From Words to Music (“I Have a Star,” Part 3)

My last two posts (Part 1 and Part 2) have been analyzing the relationship between the text and music in my vocal composition “I Have a Star.”  The work is in ABA form, and the nature of one’s personal star remains an enigma through about the first half of the piece.  It is finally revealed at the climax of the B section, in bars 46-50, where the text reads: “Grant to thy self ever faithful love / The self that star abides within.”

Notice how the repeated B-flats suggest the constancy and faithfulness of that star.  This unraveling of the mystery coincides with a resolution of a French sixth chord (bar 49) to a dominant seventh (bar 50) within the local B-flat major tonality.

The effect of the French-sixth chord is especially dramatic because the bass is E-natural instead of the usual Gb, thus creating a diminished third instead of an augmented sixth between the outer voices.  Also, tone C of the chord moves to Db on the third beat of bar 49, so that the harmony in the last two beats of the measure can also be viewed as a transitory German sixth.

The remaining measures of the B section (first three bars shown below) lead gradually back to the work’s overall key of G major.  Here descending stepwise lines in the voice and string parts are contrasted with rising figures in the piano part built from the song’s most prominent motives.  One feels a gradual relaxation of the great tension that preceded, but simultaneously a progression toward a state of exaltation.

The sense of jubilation constantly increases across the piece’s closing A section, which rises to a fortissimo climax in the closing bars, marked “Spiritoso.”  Thus the overall shape of this work is experienced not as an arch, as one might expect from its ABA form, but rather as a great crescendo from beginning to end.