unto me" seems to be a reference to the Golden Rule.  "So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets" - Matthew 7:12.

"dad"

This is where most my re-sparked interest lay, specifically in the line "you never gave us stones, we only ate bread."  I'd always thought that, following the Matthew 7 reference in "safe & sound," this was based on Matthew 7:9-10:  "Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?"  But then while reading Lord Byron's Don Juan, I came across a reference to Saturn:

One system eats another up, and this
Much as old Saturn ate his progeny;
For when his pious consort gave him stones
In lieu of sons, of these he made no bones (Canto 14, stanza 1, lines 5-8)

I also looked up Saturn in Edith Hamilton's Mythology.  She explains that

Cronos [the Greek name for Saturn] had learned that one of his children was destined some day to dethrone him and he thought to go against fate by swallowing them as soon as they were born.  But when Rhea [his wife] bore Zeus, her sixth child, she succeeded in having him secretly carried off to Crete, while she gave her husband a great stone wrapped in swaddling clothes which he supposed was the baby and swallowed down accordingly.

Later in "dad," there's the line "you'd have to eat the veins and arteries too," which seems more relevant to the story of Saturn than the Matthew text.  I still can't seem to make much sense of it, but running across that reference to Saturn in Don Juan has at least showed me that there's more to "dad" than I originally thought.

At the very end of the song, there's the sound of a train, which I'm fairly certain is a reference to "Caroline, No," the last track on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, which also ends with the sound of a train.

"marian"

The book-related metaphors ("you're no open book" and "I'd dog-ear a couple of your pages") made me realize that this might be a reference to Marian Paroo, the librarian in The Music Man.  The names are spelt the same, and there are those book references.

"Careless Love"

Since July, I've been working my way through the piano book I used in my beginner's piano class in college.  Last week I re-learned and practiced "Careless Love," which - according to the book - is a Tennessee folk song.  I'm sure I didn't notice this when I first learned the song, but there's a chromatic phrase in the chords at the end of the third phrase and into the fourth:

F7 (F, A, Eb), inverted Bb (F, Bb, D), inverted Bbm (F, Bb, Db), F (F, A, C)

I remember liking that part, but I didn't know it was because of that chromatic phrase (I didn't even know what a chromatic phrase was back then).  In the four years or so since I took that piano class, I've learnt a lot more about music, so when I discovered that chromatic phrase now, I realized that it reflects the feeling of the lyrics.  There seems to be an inherent melancholy associated with descending chromatic phrases, and the lyrics include a despairing "See what careless love has done to me."

Shortly after I played this song in piano class, I discovered a version by Fats Domino already in my music collection.  (For what it's worth, his version is in Ab major where my piano book has it in F major, so the chromatic phrase in his is within the chord sequence Ab7 C# C#m Ab.)  I recently listened to it again and transcribed the lyrics.  They're different from the ones in my piano book (not unusual for folk songs), but they too have a downhearted feeling, with phrases like "Can’t you see what careless love done to me" and "You said that you love me, and it didn’t mean a thing."

Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals

A year or two ago, I thought I found a phrase in Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G minor, KV 550 that sounded similar to a phrase in Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals.  Recently, because it was in the CMQ, I listened to that Mozart symphony and remembered this possible connection that I'd never followed up on.  So I looked up the notation for both pieces and found the specific phrases.

The viola phrase at the very beginning of the second movement of Mozart's symphony:

(click on the image to enlarge it)

(notation found here)

The first contrabass phrase in Saint-Saëns' "The Elephant":

(notation found here)

Both start with an ascending fourth from Bb to Eb, and then that Eb is repeated.  Near the end of both phrases, there's a three-note section where the middle note is lower than the outer two (a whole step in Mozart's symphony, but a half step in "The Elephant").

Apparently Saint-Saëns was familiar with Mozart's work, so I'm assuming that he would have known Symphony No. 40, but I'm not sure if it inspired that phrase in "The Elephant."  There's certainly a similarity between them, but I'm still hesitant to assert anything about classical music because I don't know very much about it.

