Donovan's "To Susan on the West Coast Waiting"

A couple days ago, I listened to a live Donovan album (The Classics Live).  One part of "To Susan on the West Coast Waiting" sounded interesting to me, so I did some research on it, by which I mean I figured out the chords and a bit of the vocal melody.

I thought there was a strained modulation when he sings "draft" in "Had it not been for the draft."  In figuring out the chords, I learned that "draft" is sung to an E note above an E minor chord, but all of the other chords in the song (in C major) are major chords.  That section sounds weird because it's a minor chord surrounded by major chords.  I think the root note being sung above it helps to emphasize the otherness too.  The draft is what's keeping these two people apart, so it makes sense that - musically - it has an almost skewed tonality.

In looking into this again to-day so I could write this post, I also noticed that the "so" in the first line ("Dear Susan, I know you love me so") has a melisma, which seems to portray how much she loves the singer/speaker.

I also checked the studio version, and while the guitar part is more complex, I'm pretty sure that minor chord is still there.  That melisma on "so" is present only in the live version though.

Django Reinhardt's "Paramount Stomp"

I'm currently listening to the second disc of a two-CD Django Reinhardt set.  I'm not sure if I noticed this before or not, but I discovered that at the end of "Paramount Stomp" (starting at about 2:20), there's a quote of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.  In the Rhapsody in Blue, that phrase is in the clarinet opening (although in "Paramount Stomp" it lacks the opening trill and glissando it has in the Rhapsody), and - if I'm not mistaken - it occurs elsewhere in the Rhapsody too.

The Gershwin quotes makes a certain amount of sense since Reinhardt recorded some other Gershwin songs.  Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" is on the same disc, and the first disc in this set includes and is subtitled "Lady Be Good" (Classic Jazz Archive, Disc 1 - Lady Be Good).

Duke Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy"

I'm currently listening to the first disc of a two-CD set of Duke Ellington.  The very end of "Black and Tan Fantasy" sounded familiar, and I just verified the source of the quotation.  It's the beginning of the third movement ("Marche Funebre - Lento") of Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 35.

Elvis Presley's "(There'll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)"

To-day I listened to an Elvis Christmas album, and I noticed a Biblical reference in the second verse of "(There'll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)":

Well, the bear will be gentle, and wolves will be tame
And the lion shall lie down by the lamb, oh, yes
And the beast from the wild shall be led by a child
And I'll be changed, changed from this creature that I am, oh, yes

There are more than a few similarities between this and part of Isaiah:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. - Isaiah 11:6-7

All of the same animals are mentioned, as is their being led by a child; it's just in a different order.

Bach: Dazu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes, BWV 40

This morning I listened to Bach's Dazu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes, BWV 40.  This isn't that great a point, but I noticed something interesting in the seventh movement: Aria (Tenor): Christenkinder, freuet euch.  The "freuet"s all have melismas, which helps to portray the ebullience inherent in "freuen" (to be glad).

While each "freuet" has a melisma (some more elaborate than others), for an example here are measures six to eight of the vocal part:

(notation found here)

Sufjan Stevens' "Eugene"

This morning I listened to Sufjan Stevens' Carrie & Lowell and noticed something about a recurring line in "Eugene."  It changes a bit every time it's repeated, but it's some variation of "I just wanted to be near you," "I wanna be near you," or "I just wanna be near you."  In all of them, there's the interval of a sixth between the "near" (F#) and the "you" (D#).  This interval does two things.  First, it implies distance between the singer/speaker and the "you."  Second, because of the musical distance covered in singing that sixth, it shows the effort that the singer/speaker is willing to exert in order to "be near you."

Bill Haley & the Comets' "Watcha' Gonna Do"

This morning I listened to Bill Haley & the Comets' Celebration (which I think is a compilation album, although I'm not sure).  In any case, I noticed two things about "Watcha' Gonna Do" (apparently also known as "Whatcha Gonna Do").

The song starts out with:

One for the money
Two for the show
Three to get ready
And-a here I go

It's very similar to the beginning of "Blue Suede Shoes" (either Perkins' original or Elvis' version):

Well, it's a-one for the money
Two for the show
Three to get ready
Now go, cat, go

At first, I thought "Watcha' Gonna Do" was copying that part of "Blue Suede Shoes," but I lookt up the dates to find that "Watcha' Gonna Do" is from 1953, and "Blue Suede Shoes" is from 1956.  So either "Blue Suede Shoes" took that phrase from "Watcha' Gonna Do" (which seems unlikely to me) or "One for the money..." is an older than either.  I remember reading something about how Haley used to take phrases he heard and put them into his songs, so maybe this is an instance of that.

