Elvis Presley's "Love Me Tender"

When I listened to an Elvis compilation album a few months ago I noticed something about "Love Me Tender."  I finally got around to really looking into it.

All of the verses start the same way, with an imperative "Love me" followed by an adverb.  However, since many of these adverbs are flat adverbs (shorn of their usual "-ly" endings, so that it's "Love me tender" instead of "Love me tenderly"), some could also function as vocatives.  The first verse starts with "Love me tender, love me sweet," and the fifth has "Love me tender, love me dear."  These could be flat adverbs (which could also be rendered as "Love me tenderly, love me sweetly" and "Love me tenderly, love me dearly"), or they could be vocatives ("Love me tender, love me, sweet" and "Love me tender, love me, dear"), directed to someone whom the singer/speaker is calling his "sweet" and his "dear."  When heard, they could work either way.

I also found the last line of the third verse interesting in its ambiguity.  It could be "we'll" or "will."  So either "For it’s there [in your heart] that I belong / And will never part" or "For it's there that I belong / And we'll never part."  It illustrates either the singer/speaker's dedication or the couple's devotion to each other.

When the lyrics are written, those ambiguities have to fall one way or the other because of spelling or punctuation, but audibly, the two senses are indistinguishable, which actually provides the song with more meaning since either sense could take precedence.

Darwall's 148th

About a month ago, Darwall's 148th was the tune for a hymn I sang at church, and I noticed something about the first phrase:

It exhibits the same cross-inscribed figure that John Eliot Gardiner mentions in Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (which I read last year and am currently re-reading):

When I looked at this later, just to confirm that cross figure, I realized that there are actually three:

The three crosses bring the crucifixion to mind:  "Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left" (Matthew 27:38).

Because there are three crosses, there's also some resonance with the Trinity, especially since the cross figures overlap.  It's sort of a visualization of the "one God in three persons and three persons in one God" that the Athanasian Creed mentions.  The constituent notes of the crosses are significant in that they're the three notes that make up a C major triad:  C, E, and G; there's also a C an octave higher than the first (I think it's also salient that it's in C major - a key with no accidentals).  So there are three crosses, the three figures of the Trinity, and the three notes of the triad.

Schumann: 6 Fugues on BACH, Op. 60

Because to-day's Schumann's birthday, I listened to his 6 Fugues on BACH.  The second fugue (Lebhaft) contained a part that sounded familiar, so I did some research and discovered that it's pretty similar to part of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.

(click on the image to enlarge it)
(notation found here [Bach] and here [Schumann])

I have no real musical training, so I might be wrong about this, but it seems that for his fugue Schumann - like Bach - used a phrase that alternates between a single note and progressively lower notes.  Bach's phrase (starting in the third measure here) alternates between A and various other notes (G, F, E, D, C#, and so on) while Schumann's (starting in the second measure) alternates between G and other notes (F, Eb, D, C, and so on).  Similar figures occur later in both works, but I've used examples that are easier to see.

I knew that Schumann used the B-A-C-H motif in his 6 Fugues on BACH (it's the first four notes in the second fugue), but I hadn't realized that he also referenced other Bach work.  I'd thought that the BACH in the title was meant to indicate that signature phrase (Bb, A, C, B), but I suppose it also indicates a larger influence.  I'm not that familiar with most of Bach's organ works (I have only a two-disc set, and even that I haven't listened to that much), so there might be others quoted or referenced in Schumann's 6 Fugues that I'm oblivious to.   BWV 565, however, is widely recognized (in contemporary times at least), so that reference was easy to pull out.

The Moody Blues' "Legend of a Mind"

Two months ago, I listened to the Moody Blues' In Search of the Lost Chord and started wondering about one of the musical phrases in "Legend of a Mind."  I'd thought that the "Timothy Leary"s at the ends of the verses had a melody that was similar to that of the "Pictures of Lily" in the Who's "Pictures of Lily."  Both lyrical phrases are five syllables, and both musical phrases are composed of only two notes, but that's where the similarities end.  There's no real resemblance between them.

However, I recently looked into "Legend of a Mind," and I found some other interesting things:

I'm fairly certain that the second (and also the third) verse contains the lines "Takes you trips ‘round the bay / Brings you back the same day" (I might be wrong in my transcription).  There's parallelism between "Takes you trips" and "Brings you back."  Both are alliterative, and the word order is similar ("Takes you trips" / "Brings you back" - [verb][direct object][word that alliterates the verb]).