The Tremeloes' "Hello World"

Last month, I wrote about a riff that's in both the Moody Blues' "So Deep within You" from On the Threshold of a Dream and Rod Argent and Chris White's "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," which was recorded after the Zombies broke up.  At the time, I'd thought I knew an-other song that had a similar-sounding part, but I couldn't identify it.  Recently though, I listened to an anthology of the Tremeloes, and I discovered that I'd been thinking of the beginning of "Hello World."

The phrase in "Hello World" is longer than those in "So Deep within You" and "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," and it repeats more frequently.  The song starts with it played four and a half times.

In "Hello World," it starts on a different pitch relative to the key than in "So Deep within You" and "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," but the intervals are the same in all three (and the pitches of the first five notes are the same between "Hello World" and "So Deep within You").

(click the image to enlarge it)

(standard disclaimer that the notation may be wrong because I did it myself)

Unlike the other two, the notes in that phrase in "Hello World" are picked individually where the second of each pair of eighth notes are hammer-ons in "So Deep within You" and "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)."

According to the liner notes in my Tremeloes collection (Silence Is Golden: The Very Best of the Tremeloes), "Hello World" was issued as a single in 1969.  On the Threshold of a Dream - the album on which "So Deep within You" appears - was also released in 1969 (specifically, April).  Apparently "So Deep within You" was the B-side to the "Never Comes the Day" single, released the same month.  According to the liner notes for Into the Afterlife, "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" was recorded in March 1968, although it wasn't released until Into the Afterlife in 2007.

So I have even fewer answers than I did when I wrote my original post.  Now I have three songs that were all recorded and/or released within about a year and that all share the same phrase.

The Shangri-Las' "Remember (Walking in the Sand)"

Last month, I listened to a compilation album of the Shangri-Las, and I became really interested in "Remember (Walking in the Sand)."  It has some great features, and the more I looked into it, the more I found.

The first thing I noticed was the bass parts during the "(Remember) Walking in the sand..." section:

(click the image to enlarge it)
(standard disclaimer that the notation may be wrong because I did it myself)

I should note that I combined the electric bass part and the bass register of the piano part in the notation.  After two eighth notes spanning a fourth (A to D) in the bass register of the piano, the electric bass echoes that fourth in quarter notes.  Musically, there's a portrayal of memory.  There's the initial event (the fourth on piano), and then that event is revisited but - because of the unreliable nature of memory - it's slightly different.  It's still the interval of a fourth, but it's played on a different instrument and the note values are longer, almost as if that memory is being dwelt upon rather than hurriedly passed over.

In figuring out how to play the bass part (so that I could write about what was happening in that section), I discovered that during the verses, it's has a downward trend:

This repeats throughout the verse, but I don't know how to add repeat signs (the program I use is actually meant to create MIDI files, not notation, but it works well enough for that purpose).

Between that descent and the key (D minor), the sadness in the lyrics ("Seems like the other day / My baby went away," "He said that we were through / He found somebody new") is emphasized.

About a month after I realized those two things about the bass part, I realized that those two sections are in different time signatures.  The verses are in 3/4, and the choruses are in 4/4.  There's a musical distinction between the events that the singer/speaker is currently relating and the events that she's remembering.

The Shirelles - Greatest Hits

Over the last month or so, I've been listening to a Greatest Hits album by the Shirelles fairly regularly, and I found some interesting things in a number of the songs, mostly just interesting melismas.  Coincidentally, it was a year ago to-day that I first listened to the album.

"Tonight's the Night"

There are some nice features with melismas in the bridge here.  The "so"s in both "I might love you so much" and "I may want you so much" have melismas, as if to emphasize how much, and the "heart" in "You may break my heart" has three syllables instead of the usual one, portraying the fragmented nature that the heart would have if it were broken.