The other thing I noticed is the mention of peaches and tree-shaking in the second verse:

Once we were happy
Happy as could be
You didn't like my peaches
So you shook another tree

I found this same metaphor in versions of "Matchbox" by Jerry Lee Lewis and by the Beatles and in the Steve Miller Band's "The Joker."  Originally, I thought that "The Joker" took that from "Matchbox," but last fall I also found it in Don McLean's "I'm Sitting on Top of the World," a song originally from the 1930s that predates all of these.  So it seems that "Watcha' Gonna Do" is just an-other song that took that peaches and tree-shaking metaphor.

Saint-Saëns: Carnival of the Animals

This morning I listened to Saint-Saëns' Carnival of the Animals.  I'm surprised I never noticed before that he quotes the melody of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in the twelfth movement (Fossils).  It starts in measure twenty-nine (this is just the piano parts):

(click here for a larger image; notation found here)

For the sake of completeness, here's "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star":

(notation found here).

Mendelssohn: Athalia Incidental Music, Op. 74

Earlier to-day I listened to Mendelssohn's incidental music for Athalia, Op. 74 (I recently got a three-CD set of some Mendelssohn incidental music, and this was the first time I listened to it).

The beginning of the overture sounded familiar, but I had to look up the notation before I realized why it sounded familiar:

(notation found here)

Initially, I thought it resembled the melody of Handel's "See the conqu'ring hero comes" from Judas Maccabaeus (I know it as a melody, but I've never heard Handel's oratorio).  After I lookt up the notation for "See the conqu'ring hero comes," I realized that Mendelssohn's overture sounds familiar because it starts with the same rhythm, not the same melody:

(notation found here)

Both have a half note, a dotted quarter note, an eighth note, and then two half notes.

After I discovered this similarity, I did some research to see if this was actually Handel's influence or whether it was just a coincidence.  I referenced R. Larry Todd's Mendelssohn: A Life in Music, which I read last year.  In the index, there are a dozen entries for "Handel influences."  I lookt up Judas Maccabaeus specifically, and - while I couldn't find anything about its influence on the Athalia overture - I did find some things that evidence Mendelssohn's familiarity with it.  In Chapter 5 (1825-1826), Todd writes that "Felix extracted themes from the oratorio and dexterously wove them into an improvisation, 'thoroughly Handelian' yet with 'no pretension to display.'"  Later, Todd mentions Judas Maccabaeus among other Handel works that Mendelssohn conducted in Düsseldorf in the 1830s.  So it seems that the rhythm from "See the conqu'ring hero comes" could very well have influenced the rhythm in the overture to the Athalia incidental music.

The Zombies' "Play It for Real"

I'm listening to the Zombies' Breathe Out, Breathe In.  I remember reading something (I think it was around the time the album came out) that compared the piano riff in "Play It for Real" to that in the Beatles' "Hey Bulldog."  I'd sort of dismissed this as, "Yeah, they sort of sound alike," thinking that the big similarity was just that they were both piano riffs.  Listening to it this time, that similarity was very obvious tonally (probably because I learnt how to play the riff from "Hey Bulldog" back in November and haven't listened to Breathe Out, Breathe In since last May).

Because I already knew the riff from "Hey Bulldog," I learnt the riff from "Play It for Real" in order to compare them, and I was surprised by how similar they are musically.  The riff in "Hey Bulldog" is in B minor where the riff in "Play It for Real" is in A major, but - as far as scale degrees - the riffs are exactly the same (up to a point at least; the riff in "Play It for Real" is longer and more developed than that in "Hey Bulldog").  I tried notating them, but they're beyond my notational skills, so I'll just have to describe them.

Both riffs start with two tonic notes (B B in "Hey Bulldog;" A A in "Play It for Real").  Then there's the third note of the scale (a D in B minor [a minor third] for "Hey Bulldog;" a C# in A major [a major third] for "Play It for Real") before going back to the tonic.  That third starts a skipping between sequentially higher notes and the tonic, and that skipping figure is capped with an ascending half-step from augmented fourth to a perfect fifth.  So - in full - it's B B D B E B E# F# in "Hey Bulldog," and - as far as it matches "Hey Bulldog" - A A C# A D D# E in "Play It for Real."

The rhythms start to differ near the end of that first phrase, but tonally, they're very similar.  The only differences are the key each is in and that one has a minor third where the other has a major third.

Rod Argent (the Zombies' keyboard player) has talked about the Beatles' influence in some interviews, so I think this is a likely instance of influence even if it was a conscious influence.