George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess

Yester-day, I listened to George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess performed by the Bethlehem Orchestra.  I noticed a few things.

In "Clara, Clara, Don't You Be Down-Hearted," I noticed some structural parallelism in the lyrics:  "Clara, Clara, don't you be down-hearted" parallels with "Clara, Clara, don't you be sad and lonesome."  A lot of the Psalms are written this way (with two lines saying almost the same thing but with synonyms), and since there are quite a few religious references in the opera (especially "Oh, doctor Jesus," which not only has religious references but is chanted more than sung, recalling a liturgy and therefore strengthening those connections), I would guess that that parallelism is a conscious echo of that style of writing.

I also noticed some interesting trumpet parts in "Narration (Scene: crap game and murder)."  After the narrator says, "She [Bess] doesn't want to be left alone with the body of Robins when the police arrive," one of the trumpets has a passage that sounds like a police siren.

A few seconds after the trumpet/police siren, there are the first four notes of "Dies Irae."  I think I'm becoming something of a boy-who-cried-wolf with the "Dies Irae," but it does fit the scene.  Furthermore, the narrator's line after those four notes is, "She's desperate," which seems to reflect the mood in the "Dies Irae" too.  Additionally, there's the religious connection with "Dies Irae" and some of the other elements of the opera.

George Gershwin's "Liza"

I'm still making my way through the Gershwin albums.  This morning I listened to the seventh disc of the ten-disc set.  This one is subtitled The Later Broadway Musicals.

In "Liza" (performed here by Leo Reisman and His Orchestra), I noticed the line "we should make a date with Parson Brown."  It reminded me of the lines in "Winter Wonderland":

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Parson Brown
He'll say, "Are you married?"  We'll say, "No man.
But you can do the job while you're in town."

I had to look up the dates though because I wasn't sure of the chronology.  "Liza" is from 1929, and "Winter Wonderland" is from 1934.  So either the writers of "Winter Wonderland" (Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith) took an idea from "Liza," or the writers of both songs choose "Brown" for the surname of their parson.

George Gershwin's "You've Got What Gets Me"

I recently started reading a book about George Gershwin, so I went back to listen to what Gershwin music I have.  I'd skipped over it about a month ago with the aim of returning to it while reading this book, like I did with Bach earlier this year.

Yester-day, I listened to the third disc of a ten-CD set of Gershwin music.  The disc is subtitled Gershwin on Screen I: "Girl Crazy" & "Rhapsody in Blue."  The first track is "You've Got What Gets Me," performed by Eddie Quillan, Dixie Lee, Mitzi Green and the RKO Studio Orchestra.  I didn't notice this at first, but the lyrics are really clever, specifically the lines "You've got what gets me / What gets me you've got."  What's great about them is that they could be taken in two different ways.  It could indicate physical attractiveness ("You have looks that attract me"), or it could be an expression of a deeper connection ("You have the mental capacity/empathy to understand how I feel, what I think, &c").  Of course, it could also be both.

I've always liked Ira Gershwin's lyrics because of the rhymes and phrases he uses, but finding this has got me thinking about them in different ways.

The Zombies' "It Never Fails to Please Me"

I'm listening to the Zombies' Into the Afterlife, and it's occurred to me that "It Never Fails to Please Me" is very much in the same vein as their earlier song "Care of Cell 44."  They both have a piano-driven beat (which, granted, isn't too unusual for some of the Zombies' songs) and "bum bum bum" vocals (although they're more "baum, baum, baum" in "It Never Fails to Please Me").  Furthermore, the diatonicism in the guitar part isn't too dissimilar from the diatonic bass part in "Care of Cell 44."

Otis Redding's "I've Been Loving You Too Long"

I just listened to a compilation album of Otis Redding (it's probably only the second or third time I've listened to it).  In any case, I noticed the line "My love is growing stronger / As you become a habit to me" in "I've Been Loving You Too Long."  I think it's a reference to "You're Getting to Be a Habit with Me."  Likening love to a habit is in the title itself and the lines:

Oh I can't break away; I must have you everyday
As regularly as coffee or tea
You've got me in your clutches and I can't get free
You're getting to be a habit with me

Still, with the number of love songs that exist and the various similes and metaphors in them, it might just be a coincidence that both of these songs make the same comparison.