"Baby It's You"

Similar to the "heart" in "Tonight's the Night," there's a melisma on "apart" in the second line -  "It’s not the way you kiss that tears me apart."

"Everybody Loves a Lover"

The last two "fell"s in the lead vocals have melismas and the later syllables have lower pitches than the first ones, so as the word is sung, it becomes lower.  The word itself is falling as the speaker/singer explains how she fell in love.

"Foolish Little Girl"

I think ever since the first time I listened to this, the opening sounded vaguely familiar.  It wasn't until about a month ago that I placed it; the first line ("You broke his heart and made him cry") is quite similar to the first line in "Do You Love Me" ("You broke my heart / 'Cause I couldn't dance").  Both songs also have the same contrast in instrumentation.  That first section is quieter with fewer instruments, but then more instruments join in and the song becomes louder.

I should note that I actually don't own the Contour's version of "Do You Love Me."  I'm writing based on the Tremeloes' version, which I think is a pretty faithful cover.

Grieg: From Holberg's Time, Op. 40

Last month, I listened to Grieg's Op. 40 a few times, both the orchestrated version and the solo piano version.  As the title page notes, From Holberg's Time was purposely written in an older style ("im alten Style"):

The Holberg in the title is Ludwig Holberg (1684-1754), a Norwegian man of letters.

While listening to the piano version, I noticed a phrase in the first movement:

(click the image to enlarge it)
(notation found here)

When I heard this it sounded familiar to me, although I had to look up the notation to figure out what was going on and why it sounded familiar.  Starting in the forty-ninth measure, the bass part starts descending, but after every two notes, it alternates octaves and repeats the last note from the previous pair.  Or, at least, it alternates octaves to some degree, since the notes are also doubled in octaves.  (This is in the orchestrated version too, although the notes aren't doubled by octaves.)

This sounded familiar because this same type of figure is in the continuo parts of two Bach works that I looked into recently, Christ lag in Todes Banden (BWV 4) and the Third Orchestral Suite in D major (BWV 1068).

(notation found here [BWV 4] and here [BWV 1068])

For the past year and a half (I finished it yester-day), I'd been reading a book of Edvard Grieg's letters (Edvard Grieg: Letters to Colleagues and Friends, Benestad and Halverson, eds.), and I recently read a letter he wrote to August Winding on 4 February 1875 saying that

recently in St. Thomas Church [in Leipzig] I heard the first concert by a Bach Association under the leadership of Volkland, von Holstein and Spitta (the author of an excellent book on Bach).  The concert included three cantatas by Bach that had not been performed publicly before.  I have never heard anything so beautiful by Bach; they are marvelous, great, profound, childlike and fervent.

I'm not sure if Christ lag in Todes Banden is one of the cantatas that Grieg heard, but that letter at least illustrates that Grieg was fairly familiar with Bach's works.

From Holberg's Time is from 1884, almost ten years after Grieg heard those Bach cantatas in Leipzig.  So between Grieg's documented familiarity with Bach's works and the close historical time period between Holberg (1684-1754) and Bach (1685-1750), it seems like Grieg might have taken that particular phrase from Bach's suite and/or cantata and used it to evoke that particular time period in his own work.

The Decemberists' "Eli, the Barrow Boy"

Recently, I've been listening (for the first time) to a box set of Pete Seeger.  Since a lot of the songs are folk songs, I've heard other versions of some of them.  So while "Molly Malone" wasn't a new song to me, because I recently listened to Seeger's version, I got to thinking about it and realized that it shares some similarities with the Decemberists' "Eli, the Barrow Boy" from Picaresque.

The first lines of both mention a city.  "Molly Malone" names Dublin specifically ("In Dublin's fair city") where "Eli, the Barrow Boy" has just a general "town."  I'd always heard it as "Eli, the barrow boy of the old town," but according to the Decemberists' website, it's "Eli, the barrow boy, you’re the old town."  It's a minor point, but both start with a location.

