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<TITLE>Re: [Smt-talk] I - II- IV as a progression (counterpoint)</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>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 film’s main title music. And, sure enough, when I got to the “Can You Read My Mind?” middle section, there was the SMT-list’s 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 Nicole’s “A Kind of Magic,” this music straddles pop and film-music genres.)<BR>
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Earlier posts in this thread proposed various rationales for the progression. Here’s another from a film-music perspective: having another chord besides V follow I-#II not only demotes #II from a more “Classical” role of V/V, but also promotes I-#II as a brief but clear token of the “Lydian” 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... (<I>Jurassic Park</I>, “Journey to the Island”), I-#II-VII#... and I-#II-iv... (<I>Star Wars I</I>, “Anakin’s Theme”), I-#II-I (<I>E.T.</I>, “The Departure,” (and others)). Having said that, I-#II-V can still intimate film music’s “Lydian code,” as in the primary theme for Alan Silvestri’s music for <I>Back to the Future</I>, which has it both ways: I-#II-I-V/V-V-.... (I recall someone (but I can’t 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) “sounds like film music.”)<BR>
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Scott<BR>
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Scott Murphy<BR>
Associate Professor, Music Theory<BR>
University of Kansas<BR>
<a href="smurphy@ku.edu">smurphy@ku.edu</a><BR>
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on 9/13/09 4:15 PM, <a href="rschultz@music.umass.edu">rschultz@music.umass.edu</a> at <a href="rschultz@music.umass.edu">rschultz@music.umass.edu</a> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT SIZE="2"><FONT FACE="Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:10pt'>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.<BR>
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Here's the cut off the album, minus most of the intro:<BR>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNzpy667zY&feature=fvw">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjNzpy667zY&feature=fvw</a><BR>
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And a live version with the intro fully intact (starts at 1:05):<BR>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQZjjTI2pUg">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQZjjTI2pUg</a><BR>
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Best Wishes,<BR>
Rob<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>------------------------------------------------------------<BR>
Rob Schultz, Ph.D.<BR>
Lecturer, Music Theory <BR>
Department of Music and Dance<BR>
University of Massachusetts<BR>
Amherst, MA 01003<BR>
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On Sat, Sep 12, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Nicole Biamonte <<a href="nbiamonte@aya.yale.edu">nbiamonte@aya.yale.edu</a>> wrote:<BR>
</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 4:37 PM, Ildar Khannanov <<a href="solfeggio7@yahoo.com">solfeggio7@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>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). <BR>
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</SPAN></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>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.<BR>
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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. <BR>
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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."<BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#888888">Nicole Biamonte<BR>
University of Iowa<BR>
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