More interesting, though, is the section half-way through, where the length of the lines increases:

Along the coast, you’ll hear the most about a light they say that shines so clear
So raise your glass, we’ll drink a toast to the little man who sells you thrills along the pier
He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down, he’ll plant your feet back firmly on the ground
He flies so high, he swoops so low, he knows exactly which way he’s gonna go

The rhyme scheme here is the interesting thing.  The first two couplets rhyme with each other ("clear"/"pier"), but the last two couplets seem like they're each two couplets re-arranged into a single line.  So they could be re-rendered as

He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down
He’ll plant your feet back firmly on the ground
He flies so high, he swoops so low
He knows exactly which way he’s gonna go

Later in the song, they do appear almost in that form:

He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down
He’ll plant your feet back on the ground
He’ll fly so high, he’ll swoop so low
Timothy Leary

But in that lengthened verse, the internal rhyme is key.  "Coast," "most," and "toast" are irrelevant to the rhyming of the first two couplets, but they act as an indication of what the rhyme scheme will become.  The words that are in the same position in the line as "most" and "toast" (the words that the eighth syllable falls on: "down" and "low") will become important in that new rhyme scheme:

Along the coast, you’ll hear the most about a light they say that shines so clear
So raise your glass, we’ll drink a toast to the little man who sells you thrills along the pier
He’ll take you up, he’ll bring you down, he’ll plant your feet back firmly on the ground
He flies so high, he swoops so low, he knows exactly which way he’s gonna go

That internal rhyme acts as a sort of structural foreshadowing.

Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83

Every year, I listen to the 22 LPs in Funk & Wagnalls' Family Library of Great Music.  Usually, I do this in May, but for lengthy and uninteresting reasons, this year I'm listening to them in June.  To-day, it was Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2.  I've listened to this only a couple times, but this time I noticed something in the first movement.

Starting at about bar sixteen of the D section, there are octaves in the piano part:

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

I'm not sure if it's meant to, but it reminded me of the B-A-C-H motif.  Brahms has Ab G, E Db, and then Gb F.  It's like Bb A C B in that there are sequential descending half-steps.  I don't know very much about Brahms, and the resemblance here might just be a coincidence, but - if nothing else - it's given me a reason to become more familiar with the piece.

Saint-Saëns: Christmas Oratorio, Op. 12

About two months ago, I happened to discover that one of the hymns in my hymnal is set to a melody by Giovanni Palestrina.  It's "The Strife is O'er, the Battle Done" set to Palestrina's "Victory."

It starts out with three "alleluia"s, and the melody for the first two of these looked rather familiar to me.  They're quite similar to "alleluia"s in Camille Saint-Saëns' Christmas Oratorio.

(click the image to enlarge it)
(notation found here [Palestrina] and here [Saint-Saëns].  The Palestrina notation that I found is in a different time signature than the version in my hymnal, and the setting is slightly different, but the melody itself is the same.)

I've only recently started to really get into sacred music, so I'm not sure if there are particular ways to set particular texts and this just happens to be one of them or if Saint-Saëns wrote his part to resemble Palestrina's.  I know virtually nothing about Palestrina and only slightly more about Saint-Saëns.

This - like most of the things I write - is just my stumbling through music trying to understand it better, and I thought this was significant enough to write about.

The Decemberists' "The Wrong Year"

I've listened to the Decemberists' What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World only three times so far, but I've heard various live versions of some of the songs because I've watched and listened to a lot of the radio station appearances that the Decemberists have been doing.

Last month, I realized something interesting about "The Wrong Year."  After almost every couplet in the verses, there's a prominent part by an-other instrument.  It's usually an electric twelve-string guitar part, but I think the absence of that twelve-string part is significant.

After "Could be that he’s into you / Could be that the obverse is true" there's an accordion part instead of the twelve-string part.  The shift in instrumentation (from twelve-string guitar to accordion) sort of mirrors the "obverse" that the lyric mentions.  Furthermore, the twelve-string is panned right, and the accordion is panned left, so there's a difference in positioning along with the difference in instrumentation.

After the first couplet in the third verse ("Sing me some eidolon / And I’ll sleep all the winter long"), there's just acoustic guitar and drums; there isn't an-other instrumental part from twelve-string guitar or accordion, which - like the lyrical mirroring of "obverse" - seems to represent the wintry hibernation.  Where switching the twelve-string to accordion indicates the opposite, here the lack of any additional instrumental part helps to signify the inactivity of sleep.

[It's not exactly relevant, but while writing this post, I referenced the lyric video, and I noticed that the hyphens in "long-forgotten" are missing.]

Jenny and Johnny's "Scissor Runner"

Two months ago, I inexplicably thought of Jenny and Johnny's "Scissor Runner," specifically a line in the chorus:

No, I won’t change another thing
I cracked the bell I tried to ring
A scissor runner stole my heart

I realized that ringing a bell is an image that also used in Buffalo Springfield's "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing," written by Neil Young.  There's "Who’s puttin’ sponge in the bells I once rung" and "Who’s tryin’ to tune all the bells that he’s rings."

