Once a lady was here...By: Paul Bowles

This one goes out to kdaniel...OOOHHHHHH yeah!!!! lol
so....this is how it goes kids....
this is a song unlike any I have sung before...why? you ask...because it alternates back and forth between meters..like this..one measure is in four..the next is in five..then four...then five ..and so on...
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it is actually very fun to sing and especially with all the "unique" and sometime dissonant intervals which make up the vocal line.

Text-
Once a lady was here.
a lady sat in this garden,
and she tought of love.
the sun shone the same,
the breeze bent the grasses slowly
as it's doing now.
so nothing has changed.
her garden still looks the same,
but it's a diff'rent year.

soon the evening comes down,
and paths were she use to wander
whiten in the moonlight,
and silence is here.
no sound of her footsteps passing
through the garden gate.
no, nothing has changed.
her garden still looks the same,
but yesterday is not today.

The general layout of this song seems to be AA..it is just setting a different text to the same rhythmic and melodic patern, which also makes the song strophic...
the piano part is made up of mainly block chords alternating- left hand on beats 1 and 3 and right hand on 2 and 4 through the measures...and on the measures where there are five beats, the fifth beat is usually a rest...this then leaves the vocal line out by itself for a beat.
On thing that is really interesting about how he set the text against the accompaniment...many times he has the phrase ending on the beat one of the five beat measure, therefore, you are starting pretty much every phrase on beat two, and having a rest for breath on the first beat of the 5 beat measure.
As I keep looking at this setting, I think I'm starting to see why he did it....
The reason I think he did it was becasue he is trying to line up the stress of the word with the strong beats of the measure. The way it is set right now..the first phrase has stress on the capitalized parts of these words...
Once a LAdy WAS HERE...if he had the meters switched around it would be...
Once A laDY was HERE....putting the stress on wierd parts of words..the first way, and way it is composed normally lines the words and beats up very naturally with the way we would normally stress it. It's all soo clear now..I dont know if you understand, but I feel a lot better now..becasue I'm understanding it more..
it then goes on the same way repeating the first A section then throwing a termanitive tag on the end..
Dr. Spiegelberg, I think you should try this one out..it's a fun one, and I think it would sound great in your voice!!
later-