Both characters "cry" out the wares that they have to sell.  The second verse of "Molly Malone" explains that "She was a fishmonger," and the "Cryin' 'Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh'" line is at the end of every verse and acts as a transition to the chorus (which is comprised of all the same words).  While Eli has a wider variety of merchandise (he "Sells coal and marigolds" and "Corn cobs and candlewax"), he too "cries out all down the day."

It's not as obvious in "Eli, the Barrow Boy" as it is in "Molly Malone," but both have a fair amount of repetition to describe how much time the characters spend trying to make sales.  "All the day," "All down the day," or "Down the day" appear (usually twice) in every section of "Eli, the Barrow Boy," and "Through streets long and narrow" (or, as some versions have it, "Through streets broad and narrow") is the second-to-last line in every verse in "Molly Malone."

While Molly Malone dies of a fever and Eli drowns, both return as ghosts to continue pushing their wheelbarrows through the streets and sell their goods.  The last verse of "Molly Malone" explains that "Now her ghost wheels the barrow / Through streets long and narrow," and - likewise - the last section of "Eli, the Barrow Boy" has Eli saying, "But I am dead and gone and lying in a church ground / But still I push my barrow all the day."

I know Colin Meloy has some interest in folk songs (evidenced by the Colin Meloy Sings Shirley Collins EP and The Hazards of Love album), so I'm assuming that "Molly Malone" did have at least some influence on "Eli, the Barrow Boy."  I think the similarities would be too much of a coincidence otherwise.

The Moody Blues' "So Deep within You"

When I listened to the Moody Blues' On the Threshold of a Dream last month, the recurring guitar riff in "So Deep within You" caught my ear.  I figured out how to play it and confirmed that - save for the key - it's identical to a part in "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)," which was recorded by Chris White and Rod Argent shortly after the Zombies broke up.  (There are two versions of "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" on Into the Afterlife, but this riff is present only in the second version [track #18], the one with fuzz guitar.)

(click the image to enlarge it)
(standard disclaimer that since I did the notation myself, it might be wrong)

I didn't know how to indicate it in the notation, but the second note in each pair of eighth notes is a hammer-on.

In the Zombie Heaven liner notes, Paul Atkinson (the Zombies' guitarist) says that the Zombies were friends with the Moody Blues and used to go to their parties (p. 31).  While that provides evidence that the Zombies and the Moody Blues knew each other, it's slightly misleading as far as guitar players, since Atkinson didn't play on "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)."  The Into the Afterlife liner notes explain that it was Mac McLeod.

The chronology is also troublesome.  The Into the Afterlife liner notes say that the session at which "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" was recorded was in March 1968.  On the Threshold of a Dream came out in April 1969.  But "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)" wasn't released until the Into the Afterlife album in 2007.  So while it would appear that there was some mixing of influences since the songs originated only about a year apart, since the riffs are so similar (with the same accidental even), and since the bands knew each other, it doesn't seem possible that the Moody Blues could have known "Telescope (Mr. Galileo)."  Apparently, the similarity is just a coincidence.

Handel: Messiah

A few months ago, I wrote a rather long post about Handel's Messiah, and - just like I thought - a few days after I posted it, I found an-other Biblical source for the text.  And then I kept finding more.  I still haven't found all of them, but I've found enough that I didn't have in my last post to think that it's worth updating.  So this post is an addendum to the first, although I'm including only the sources I've found for the Biblical texts.  Like I said in my original post, I could probably just look them all up somewhere, but I wanted to find them myself.

What I've written about the music can still be found here.

Part I

1.  Symphony
2.  Comfort ye my people

"Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.  A voice cries: 'In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.'" - Isaiah 40:1-3

3.  Ev'ry valley shall be exalted

"'Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.'" - Isaiah 40:4

4.  And the glory of the Lord

"'And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.'" - Isaiah 40:5

5.  Thus saith the Lord of hosts

"For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land.  And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts." -Haggai 2:6-7

"Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.  And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts." - Malachi 3:1

6.  But who may abide the day of His coming

"But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?  For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap." - Malachi 3:2

7.  And he shall purify the sons of Levi

"He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD." - Malachi 3:3

8.  Behold, a virgin shall conceive

"Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.  Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." - Isaiah 7:14

This is also quoted in Matthew, where it includes the "God with us."

