:: The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis ::

WebFacts

Chapter 26 WebFacts

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There are many jazz harmony books on the market, but the best resource to bridge the field of common-practice Roman numeral analysis with music in early twentieth-century popular styles is The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era: 1924-1950 by music theorist Allen Forte (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). This volume opens with five short chapters (4-12 pages each) that describe the harmonic language, rhythmic features, melodic design, lyrics, and form of American popular song with terminology that will be familiar to you. (Much of the approach taken in this text is indebted to Forte's book.) The remainder of the book is devoted, chapter-by-chapter, to the music of different composers; these include Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, Harold Arlen, and others.

Another book you might enjoy is Alec Wilder's American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900–1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972). This book, written by a composer of popular songs, is more personal-full of opinions about the quality of individual songs and shows. It covers virtually the same composers with a little more historical context (especially regarding the roots of the popular song early in the century) and less musical analysis, but its informal writing style makes the book enjoyable to read.

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Among the more famous song cycles are two by Franz Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin (The Beautiful Miller Girl) and Winterreise (Winter's Journey), and two by Robert Schumann, Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love) and Frauenliebe und -Leben (A Woman's Love and Life). Die schöne Müllerin, with poetry by Wilhelm Müller, features typical elements of a German song cycle: it tells the story of a wanderer who stops by a brook, meets a miller's daughter, and joyously falls in love with her. She eventually falls in love with another man instead, and the wanderer commits suicide by drowning in the brook. The final song, "Des Baches Wiegenlied" ("Lullaby of the Brook") suggests death by analogy with sleep. Other song cycles have similar tales to tell. Less typical is Schumann's Frauenliebe, which differs from the others in that it tells a woman's story (though the poetry was written by a man, Adalbert von Chamisso). The cycle of poems tells of a young girl's love at first sight, her engagement and wedding, the birth of her first child, and finally the death of her husband (and, by extension, of her happiness!).

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A motivic analysis of "Im wunderschönen Monat Mai" might highlight the primary pitches of the opening vocal melody (sung to the text of the title) as B4-D5-F#4-A4. This analysis eliminates the suspended C#4 and the passing tone G#4. Interestingly, this is exactly the order of keys tonicized: B minor (mm. 9-10), D Major (mm. 11-12), Fƒ minor (mm. 13-15), and A Major (mm. 16-19). We therefore see a motivic parallelism between the small-scale motive in the vocal line and the large-scale choice of keys.