Seems like even for the HN intelligencia it can be insightful to read YT comments ...
--
Dembai 3 years ago
To anybody who's wondering why they chose these specific words and the specific repeats: they're actually doing a musical analysis on the phrasing that he's using in the chords.
I'm a bit Rusty with analysis, but basically glass is constantly shifting between what we call tonic, dominant and sub-dominant functions.
A subdominant function is a chord that adds tension, demanding to be resolved. It is like a question. The next chord is the dominant function...pointing back to the tonic as an answer.
So Glass starts on the tonic but moves to a subdominant (a question) which recieves a dominant moment (an answer) which turns back into the tonic for just a moment....before sliding back into a sub-dominant question.
It never feels resolved because every resolution lasts only a moment before turning back into a question.
The music was already doing this. They just added lyrics, so to speak.
--
Dembai 3 years ago
To anybody who's wondering why they chose these specific words and the specific repeats: they're actually doing a musical analysis on the phrasing that he's using in the chords.
I'm a bit Rusty with analysis, but basically glass is constantly shifting between what we call tonic, dominant and sub-dominant functions.
A subdominant function is a chord that adds tension, demanding to be resolved. It is like a question. The next chord is the dominant function...pointing back to the tonic as an answer.
So Glass starts on the tonic but moves to a subdominant (a question) which recieves a dominant moment (an answer) which turns back into the tonic for just a moment....before sliding back into a sub-dominant question.
It never feels resolved because every resolution lasts only a moment before turning back into a question.
The music was already doing this. They just added lyrics, so to speak.