"'Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel" (which means, God with us)." - Matthew 1:23

9.  O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion

"Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, 'Behold your God!'" - Isaiah 40:9

"Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you." - Isaiah 60:1

10.  For behold, darkness shall cover the earth

"For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you." - Isaiah 60:2

11.  The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light

"The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined." - Isaiah 9:2

12.  For unto us a child is born

"For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." - Isaiah 9:6

13.  Pifa
14.  There were shepherds abiding in the fields

"And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear." - Luke 2:8-9

15.  And the angel said unto them

"And the angel said to them, 'Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.  For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.'" - Luke 2:10-11

16.  And suddenly there was with the angel

"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying," - Luke 2:13

17.  Glory to God in the highest

"'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!'" - Luke 2:14

18.  Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion

"Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!  Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.  I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall speak peace to the nations; his rule shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth." - Zechariah 9:9-10

19.  Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy." - Isaiah 35:5-6a

20.  He shall feed his flock like a shepherd

"He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young." - Isaiah 40:11

"'Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.'" - Matthew 11:28-29

21.  His yoke is easy

"'For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.'" - Matthew 11:30

Part II

22.  Behold the Lamb of God

"The next day he [John] saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'" - John 1:29

23.  He was despised and rejected of men

"He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide the faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." - Isaiah 53:3

"I gave my back to those who strike, and my cheeks to those who pull out the beard; I hid not my face from disgrace and spitting." - Isaiah 50:6

24.  Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows

"Surely he has borne our griefs and carried out sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace..." - Isaiah 53:4-5

25.  And with his stripes we are healed

"... and with his stripes we are healed." - Isaiah 53:5

26.  All we like sheep have gone astray

"All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." - Isaiah 53:6

27.  All they that see him laugh him to scorn

28.  He trusted in God that he would deliver him

29.  Thy rebuke hath broken his heart

30.  Behold and see if there be any sorrow
31.  He was cut off

"By oppression and judgement he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?" - Isaiah 53:8

32.  But thou didst not leave his soul in hell

In my previous Messiah post, I postulated that this was related to Psalm 16:10 - "For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption."  I found a similar verse in the New Testament:

"'For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your Holy One see corruption.'" - Acts 2:27

33.  Lift up your heads, O ye gates

"Lift up your heads, O gates!  And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.  Who is this King of glory?  The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!  Lift up your heads, O gates!  And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.  Who is this King of glory?  The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory!" - Psalm 24:7-10

34.  Unto which of the angels

"For to which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my Son, today I have begotten you'?  Or again, 'I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son'?" - Hebrews 1:5

35.  Let all the angels of God worship Him

"And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, 'Let all God's angels worship him.'" - Hebrews 1:6

36.  Thou art gone up on high

There's some similarity between the text here and Ephesians 4:8:  "Therefore it says, 'When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.'"

37.  The Lord gave the word
38.  How beautiful are the feet

"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.'  The voice of your watchmen - they lift up their voice; together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the LORD to Zion.  Break forth together into singing, you waste places of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people; he has redeemed Jerusalem." - Isaiah 52:7-9

39.  Their sound is gone out
40.  Why do the nations so furiously rage together

"Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?  The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and his Anointed, saying," - Psalm 2:1-2

41.  Let us break their bonds asunder

"'Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.'" - Psalm 2:3

42.  He that dwelleth in heaven

"He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision." - Psalm 2:4

43.  Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron

"You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel." - Psalm 2:9

44.  Hallelujah

"Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, 'Hallelujah!  For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.'" - Revelation 19:6

"Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, 'The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.'" - Revelation 11:15