The Beach Boys' "Amusement Parks U.S.A."

I skipped ahead to listen to the Beach Boys' Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) because to-day is Brian Wilson's birthday.

I think "Amusement Parks U.S.A." references "On Broadway."  In the spoken part, the carnival barker says that the attractions cost only "one thin dime," which is also a line in "On Broadway."  "One thin dime won't even shine your shoes."

So either that line is a reference to "On Broadway" or "one thin dime" is a more common phrase than I'd thought.

Palisades Park is also mentioned in the song ("At Palisades and Salisbury Parks the roller coasters are flyin'").  It might be a reference to Freddy Cannon's "Palisades Park," which is also about an amusement park, but Palisades Park is apparently also a real place, so it might not be a viable connection.

Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring

I'm in the midst of listening to Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring.  At the very beginning of the Dance of the Youths section, there are sudden chords from the brass instruments on top of a foundation of rapid notes in the strings:

(notation found here)

This sounded vaguely familiar to me, and before too long I realized that John Williams used this same sort of effect in the Star Wars soundtrack, specifically while the main group of heroes are being chased around the Death Star by the stormtroopers in A New Hope.

I have the soundtrack for A New Hope, so I skipped around in it a bit before I found the sort of thing that Stravinsky did.  It might be in other places, but it's certainly in "Tractor Beam/Chasm Crossfire."  However, where Stravinsky places chords from the brass instruments above the string part, I think Williams has mostly just timpani parts.  There are other brass parts in Williams' piece, but they don't really have an equivalent in The Rite of Spring; it's just the rhythm of the string part and the suddenness of the brass chord/timpani that they have in common.

Jack White's "Entitlement"

I’m currently listening to Jack White’s Lazaretto for the first time.  I noticed an interesting poetic/lyrical device he uses in the first verse of “Entitlement”:

Every time that I’m doing what I want to,
Somebody comes and tells me it’s wrong.
Whenever I’m doing just as I please,
Somebody cuts me down to my knees.

He uses structural parallelism between the two lines, so that the first part of the first sentence (“Every time that I’m doing what I want to”) is similar to the first part of the second sentence (“Whenever I’m doing just as I please”) and the second part of the first sentence (“Somebody comes and tells me it’s wrong”) is similar to the second part of the second sentence (“Somebody cuts me down to my knees”).

M. Ward's "Hold Time"

This morning, I listened to M. Ward's Hold Time.  At the very end of the title track, the vocals are just "do do do"s.  They sounded really familiar, and I was able to place them as similar to the "do do do"s in the middle of Graham Nash's "Lady of the Island" from Crosby, Stills, and Nash's eponymous debut album.  There are a few phrases consisting of "do do do"s in the middle of "Lady of the Island," but the third one (at about 1:29) is the one that's similar.  (Or, rather, as "Hold Time" is more recent, its "do do do"s are similar to the third phrase in "Lady of the Island.")

I just listened to those two sections back-to-back, and while the rhythms and number of notes are different, the notes themselves are the same.  It's a descending arpeggio on G minor (D to Bb to G), and then an ascending phrase (F to G to Ab).

Like most of these instances where two songs use a similar phrase, I'm not sure if it was intentional.  However, a lot of M. Ward's songs have the same sort of feeling that I get from "Lady of the Island" (although I don't find them quite as melancholic), so I wouldn't discount it.

Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas

I just listened to Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas for the first time.  I noticed that the repeated bass part in "Ah! Belinda, I am prest with torment" is a variation of the first musical phrase of "Dies Irae."

(notation found here)

This quotation makes sense, as "Dies Irae" is about Judgement Day and the end of the world.  To some degree, it matches the emotional tone in "Ah! Belinda, I am prest with torment."