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.