"On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of Lords." - Revelation 19:16

Part III

45.  I know that my Redeemer liveth

"For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth.  And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God." - Job 19:25-26

"But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep." - 1 Corinthians 15:20

46.  Since by man came death

"For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." - 1 Corinthians 15:21-22

47.  Behold, I tell you a mystery

"Behold!  I tell you a mystery.  We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." - 1 Corinthians 15:51-52a

48.  The trumpet shall sound

"For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.  For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality." - 1 Corinthians 15:52b-53

49.  Then shall be brought to pass

"When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  'Death is swallowed up in victory.'" - 1 Corinthians 15:54

50.  O death, where is thy sting

"'O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?'  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." - 1 Corinthians 15:55-56

I looked into the source for this text a bit more, and - apparently - it's a quotation of Hosea 13:14: "Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol?  Shall I redeem them from Death?  O Death, where are your plagues?  O Sheol, where is your sting?  Compassion is hidden from my eyes."

51.  But thanks be to God

"But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." - 1 Corinthians 15:57

52.  If God be for us, who can be against us

"If God is for us, who can be against us?" - Romans 8:31b

"Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?  It is God who justifies.  Who is to condemn?  Christ Jesus is the one who died - more than that, who was raised - who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us." - Romans 8:33-34

53.  Worthy is the Lamb, Amen

"[Many angels were] saying with a loud voice, 'Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!'  And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, 'To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!'  And the four living creatures said, 'Amen!' and the elders fell down and worshipped" - Revelation 5:12-14

The Roulettes' "This Little Girl"

Back in April, I got the Roulettes' one and only album Stakes and Chips.  The first time I listened to it, I thought that the beginning keyboard part of "This Little Girl" (credited to Holland, Stevenson, and Cosby) sounded similar to the beginning keyboard part of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say."  A few months later (in June), I learned the two parts in order to compare them, and recently I finally got around to notating them:

(click the image to enlarge it)
(standard disclaimer that since I did the notation myself it's entirely possible that I have something wrong)

When I figured out the parts, I was actually surprised by how similar they are.  They both start with the same four-note figure: E, B, D, E' (although "What'd I Say" plays the B as two eighth notes, where "This Little Girl" has a single B as a quarter note).  It wasn't until notating it that I discovered that both have notes tied over a bar line too.

Like the phrase in "This Little Girl," the phrase in "What'd I Say" is two measures long, but - barring a slightly different rhythm so that an E note from the next measure intrudes a bit - it's the same notes in every measure.  As the song goes on, that same phrase is raised by intervals so that it starts on A and later on B.  The phrase in "This Little Girl" doesn't do that, but it's similar enough that I think it took some inspiration from the phrase in "What'd I Say."

Saint-Saëns: Christmas Oratorio, Op. 12

I've been really into Saint-Saëns' Christmas Oratorio lately.  Even though Christmas is months away, I've listened to it five times in the last few months.  I noticed a couple things that I wanted to write about, and then - in following along in the score (found here) - I found a few more.

II. Recit et chœur

Beginning at the fifty-seventh bar of the movement (the twenty-sixth bar after the key change that corresponds with the beginning of the soprano solo), the text is "Et hoc vobis signum" ("And this to you a sign" - the first part of Luke 2:12).  The musical setting of "vobis signum" forms a cross:

I first learned of this cross-inscribing feature in John Eliot Gardiner's Bach: Music in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Gardiner illustrates Bach's use of this in Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4:

In the Christmas account, the "sign" of the Savior for the shepherds is "find[ing] a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger," but this is also a foreshadowing of the crucifixion, which is also a sign of "a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11).

I've found this cross inscription in quite a few pieces now, but I don't know if any of them were placed intentionally (although I can usually devise a plausible meaning for their placement).  However, since I first learned about this in a Bach cantata and the first movement of Saint-Saëns' Christmas Oratorio has the note "dans le style de Séb. Bach" ("in the style of Seb[astian] Bach"), I feel that it's more likely that Saint-Saëns - since he was obviously familiar with Bach's work - created the cross figure intentionally.

