Sondheim Slanted Evening

Hopefully the post title is reason enough to be wary of where we're headed here. Just two years and one day ago, I was writing a tribute to the remarkable creative force behind Company, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods, and here I am presenting a couple of silly distortions of his exquisite musical/lyrical ideas. But it certainly comes from a place of affection.

First up, a couple of months ago, I mentioned seeing just a two-bar cadential figure shown in a question on a Facebook group and I knew at once I'd played this flourish.

It took me a bit of time to realize it's the closing gesture (hear at 2:29 here) from On the Steps of the Palace, Cinderella's big number from Into the Woods. When I mentioned this to some friends online, one repeated a suggestion she'd made before about combining Sondheim's Steps with Borodin's lovely orchestral tone poem In the Steppes of Central Asia. Ultimately, I failed to resist this temptation.

As it happens, I was making this around the same time as I was converting Schubert's Erlkönig to a major key, and we were discussing major/minor modes in a couple of theory classes, so I found it interesting that the "key" to getting Borodin and Sondheim to play nice together was to set the former's plaintive minor key melody against the latter's major key ostinato accompaniment. (If you don't know the originals, you may follow the links in the previous paragraph.) 

This turns out to be a nice way to look at the concept of relative major and minor keys, keys which are "related" because they basically use the same set of pitches but with a different starting/ending note. One simple way to say this is that if one starts on the sixth note of a major scale (down two from the original home pitch which can be called 1 or 8) and follow the scale trail up to the same note, one ends up with the major key's relative minor. Thus, Borodin's minor key melody, which begins on scale degree 5 can actually be harmonized in major simply by treating each scale degree as if it is two lower. The same pitch is now treated as scale degree 3.

I'm sure that sounds quite pedantic, so here's a quick demo. 

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First you hear Borodin's melody more or less against his original minor key harmonies, starting on scale degree 5. (This version is already transposed to the key [B Minor/D Major] I used in my mashup below, and the meter has also been switched from Borodin's 2/4 to Sondheim's 6/8, with a few other melodic adjustments.)

Then you hear the exact same melody against the repeating accompaniment vamp Sondheim uses in his song, except the vamp is downshifted from D Major into the same B Minor as the melody.

Finally, you hear the exact same melody against Sondheim's original accompaniment, this time shifted back up to its original D Major. Though not all minor-key melodies transfer so easily (I think it helps that the original minor key melody does not use scale degrees 1 or 2), this one actually works fine against the new harmonies - but it certainly sounds different! It's worth noting that one reason this mashup sort of works is that both Borodin's melody and Sondheim's melody (which you don't get to hear here) spend a lot of time over pedal bass notes (basically meaning the lowest note in the accompaniment doesn't change).

To complete my silly little arrangement, we open with the major-key melody which opens Borodin's tone poem, then transition into Borodin's main tune (now contextualized as major) and, of course, we end with the flourish that got me into this mess in the first place.

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Now as if that wasn't silly enough...today, I ran across a discussion in a Sondheim Facebook forum which resulted in someone jokingly proposing a mashup of The Ladies Who Lunch from Company with the technopop classic I'm a Barbie Girl. Someone else suggested the title, The Barbies Who Brunch, and my mind started racing again.

Although this might seem particularly absurd, the aging alcoholic bitterly singing about the "ladies who lunch" might be thought of as a cautionary tale about where a plastic Barbie lifestyle leads. Joanne sings derisively about Barbie-esque women who live glossy, empty lives. And speaking of "major vs. minor," the "Barbie Girl" song, though relentlessly upbeat, is in a minor key which gives it a bit of a dark undertone, while Sondheim's depressing anthem is a great example of a sad song in a major key.

In this case, most of the music is Sondheim's, with lyrics inspired by "Barbie Girl" and some melodic quotations from the pop tune mixed in, most notably in the accompaniment. 

By the way, a case could be made that Sondheim would be most offended by my frequent use of slant rhyme here (brunch/such ~ world/girl ~ Ken/him). He's generally not a fan of rhyming only halfway, as well described here. "Using near rhyme is like juggling clumsily." Oof. However, I feel like the slant rhymes help pay homage to the pop idiom - and, they were the best I could do in the middle of an otherwise busy day.

This mashup probably won't make much sense if you don't know both songs reasonably well (see links above), but I think it kind of works. Notice I only tease the idea and don't continue with the main body of Sondheim's song, but I am pleased with the Bossa Nova Barbie beat that ends this:

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