Music Analysis

Hi all, I have choosen this piece fairytale (童话) to do my musical analysis. This is a chinese piece sang by Guang Liang (Chinese Singer), however this is not the original version of the piece. I could not get the midi file for the above score, so for listening purposes, you can check out the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABenWi0DlIU&feature=related. It is pretty close to the chosen score.

Harmonic and Functional analysis

• The opening of this piece is in F major and it stays in this key till the final chorus where it modulates once to G major, and once more to A major. The piece begins with a four bar intro in F major. The chord progression is:

I---vi---IV---V,

and so the functional analysis for this part would be

T---PD---D.

• The melody starts on the fith bar with a preceding upbeat of one and a half counts, and this pattern is repeated throughout the entire piece. The chord progression from bars 5 to 8 would be similar to that of the intro:

I---vi---IV---V,

and similarly the functional analysis would also be

T---PD---D.

This is again repeated in the consequent phrase from bars 9 to 12.

• From bars 13 to 16, a new theme is introduced and the chord prgression is now:

iii---vi---IV---V,

the iii in this case seems to act as a tonic substitute. The functional analysis for this four bars would still be T---PD---D. This would again be repeated in bars 17 to 20.

• The chorus to this piece begins on bar 21 where the chord progression is mainly two to a bar instead of one to a bar as in the first 20 bars. The chord progression for this part of the music is:

I---iii(6/4)---vi---I(6/4)---IV---V---I.

The functional analysis for this part would now be:

T---PD---T---PD---D---T.

• The chorus then continues with:

IV---V---I---iii(6/4)---vi---IV---V---IV.

• The last chord IV is actually for the music to enter a bridge instead of ending it off in a perfect cadence as can be seen in bar 63 where the final chorus ends on the tonic chord as what should have originally been intended for bar 28. So summing, the functional analysis for the chorus is:

T---PD---T---PD---D---T---PD---D---T---PD---D---(T)

The last T in parenthesis would actaully mean the intended chord for the chorus.

• Moving on to the analysis of the bridge part. As mentioned earlier, the chorus was supposed to end on the tonic, however it ends off on the subdominant, a chord IV which also signifies the start of the bridge. The chord progression here would be as follows:

IV---I(6)---ii---I---IV---I(6)---ii---V

If we look at it further, we can actually say that the chorus ends midway through the bridge (i.e bar 28). The two opening chords of the bridge section can actually act as a form of tonic expansion and then rounds the whole chorus off with a plagal cadence ending, except that since a chord I in first inversion is used, the cadence at that point does not sound like a full closure. A further analysis of the bridge section would show that it ends on an imperfect cadence, which actually allows the piece to go back to the second theme(13-20) introduced at the beginning. This second theme is exactly the same as the original in terms of chords and functional analysis. So the functional analysis for the bridge section would be:

PD---T---PD---T---PD---T---PD---D

From here, we can actually see that the entire bridge section would be a tonic expansion by itself.

• The last section of concern here would be the final two of the piece since it would be irrelevant to comment further on the other parts as they are repeated. Both these chorus are actually modulated, and are modulated by step. In the last two beats of bar 47, we can see that the composer starts on a submediant and uses a G flat to prepare for the modulation to G major. A chromatic pivot chord in the form of F# is used here. The dominant of G major which is D major is first heard as a secondary dominant i.e V/ii. The next bar then shows a complete modulation to the key of G major which we can draw from the key signature as well as the G chord used.
• A similar method is used for the next chorus where it modulates to A major. This time round however, the chromatic pivot chord is G#. As similar to the above, the secondary dominat of the new key is heard first before we here the actual modulation. The chord and functional analysis for this part would be the same as the beginning.
• The piece ends in A major with a two bar coda which we can consider as an extension ofthe last chorus. The chorus ends at the first two beats of bar 63, on a perfect cadence. However, the piece does not end there it carries on further to chords IV and V before ending on I. It thus can be seen that the final two bars are actually a tonic expansion of the final chorus in the form:

T---PD---D---T

Phrase Structure Analysis

• Looking at bars 5 to 8, the first voice part enters with a sentence. The sentence structure would be S,S,L . Bearing in mind that the sentence actually begins on the upbeat from bar 4, we can see that each S is represented by 4 crotchet beats, and the L would be represented by 8 crotchet beats. This would form the antecedent phrase, with a half cadence closure. The next 4 bars would be in a similar SSL pattern and it forms the consequent phrase. However the consequent period does not display any complete closure in terms of cadence ie. the cadential closure is still a half cadence, similar to bars 5 to 8. This 8 bars would form the antecedent period.

• The consequent period is formed by bars 13 to 20. Similarly, bars 13 to 16 would form the antecedent phrase with a SSL structure similar to that of bars 5 to 8. The consequent phrase would be from bars 17 to 20 with a similar SSL structure. The cadential closure for this part would be similar to that of the antecedent period in that both phrases again close with a half cadence, or there is no distinction in the type cadence used. The whole structure from bars 5 to 20 now forms a double period:

------------------------------------------Double Period

-------------------------------------------(Bars 5 -20)

------------Ant Period------------------------------------------Conseq Period

----------(Bars 5 - 12)-------------------------------------------(Bars 13 to 20 )

Ant phrase ---------Conseq Phrase -------------Ant Phrase ----------------Conseq Phrase

(Bars 5 - 8) -----------(Bars 9 - 12) ------------(Bars 13 to 16) ---------------(Bars 16 to 20)

• The chorus would form a new period by itself. The 8 bars can be divided equally into an antecedent phrase and a consequent phrase. The Antecedent phrase wouldbe from bars 21-24 with the one and a half beat, upbeat in bar 20. It ends after the first two and a half beats of bar 24. The consequent phrase would be from that point all the way to the first two and a half beats of bar 28 where it closes with a plagal cadence as aforementioned. Within the phrases we can see a short, short, long structure in each phrase. Each short sentence is about four crotchet beats while each long sentence would be about eight crotchet beats long. Hence the chorus would be a simple period with an antecedent and consequent phrase:

------------Ant Period

-----------(bars 21-28)

Ant phrase ---------Conseq Phrase

(bars 21-24)---------(bars 25-28)

• Well, i thats all for now, will be back with more posts or edits.

Music score taken from: http://www.gangqinpu.com/html/181.htm