Britten: Noye's Fludde, Op. 59

I'm listening to the soundtrack from Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.  It includes some selections from Britten's Noye's Fludde, Op. 59.  I hadn't noticed before that "The Spacious Firmament on High" uses the tune "Tallis' Canon," and that some of it is actually sung as a canon.

Buddy Holly's "Fool's Paradise"

Between Saturday and Sunday, I listened to Buddy Holly's three-disc Memorial Collection.  This morning I got thinking about "Fool's Paradise," and I realized that there are some melodic phrases that mirror the lyrics.  The "up to Heaven" in the first line is sung to an ascending phrase (F, G, A, C), and the "love came tumblin' down" in the bridge is sung to a descending phrase (D, C, Bb, Bb, A, G).

In figuring out the vocal melody and the guitar chords, I found two other things about the bridge.  First, the interval between the two syllables of "The whole" in the line "The whole world was my kingdom" is a sixth (F to D), which suggests the vastness of the singer/speaker's "kingdom."  Second, there's a G major chord under the line "Then I saw you glance at a new romance."  The song is in F major, so the B note in that G major is an accidental (normally, it would be a Bb, making it a G minor chord), which musically represents the novelty of the "new romance."

The Smiths' "Meat Is Murder"

Earlier I listened to the Smiths' Meat Is Murder, and I noticed a small thing about the title track.  There's some alliteration in the phrase "the flesh you so fancifully fry."  The use of alliteration emphasizes the fancifulness that's mentioned in the line itself.

Fly These Wings' "Maybe I'm"

A couple days ago, I listened to Fly These Wings' "Maybe I'm."  Like I mentioned a couple months ago, Fly These Wings was a band my cousin was in a year or two ago, so this post is mostly just for my own reference (although there is a video for the song).

I'd previously noticed the phrase "daily bread," and I was pretty sure that this was a reference to the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount: "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matthew 6:11).  Listening to it a couple days ago, I noticed the phrase, "for the least of these," which I also found in Ivan & Alyosha's "Drifting Away" a month ago (and wrote about for this project).  Matthew 25 talks about when the King will come again.  He will say to the blessed, "As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40), but He will say to the cursed, "As you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me" (Matthew 25:45).

When I first noticed the "daily bread" phrase, I was wondering if it was intended as a Biblical reference because it seems that "daily bread" has also just become a common phrase.  But since I found "the least of these," which is also from the Bible, I'm more confident that both are intentional Biblical references.

Stephen Stills' "Feed the People"

This morning I listened to Stephen Stills' Man Alive!, and I noticed a Biblical reference in "Feed the People."  There's the recurring line "Turn your swords to plowshares everywhere and feed the people."  Coincidentally, two days before I listened to the album, I read Isaiah 2, where Isaiah writes, "He [God] shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4).  While Stills' song is primarily concerned with feeding people, through that Biblical reference, which - in its original context - is more about turning away from war, it also advocates pacifism.

The New Pornographers' "Centre for Holy Wars"

This morning I listened to the New Pornographers' Mass Romantic, and I noticed a small thing about "Centre for Holy Wars."  During the "Hope grows greener than grass stains" tag at the end, the "grows" in the harmony part has a melisma.  It's sung to the phrase G# A# B.  Because it's sung to more syllables than it's usually spoken, there's a sense of that growing.

The Kinks' Low Budget

This morning I listened to the Kinks' Low Budget (I think for only the second time), and I noticed some things.

"Catch Me Now I'm Falling"

In order to musically represent the falling, there are some "down"s and "falling"s sung with descending melismatic phrases.

There's also a lyrical mirroring in the song's structure.  Twice, after the line "you've gone out of town," there's a guitar solo instead of more lyrics right away, which helps to demonstrate that absence and lack of communication.

"Public Health"

Instead being pronounced with the single syllable, the "strain" in the line "Cos' it [exercise] relieves the strain" is sung to four (with the notes B, A, F#, E).  There's a looseness with which it's sung (as opposed to spoken), which recalls and emphasizes the earlier lines "Loosen up your muscles / And feel the knots in your body untie."

