Last night of the world – Miss Saigon

 

 

‘Last Night of the World’ from Miss Saigon

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuUI5TW_UCU&feature=related (Original London Cast version)

Introduction:

This song was from the musical Miss Saigon, and was composed by Claude Michel Schonberg and Alain Boublil. The original singers of this duet are Lea Selonga and Willy Falk (in the Broadway cast)/Simon Bowman (West End cast). The duet appears in the middle of Act 1, before the character Chris leaves Kim for that night, after promising that he will bring her back to the United States with him. For Kim, it is a song of hope for a better life.

Lyrics:

In a place that won’t let us feel
In a life where nothing seems real
I have found you, I have found you
In a world that’s moving too fast
In a world where nothing can last
I will hold you, I will hold you

Our lives will change when tomorrow comes
Tonight our hearts drown the distant drums
and we have music all right
tearing the night

A song
played on a solo saxophone
A crazy sound, a lonely sound
A cry that tells us love goes on and on
played on a solo saxophone
It’s telling me, to hold you tight
and dance like it’s the last night of the world

On the other side of the earth
There’s a place where life still has worth
I will take you, I’ll go with you
You won’t believe all the things you’ll see
I know ’cause you’ll see them all with me

Dreams, they were all I ever knew
Dreams, you won’t need when I’m through
Anywhere, we may be
I will sing with you
a song…
Listening:

What attracted me to this piece (apart from the awesome singing which I’ll discuss later), was what seems to be the fusion of real instruments (strings..) and electronic music (keyboard). While the real instruments help to bring the music up and down the different levels, such as the “interlude” part, the electronic part is kept constant by the arpeggiated chords and also echoes the melody as sung by the singers. I feel that this fusion between real and electronic instruments creates a heightened dramatic effect, and the music wouldn’t work if either of these are missing. Why? The keyboard’s arpeggiated chords  holds the singing together and by using arpeggiated chords, we are also able to hear the clear augmented and diminished (juicy chords??) chords that penetrate through this song. The clear, bell like sounds from the keyboard/synthesizer suits this particular scene as it’s one of dreams and hope, and thus would not go well with something heavy like a weighted piano sound. The strings section, while also following the singing, begins initially as something “in the background”, but the intensity gradually increases towards the chorus.

The “South Pacific” feel of this song comes largely from the saxophone mimicking the lyrics of the song “A song….played on a solo saxophone” (personally, it’s quite cheesy, but still ‘sexy’). How does the saxophone contribute to the music? I believe it’s through the player’s own interpretation. There a few versions of this solo saxophone on youtube, played by different people in different productions of Miss Saigon.  While the notes are probably spelt out for the player, how he ‘elongates’ certain particular notes, or ‘drawls’ through a phrase determines how the piece turns out to be.

After repeated listening, I realize that the B –> B+ –>B–>B+ progression has a more significant meaning then just 2 chords interacting together. In the piano version as seen in the attached files, between B and B+ broken chords in the L.H, the only difference between them is the F# becoming a F*/G natural. By interchanging between the notes  F# and G, it creates a push and pull effect, which is resolved in the Emaj7. The resolve in the Emaj7 lands on the lyrics “I have found you…” which is significant, as the lyrics represent a moment of hope and gladness.  The same techniques is used in the Bridge of the song (Kim: Dreams were all I ever knew…..), where it fluctuates between 2 minor chords (G#m and C#m) before resolving on a major chord (E chord) to signify the characters pledge of staying together.

The climax of this song occurs right at the end , when the chorus (A song…played on a solo saxophone) is transposed by minor 3rd to the key of D major. Unlike the previous chorus where the bass line moves together with the chord changes, in this final chorus, it looks like there is dominant pedal point (not too sure about this), which grounds the last few bars in a chord V before going to the tonic.

Background of the Song

The Song “My Favourite Thing” was written in 1959 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for a Broadway Production and later popularized by Julie Andrews in the film adaptation – The Sound of Music. This song was written to be sung by a young woman scared of facing new responsibilities outside the convent.

Harmonic Analysis

This song is pretty much repetitive, with the same block of melody repeated thrice, albeit twice in the minor key and once in the major key. Also, the first section of the melody takes on a distinctive property of only using three notes – B, F#, E. Perhaps this choice of repetitive moments was the composer’s idea of enabling the listener to catch on this tune. Despite the lyrics which are happy and telling of things that she likes, the song begins in a Minor key, featuring the singer’s apprehensiveness and dread of stepping out of her comfort zone. The shift to E major represents a transition of the singer’s expression as the major key brings about something lighter and a shift in her mood, from apprehensiveness to optimism. The V7 chord of at the end of each sentence repeated block further emphasizes this change in atmosphere – like a tipping-over effect- in to a new phase of life.

Phrase Analysis

This song has an obvious Simple Sentence Structure. The short-short-long subdivision is characterized by 4 bars in each of the “short” subphrases and 8 bars in the “long” subphrase. In this case, the piece is kept at the basic simple sentence structure rather than a double sentence as there are no larger overview of a short-short-long subdivision.

First post!

So this is going to be my Music blog.

Hopefully it stays alive!