Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Seasons of Love from "Rent"

This piece is very simple in the melody. A six-note pattern repeats 4 times at the beginning and comes back many times throughout the piece. It's mainly stepwise with traditional resolution to the leaps within. The contour of the melody is very consistant with an up-down motion. There are many passages where the melody ascends and then repeats the exact ascending phrase. The cadences alternate between half and aunthentic throughtout the entire song. In the tenor part of the chorus, the composer uses neighboring tones as the only moving pattern when the rest of the voices are holding their notes on the word love. There are three soloist sections in which they take the six-note pattern and add ornamentation and their own style to it. It seems to be a very simple piece, though I am attached to it. This is one song we sang at my highschool graduation and it brings a certain peace and sadness to my heart when I listen to it.

1 comment:

Scott said...

Is there anything inherent in the music that creates the peace and sadness, or is it just the association with your graduation?