The chœur section of the second movement has the text "Gloria in altissimis Deo, et in terra pax..." ("Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace..." - Luke 2:14).  "Gloria in altissimis Deo" is first sung by the sopranos and the altos, the higher voices, and "Et in terra pax" is first sung by the tenors and the basses, the lower voices:

(click the image to enlarge it)

Distributing those parts of the text among those particular voices results in an audible representation of the highness of Heaven and the lowness of Earth.  (Incidentally, Handel does this same thing [with the same text even] in the Messiah.)

Furthermore, the "altissimis" ("highest") is set across a series of rising notes, as if to further indicate the height:

V. Duo (soprano & bass)

At the 60th bar, the cross inscription is seen again (it's also present a few times in earlier measures, but here it's clearer to see):

The accompanying text this time is "Deus meus es tu."  I'm not sure if there's a Biblical source behind this, but it translates to "You are my God."  Again, the cross inscription points to the crucifixion, an act that illustrates Christ's compassion for us.

Since this is a duet and the text has a predicate nominative, it's easy to set it in such a way that the subject and the predicate nominative are sung simultaneously, which Saint-Saëns does.  The grammatical structure is doubled by the musical structure.  In the first bar in the example above, as the soprano sings "es tu" ("you are"), the bass sings "Deus" ("God").  Then it's reversed and the soprano sings "Deus" as the bass sings "es tu."  Between them, it's "You are God."

IX. Quintette et chœur (soprano, mezzo-chorus, alto, tenor, bass)

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the melody to which some of the "alleluias" here are set and how it resembles a melody that Palestrina wrote.

X. Chœur

I'm not sure if there's a Biblical source for this text either, but the tenth movement begins with "Tollite hostias et adorate Dominum in atrio sancto eius."  I put some effort into this translation and came up with "Raise sacrifices and worship the Lord in His holy hall."

Of course, after I did my own translation, I found one on the internet:  "Bring offerings, and adore the Lord in his holy place."  The "His holy" is what I'm drawing attention to here, because it's set to yet an-other cross inscription, this time in both the soprano and bass parts:

It's not as obvious why the cross is inscribed here as it is in its other occurrences.  Since half of it accompanies the first part of "holy," it seems like it has something to do with sanctification.  I'm not sure, but I thought I would point it out.

There are actually multiple crosses here.  There's one in the soprano part, one in the bass part, each of those is doubled in the corresponding strings, there's one in the the higher register of the organ part (the second line from the bottom), and - though it might be far-fetched - there's also one in the movement number (X).

Carole King's "Home Again"

About four months ago, I wrote about Carole King's "It's Too Late."  Instead of transcribing the lyrics myself, I referenced those in the liner notes of Tapestry, and - in doing so - I found an interesting line break in "Home Again."

There's a slight pause after "I really need someone to talk to, and nobody else" before it's completed with "Knows how to comfort me tonight."  Before it's completed, that "nobody else" seems to be the direct object of "need" instead of the subject of an-other clause.  So it could be rendered as "I really need someone to talk to and nobody else."  As long as that pause continues, there's a different meaning to that line.  With "nobody else" as a direct object of "need," "someone to talk to" acquires an exclusivity (something like "I need nobody else but someone to talk to").

Of course, the completion of the line provides that same specificity ("Nobody else / Knows how to comfort me tonight"), but it's artfully done via that pause and the ambiguity of what function "nobody else" plays.

Mel Carter's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me"

When I listened to Mel Carter's "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me" a few months ago, I noticed that there's some use of the homophones "will be" and "we'll be."  It wasn't until recently (when I transcribed the song) that I really looked into them.

