[Smt-talk] I - II- IV as a progression (counterpoint)

[Murphy, Scott Brandon]

Yesterday evening, my two kids were trying on a Superman costume (older one
with cape and belt, younger one with the tights), and I wanted to provide
some appropriate music for the inevitable flying around the living room, so
I sat down at the piano and plunked my way through the 1978 film¹s main
title music. And, sure enough, when I got to the ³Can You Read My Mind?²
middle section, there was the SMT-list¹s I-II#-IV progression underlying the
opening of the melody, taking a list-thread that I thought was pretty well
tied off and brightly dyeing it red, blue, and yellow.  (Like Nicole¹s ³A
Kind of Magic,² this music straddles pop and film-music genres.)

Earlier posts in this thread proposed various rationales for the
progression. Here¹s another from a film-music perspective: having another
chord besides V follow I-#II not only demotes #II from a more ³Classical²
role of V/V, but also promotes I-#II as a brief but clear token of the
³Lydian² sound that plays an important role in many popular film scores.
This especially (but not exclusively) includes the beginnings of many heroic
themes by Williams: I-#II-vi... (Jurassic Park, ³Journey to the Island²),
I-#II-VII#... and I-#II-iv... (Star Wars I, ³Anakin¹s Theme²), I-#II-I
(E.T., ³The Departure,² (and others)). Having said that, I-#II-V can still
intimate film music¹s ³Lydian code,² as in the primary theme for Alan
Silvestri¹s music for Back to the Future, which has it both ways:
I-#II-I-V/V-V-.... (I recall someone (but I can¹t recall who) remarking to
me years ago that the beginning of the transition in the last movement of
Beethoven 5 (or whatever you want to call the spot when F#s first appear)
³sounds like film music.²)

Scott

-- 
Scott Murphy
Associate Professor, Music Theory
University of Kansas
smurphy at ku.edu



on 9/13/09 4:15 PM, rschultz at music.umass.edu at rschultz at music.umass.edu
wrote:

> Following Nicole back to the original topic, the second half of the verse to
> Billy Joel's "Scandinavian Skies" (starting with "we climbed towards the
> sun...") also contains the progression in question, though here it is with
> respect to a tonicized IV, i.e. Bb-C-Eb-Bb in F. Of course, the minor
> pentatonic implications a la Midnight Hour/Proud Mary are clear (indeed, the
> subsequent return to tonic passes through Ab, not A), but the tonicization is
> strong enough that I distinctly hear I-II-IV-I of IV rather than IV-V-bVII-IV.
> 
> Here's the cut off the album, minus most of the intro:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNzpy667zY&feature=fvw
> 
> And a live version with the intro fully intact (starts at 1:05):
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQZjjTI2pUg
> 
> 
> Best Wishes,
> Rob
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Rob Schultz, Ph.D.
> Lecturer, Music Theory
> Department of Music and Dance
> University of Massachusetts
> Amherst, MA 01003
> 
> 
> On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Nicole Biamonte <nbiamonte at aya.yale.edu>
> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Ildar Khannanov <solfeggio7 at yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>>  
>>> As for supertonic triad as a substitute for subdominant triad, it does not
>>> exist! If we are talking about root position supertonic  triad in major, it
>>> is used very rarely because there is a serious problem connecting it with
>>> tonic, and that is a very serious voice leading problem : there are no
>>> common tones indeed and no purpose of resolution. In minor this chord is an
>>> absolute nonsense. Only Snoop the Dogg uses it after the tonic triad ( "I've
>>> been a sittin in a Holiday Inn...etc).
>>>  
>> I don't know the Snoop Dogg song, but adjacent parallel triads with no common
>> tones are plentiful in the rock repertoire, although--as noted earlier in
>> this thread--progressions with major II are rare.  One example of a I-II
>> oscillation that came up in a private exchange with Paul Steinbeck is the
>> repeated Fmaj7-G of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams."  However, because of the
>> melodic prominence of A and especially E, and the lack of Fs in the melody,
>> it is also possible to parse these chords as bVI-bVII in A minor, a harmony
>> that is stated only briefly in the bridge.  I wonder if this might be one
>> of Mark Spicer's "absent tonics."  I don't know of any other examples like
>> this; it's actually easier to find examples of Phrygian I-bII oscillations.
>>  
>> bVII-I and bVII-i oscillations are far more common, in folk music as well as
>> in rock.  The subtonic in this context could function as dominant,
>> subdominant, or linear neighbor-chord to the tonic; which of these
>> interpretations makes the most sense depends on other factors in the
>> particular song. 
>>  
>> Just to bring this thread back around to the original topic of I-II-IV-I, I
>> heard another example today: the verse of Queen's "A Kind of Magic."
>>  
>> Nicole Biamonte
>> University of Iowa
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
> 
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