"The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke" by Queen

This song is a fun tune by Queen that was inspired by a painting of the same name by Richard Dadd. Some info on the artist and the painting is here.

Because the painting is complicated (and the song is under 3 minutes), there is not a traditional verse/chorus configuration of many rock songs but just two contrasting phrases with an instrumental break in the middle. The lyrics basically describe the painting which is full of all sorts of fairies doing different things.

The piece begins with a woodblock like clicking sound with the final gong hit from the last song still fading out. Then this sound gets replaced by the harpsichord (yes, it is really a harpsichord, Queen were part of the "no synthesizers" crowd during the 70's) doing the eighth notes on the V chord with a I on the &'s of 2 and 4. Then the voice enters with "he's a fairy feller" with a slide whistle and accent with guitars and bass. Then the bass joins the harpsichord and after only doing accents on downbeats, they do a downbeat on the & of one followed by a 5/8 measure before the main phrases come in.

While the two phrases have the same melodic line, the accompaniment keeps the music interesting. The first phrase has background of the harpsichord and drums keeping eighth notes which allows the bass line to do offbeats. After this phrase, the song takes a cut time feel with emphasis only on the half notes. The guitar replaces the harpsichord for the most part while the piano enters the picture as background music. As this music repeats three times, these parts become more prominent with background vocal added in the third time which transitions into the solo.

The solo is very interesting because the main part is the background vocalists doing ahh's. The first four measures just has the bass and drum accompaniment, but then the voices switch speakers (giving the effect of another singer) and the harpsichord joins in, and while it doesn't have real melodic material, it is doing a little motive that goes beyond just chord framework which gives these few measure a feeling of polyphony. After those four bars, the voices switch back and the guitar does the motive thing like the harpsichord.

Then the first phrase enters, followed by the second which this time has the background vocalists the whole time. Then after this piano takes over a solo which slowly retards to the tonic chord which represents the beginning of the next song.

This is a fun song that fits in well with the album (there aren't enough "art" albums today, they're all just a bunch of songs) and also allows a person to expand their vocabulary with words like hostler, quaere, and tatterdemalion.