A Chord

When I was listening to my old college singing group (the Harvard Noteables) rehearsing last year, one thing struck me quite a bit. The seniors were singing "Hear My Song", from Jason Robert Brown's Songs for a New World, and towards the end, from 5:03 to 5:08 if you have the recording, they sang a wild chord! I keep thinking now that, if I were writing a marching show of Songs for a New World, this chord would be the point in the closer where the entire audience starts screaming. So what is it?

That section of the song is in the key of B. I'm doing this by ear, by the way, so feel free to correct me. This is Jason Robert Brown, so his chords are all 2's and 4's -- in the key of C, these would be the tonic CDG, the subdominant CFG (though the bass player would most likely play the F), and the dominant GCD (which actually makes it equal to a 64 chord). While this looks rather drab, with a C present in the important chords, it's important to note that his music's harmonic interest comes from having other chords besides those three. My point is really about the character of the primary chords he uses.

Back to the music. Starting at 4:50, we have repeated melodic precadential material over a dominant F#4 chord (or B2/F# if you prefer, but there is ambiguity between the V and I64 feelings). The bass alternates the F# with an E, so this could also be a quartal dominant 7th in whatever inversion it is that has the 7th in the bass (3rd in CP theory -- CP being Common Practice -- but that isn't very meaningful here). After three bars, this is followed by a chord with an A in the bass guitar and soprano, a B in the man's voice, and possibly an E somewhere, for an A2 chord (though I hear it as an A chord with an added 9, since that B is important). The next bar features a B2 chord, with mostly parallel motion (though the male voice goes to a different note to jump instead of moving in parallel), and the next bar, that wild chord, has a G in the bass, an F# in the man, D in the woman. I think. And possibly an A someplace else. If I can get a hold of the score, I'll check. But at least on the piano, G A F# D sounds about right, with a ninth between the G and the A. This looks like a D/G chord, which would be -- ahem -- bIII/b6^, if that makes any sense. However, it's clearly a G9 chord of some sort, in this case a Gmaj9 with no third. It's hard to fit non-CP chords into CP conventions! In that case, this is a bVI chord, but there is no third because that would make a minor chord with the F# and D and that would change the energy of that chord. But it's ambiguous enough that it could be both a D/G and a Gmaj9.

Where does the chord get this energy? Partly from that beautiful major ninth, I think. The major ninth, where the top note is tonicized, is a very harmonic interval that does not resolve as might be expected, since the bass and not the soprano is the source of tension. As I hear it, it has no directional pull, but it clearly can't end a piece. Another example is in Meadowlark. This major ninth could actually be considered a diminished tenth, possibly. I don't know. One possible resolution is for both notes to resolve a half step in, to an octave; an example would be (in diminished 10th form) D# f to E e, but the idea can be expanded to resolve to E g instead, which is the same harmony in this case. Consider the following progression of two-note chords: F e, Bb d, F e, D# f, E g. The D# f chord is pretty much an Eb9, but since it's so foreign to the key, it might be better to interpret it as D# dim10, or however you want to write it. It's the inverse of the augmented 6th, but since it's a major 9th it sounds much more open (since the 9th is made up of two open fifths stacked) and therefore much more powerful. IF IT'S IN TUNE. I'm also hoping that the 9th really is in the chord, or I'll look stupid. (: The chord two chords before the chord in question is a 9th chord with this property.

Another part of the power of that chord, I think, is that the (human) voices all leap up to the note. Persichetti uses this as well, for great effect, in his Psalm, for a similar I - bVI progression that could be written C c e g, C c e g, C c e g, Ab eb ab c'. The bVI is a very powerful chord, since it's new to the scale in major and just a major chord in minor, but if the upper voices leap up to it, it's a gigantic swell of excitement. In our example, the chord is a bVI in the bass, giving it this powerful function, even though the other notes aren't those of a bVI major chord.

Finally, that chord is powerful because it's in tune. I can't pick out the notes of the singers at all, yet they're so crunchy!

Thoughts?