"Moving Pictures"

After four measures of drums, there's a guitar figure that repeats, lasting nine measures.  After the line "Nothin' in life is a permanent fixture," that figure is raised a whole step (instead of C, G, A, C, it's D, A. C. D).  To some degree, that recurring figure's changing reflects the line it follows.  While it's just a transposition rather than a melodic alteration (so it retains some semblance of what it was), it does also seem to represent the "moving" in "Moving Pictures."

The Mamas & the Papas' "No Salt on Her Tail"

Last night I listened to the Mamas & the Papas eponymous second album, and I noticed a couple things about "No Salt on Her Tail."  During the first instance of the "This little bird..." section, the "away" in the line "She can fly away" has a melisma.  It's sung to an F, F, D, C phrase.  That's more than the two syllables with which "away" is normally pronounced, so it gives a sense of the movement in the bird's flight.

In that section "away" is rhymed with "stay" (the lines are "She can fly away" and "No cage to make her stay").  The "make her stay" is all sung to the same note (an F), so again there's a mirroring of the lyrics in the music.  Where "away" is sung to multiple notes and suggests movement, the phrase in this line about being stationary is sung to a single note.

This section is repeated near the end of the song (raised a half-step, which I hadn't realized until figuring out the vocal melody), but not all of these features are still in place there.

Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London

To-day I listened to Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent's Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, and I noticed a couple things.

"In My Mind a Miracle"

This is the first track on As Far As I Can See (which was the first album for which Blunstone and Argent used the Zombies moniker again).  I'd previously noticed the importance of sight in the lyrics, with lines like "No longer blind, I see because of you" and the hint at the classical blind seer, like Tiresias, (and the Zombies' Odessey and Oracle) with "In you I found my Odyssey and Oracle" (in the liner notes, they've finally fixed the spelling).  I'd noticed all of those visual things, but I'd neglected to notice the Latin root of "retrospect" in the line "The things that I've done in / Retrospect have caused me pain."  In Latin, spectare is the verb to look at.

"Hold Your Head Up"

This is something that should have been obvious, but in the "Hold your head up" chant after the organ solo, "Hold your head" is all sung to one note (a D), but the "up" is sung to a higher note (an F), so there's an ascent in the music and the lyrics.  This feature is also in Argent's original (from All Together Now).

The Beach Boys' "Hushabye"

I just listened to the Beach Boys' All Summer Long (the 1990s re-issue packaged together with Little Deuce Coupe and some bonus tracks).  I transcribed some of the songs (because my transcriptions of Beach Boys songs are frightfully scarce), and I noticed a couple things about the lyrics in "Hushabye," written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman.

The last two lines in the first verse are: "Guardian angels up above / Take care of the one I love."  I'd always understood the "Guardian angels up above" line as a vocative because there's a vocative in the preceding line: "Oh, my darlin', don't you cry."  The line break seems to further that reading too.  Consequently, the next line - "Take care of the one I love" - is an imperative.

Listening to and transcribing the song now, I realized that it could just be a statement interrupted by a line break.  Instead of "Guardian angels up above, take care of the one I love," it's just "Guardian angels up above take care of the one I love."  Rather than the singer/speaker commanding the angels to guard his loved one, he's reassuring his love that she's being watched over.

I'm most familiar with "Hushabye" via the Beach Boys' version, and I'm fairly familiar with Jay & the Americans' version, but the liner notes for the Little Deuce Coupe/All Summer Long re-issue mention that the original was by the Mystics.  I happened to have the notation for the Mystics' version (from 1959) in Hal Leonard's Essential Songs: The 1950s.  In those lyrics, there's a comma between "Guardian angels up above" and "Take care of the one I love," indicating that those lines are a vocative and an imperative:

Both readings are grammatically viable though.

(For what it's worth, while the notation here is in F major [and I'm assuming the Mystics' version is in F major too, since the notation is based on their version], the Beach Boys' version is in E major, and Jay & the Americans' is in G major.)

The second thing I noticed is the phrase "dawn's early light" in the bridge:  "Lullaby and goodnight / Till the dawn's early light."  I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but that same phrase is in the first line of "The Star Spangled Banner" - "Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light / What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"