I did a bit of research, but I couldn't find anything that really links the two.  Still, I don't think that bell ringing is that common of an image, and these lines are constructed fairly similarly.  They all end with some form of "ring," and "Scissor Runner" rhymes "thing" with "ring" like one of the instances of the bell image in "Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing":

And who’s all hung up on that happiness thing
Who’s tryin’ to tune all the bells that he’s rings
And who’s in the corner and down on the floor
With pencil and paper just countin’ the score?

Granted, rhyming "thing" with "ring" isn't that unique, but I still think there's something to this.  If it isn't a very subtle reference, at least it's an interesting coincidence.

Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon"

Two months ago, when I listened to a Neil Diamond compilation album, I noticed a line in "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" - "Love you so much can’t count all the ways."  I'd never really paid much attention to that line before, but listening to it that time, I realized that it's a reference to one of the sonnets in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

It seems like Neil Diamond wants to outdo Browning; the speaker/singer in his song says that he "can't count all the ways," but Browning's speaker actually does proffer a list of seven ways.

I couldn't find any further points of comparison between Diamond's song and Browning's sonnet, but since Browning's sonnet is so well known and since the phrases match so closely (save for Diamond's negation), I think it's an intentional reference.

Glenn Miller's "Over the Rainbow"

When I listened to a Glenn Miller compilation album back in March, I noticed something interesting about his version of "Over the Rainbow."  Two days ago, I listened to Judy Garland's version from The Wizard of Oz and Glenn Miller's version again to compare them.  Lyrically, the verses in both are the same, but then things start to diverge.  In Garland's version, there are short segments following the verses:

Somewhere over the rainbow, bluebirds fly
Birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh, why can’t I? 

If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why can’t I?

Miller's version has only one of these, but the lyrics of the second half of the first line are different:

Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue
Birds fly over the rainbow, why then, oh, why, can’t I?

Instead of "bluebirds fly," Miller's version has "skies are blue."  "Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue" is a line in the song (the third line of the first verse), so it's not a drastic divergence, but - significantly - replacing "bluebirds fly" with "skies are blue" disrupts the rhyme scheme.  "Fly" and "I" rhyme, but "blue" and "I" don't.

The half-substitution of that line might just be a mistake, but the strain it causes by not rhyming still relates to the lyrics nicely.  There's an incompleteness because there isn't a rhyme, and that same lack is in the lamentation "why then, oh, why, can't I?"

Glenn Miller's "Wishing (Will Make It So)"

A few months ago, I listened to a Glenn Miller compilation album and transcribed some of the lyrics.  I noticed something interesting about the lyrics of "Wishing (Will Make It So)," which are pretty short and worth quoting in their entirety:

Wishing will make it so
Just keep on wishing, and cares will go
Dreamers tell us dreams come true
It’s no mistake
And wishes are the dreams we dream
When we’re awake

The curtain of night will part
If you are certain within your heart
So if you wish long enough
Wish strong enough
You will come to know
Wishing will make it so

The second verse has two instances of internal rhyme ("curtain" with "certain" and "long" with "strong") where the first doesn't have any.  In a way, the increasing prevalence the rhymes mirrors the first line (and the title): "wishing will make it so;" with prolonged effort and time, things will fall into place and become better.

Bach: Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, BWV 119

Last month, I got a box set of Bach's complete sacred cantatas.  I've been listening to them at the rate of a disc per day since 21 March (Bach's birthday according to some calendars).  One of the cantatas I listened to to-day is Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, BWV 119.  A particular phrase in the seventh movement caught my ear.  It's an arpeggiation after which the fifth is repeated.  I looked up the score and found it in the oboes at bars 69-70.  Four bars earlier, it's also in the violin and viola parts.  I've listened to the cantata only once (and just briefly looked at the notation in order to find some examples), but I think it appears in various instruments and arpeggiates different chords.

This particular phrase caught my ear because it's also in the first Orchestral Suite, BWV 1066.  I've been listening to one of the suites everyday this year, and I listened to the first Orchestral Suite everyday from January through March, during which I apparently became pretty familiar with it.  The phrase in question is in the violins and viola at the very beginning of the second gavotte, in the third movement.  The note values are twice that of the notes in BWV 119 (with an even longer ending note), but otherwise, the rhythm is the same.

(notation found here [BWV 119] and here [BWV 1066], click the image to enlarge it)

I'm not sure if there's anything more to this than just Bach's re-using this particular phrase, but I found it noteworthy.