In the first verse, Harry Nobel - who wrote the song - establishes the repetition of some words at the end of each line:

Hold me, hold me
Never let me go until you’ve told me, told me
What I want to know and then just hold me, hold me
Make me tell you I’m in love with you

But in the second verse, he plays around with that repetition via the "will be" and "we'll be" homophone.  It could be either:

Thrill me, thrill me
Walk me down the lane where shadows will be, will be
Hiding lovers just the same as we’ll be, we’ll be
When you make me tell you I love you

Or:

Thrill me, thrill me
Walk me down the lane where shadows will be, we'll be
Hiding lovers just the same as we’ll be, we’ll be
When you make me tell you I love you

The first iteration is probably what's intended, although in making sense of that verse, I thought of the second version first.  The difference is in the first "will be" and "hiding."  They could be a future tense transitive verb or a future tense linking verb with an adjective.  It's either "Walk me down the lane where shadows will be hiding lovers" or "Walk me down the lane where shadows will be.  We'll be hiding lovers just the same as we'll be when you make me tell you I love you."

The more I think about this, the more I'm in favor of "shadows will be hiding lovers," but the other parsing could be argued for too.

It's interesting how Nobel (intentionally or not) varies the lines in that second parsing, inserting that line break between "we'll be" and "Hiding lovers."  After establishing repeating sounds in the first verse, changing the meaning while still retaining the same sound plays with the listener's expectations.  It creates a similar kind of thrill that the verse itself mentions.

Punch Brothers' "Rye Whiskey"

Back in May, I watched the Punch Brothers live at the House of Blues via WGBH.  During "Rye Whiskey," I noticed the lines "Oh boy, rye whiskey makes the sun set faster / Makes the spirit more willing / But the body weaker."  I realized that this is an allusion to the Bible.

It's actually in two different places in the Bible, but the verse is the same: "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.  The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Matthew 26:41 and Mark 14:38).  Jesus says this to the disciples after they fall asleep while Jesus is praying alone in the Garden of Gethsemane.

It seems like "The spirit is willing, but the body is weak" has become a pretty common expression, but I think "Rye Whiskey" illustrates a deeper familiarity since the next line is "Because rye sleep isn’t good sleep, boys."  The particular weakness of the Biblical "the flesh is weak" is falling asleep, which "Rye Whiskey" also mentions.  In fact, "Rye Whiskey" seems to go even a step further and say that it "isn't good sleep."  It's not only the weakness of a body that's weary; it's the weakness of a body that's weary but can achieve only a fitful sleep because of the effects of rye whiskey.

The Mills Brothers' "Too Many Irons in the Fire"

This morning I listened to the first disc of the Mills Brothers' The Anthology (1931-1968).  Even though I wasn't transcribing the lyrics, I noticed a small grammatical thing about the lines "Oh, it’s too bad your one fault will keep us apart / This fault is breaking my heart" in “Too Many Irons in the Fire.”

The second of those lines can be parsed two different ways; the key difference is "is breaking," which could be either a linking verb and a gerund or a present progressive verb.  The different grammatical structures create different meanings for the line.  Parsed as a linking verb and a gerund, "breaking my heart" is the "fault."  That line could be rendered as "This fault = breaking my heart."  Parsed as a present progressive verb though, the fault itself isn't named*; the significance is only that it's affecting the speaker/singer.  As a simple present tense (instead of progressive), it could be rendered as "This fault breaks my heart."

I think the second parsing (as a present progressive) has a slight advantage in that it doesn't specifically name the fault, almost as if the singer/speaker doesn't want to deal with it.  Instead of naming the fault, a few positive qualities are mentioned in the immediately-preceding lines:

You have two beautiful eyes
Eyes that I idolize 

You have such charms in your tresses
Two perfect arms for caresses

I also mention this so I can point out the almost-palindromic assonance with "eyes"/"-ize" and "I"/"i-" in "Eyes that I idolize."

---
*I should note that it isn't named in that section.  The fault itself seems to be in the title and the first lines: "Too many irons in the fire / And there's too many loves you desire."