On Sunday, June 15, 2003, at 05:04 PM, Andrew Stiller wrote:
Well sorta, but all he does is put the voices up there w.o doing any real analysis. What I meant was that Pollack always seems to assume that the harmony in a given song was created by generating a chord progression, the internal voice-leading properties of which were then picked out and brought forward, whereas I believe that very often the Beatles composed by genuinely contrapuntal means.
Well, I haven't read enough of his analyses to know whether this is an accurate summary or not -- but it's not the impression that I got! I mean, sure, the chord symbols are there for analytical purposes and ease of reference, but so far I haven't seen him claiming that "the lads" would have employed or would even recognized this terminology -- which would obviously make it hard for the "chord symbols to come first," since none of them had any theoretical background whatsoever. It's not like when John wrote the phased-out harpsicord ostinato at the beginning of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" (apparently it's actually some sort of weird Hammond organ stop, but whatever) he was thinking "okay, let's see, how about this chord progression: A -» A7/G -» D(add9)/F# -» D-/F -» A/E" -- let alone "I -» I7 (or V7 of IV) -» IV(add9) -» IVm -» I over V" or anything remotely similar. It's obviously counterpoint-generated, and once you have the top E as a melodic pedal and the descending bass line, almost everything else -- including the delicious suspended 9th on the D/F# and its eighth-note D-C# resolution in the next measure -- falls into place around it. Of course, he wouldn't have thought in *those* terms either, but obviously on some level they were all aware of contrapuntal "pull" and voice-leading and all that. I thought Pollack was pretty clear about that, at least in his analysis of "Lucy."
Here's the skeleton of it:
Thanks Andrew... no time to check it out at the moment, but I've archived your post for future reference. I really appreciate your posting it, and I look forward performing your little experiment.
Regards,
- Darcy
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