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Form as Harmony in Rock Music

2023; Duke University; Volume: 67; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00222909-10232129

1941-7497

Margaret Thomas,

Music Technology and Sound Studies

DREW NOBILE'S FORM as Harmony in Rock Music constitutes an important addition to the growing body of monographs and textbooks focusing on the theory and analysis of rock music (variously defined). Nobile frames his theory around repertoire he calls "small-r rock," which he describes not as a genre, but as an "umbrella term encompassing many genres," including music that might be characterized generically as "big-R Rock," pop, folk-rock, and so on. He strives to "make the case that all of these various genres can be seen to exhibit a consistent musical style, engaging with the same compositional norms and employing similar expressive devices" (xxi). Nobile's "target repertoire . . . is concise, radio-ready rock songs from . . . the 'classic rock' decades," and he considers the years 1963 and 1991 to mark "important stylistic boundaries" delineated on one end by the Beatles' first commercial recording and on the other by the rise of hip-hop and grunge (xxi).1As the title suggests, Nobile focuses on the interaction of form and harmony, arguing for viewing form in rock as a process founded in harmony. He asserts that "rock's harmonic structures are organized as goal-oriented trajectories, and the way those trajectories interact with thematic groups defines a song's basic formal process" (xiv). The goal-oriented harmonic structures he identifies are framed around the harmonic functions of tonic, predominant, and dominant; these interact with such familiar formal functions as verse, chorus, refrain, bridge, prechorus, postchorus, intro, and outro. Nobile presents his work in dialogue with other rock scholarship, frequently acknowledging it and occasionally disagreeing with it. Nobile's work is distinguished by its focus on structural analysis and structural listening, by its adaptation of Schenkerian methodologies to the analysis of rock music, and by its persuasive theoretical and analytical discussions.Nobile received the Society for Music Theory's 2021 Emerging Scholar (Book) Award for Form as Harmony in Rock Music. The award citation describes the book as "an important research reference and teaching tool" (Manabe 2022: 9). While Nobile's book is not presented as a textbook—it lacks exercises and review questions such as those found in Ken Stephenson's (2002) What to Listen for in Rock and David Temperley's (2018) The Musical Language of Rock—it does indeed carry a pedagogical, instructive tone throughout that aligns with the description of it as a teaching tool. The prose is very clear and, at times, informal and conversational. The book's structure is progressive, beginning with a chapter that develops Nobile's theory of harmonic function and syntax. The next three chapters focus on individual song sections and their interaction with harmonic function and formal process: verses; choruses; and prechoruses, bridges, and auxiliary sections (solos, instrumental breaks, transitions, postchoruses, intros, overture choruses, and outros). With these building blocks in place, Nobile devotes the remaining four chapters to complete song forms: verse forms (AABA and strophic); verse-chorus form (either sectional or continuous); and verse-prechorus-chorus form. By design, the book is intended to be read comprehensively and sequentially; it does not invite skipping around. Thus, if one were to use it as a teaching tool, either the entire book should be read and taught, or perhaps the first chapter alone (the only chapter to include a comprehensive summary section); later chapters assume that the reader is familiar with all of the preceding material. Moreover, while the intended audience is never explicitly stated, readers without a significant background in harmony and form would likely struggle with it. Given the number of Schenkerian-style graphs provided throughout the book, a basic understanding of Schenkerian analysis is also helpful. Nobile does provide a brief overview of how to understand the way his graphs illustrate the functional circuit of tonic-predominant-dominant-tonic (T-PD-D-T), however, and he goes on to note that "it is not my intention . . . to use graphs to substitute for written discussion (especially since many readers are not expert Schenkerians), but rather to use them as succinct summaries of the harmonic analyses presented in the text" (9).Musical examples are plentiful and informative, including some graphs as mentioned above.2 Most often, examples are fashioned as annotated lead sheets, with the vocal line presented in musical notation—sometimes in a simplified form for longer passages—along with chord symbols, Roman numerals, and harmonic function (T, PD, D). Nobile includes lyrics and various other annotations, including cadence labels, formal sections, and/or analytical observations. The headings for examples are informative, and those that represent a passage other than the beginning of a song typically include a time stamp to indicate the placement of the passage in the recording. Nearly all analytical discussions are accompanied by an example conveniently placed within the text, which facilitates and invites the reader's close examination of the examples. In fact, this mode of reading becomes so much a part of the experience with this book that it is something of a disappointment when a discussion is not accompanied by an example, or when it refers to an example in a different chapter.Importantly, the close engagement with the analyses that the examples invite is greatly enhanced by the chapter playlists that are provided in the book's companion website.3 Nobile provides playlists for both Apple Music and Spotify streaming platforms that include nearly all of the songs discussed in each chapter. The playlists on both platforms are almost identical, with just a few differences that reflect artists' varying affiliations with the two platforms. The song order on the playlists mimics the order of musical examples in the text, sometimes going so far as to include a song twice in a given chapter's playlist if it is discussed twice in that chapter. Several songs appear in multiple chapter playlists. Thus, to engage closely with the book and its examples, one ideally has the playlists at the ready, listening to each song in turn. When the book is read this way, the resulting experience constitutes a rich immersion into the repertoire Nobile discusses (more on that later), along with a more meaningful engagement with the theoretical and analytical ideas he presents. The constructed playlists set this book apart from similar recent books focusing on rock music and invite a participatory approach to reading that greatly enhances the accessibility of the analyses and discussion.In chapter 1 Nobile develops the theory of harmonic syntax and function in rock on which the rest of the book is founded, a theory that draws on his earlier work dealing with rock music and structural analysis (Nobile 2014), harmonic function (Nobile 2016), and counterpoint (Nobile 2015). An introductory discussion presents an overview of different ways of conceptualizing harmonic function, ranging from Riemann's Funktionstheorie, which "originated the practice of labeling every chord as a modification of one of the three primary triads, namely, I, V, and IV," to "more recent work [that] aims to reconcile Schenkerian notions of goal-directedness and prolongation within a theory of harmonic function," work that draws on the concept of the phrase model (3). Nobile's approach is distinguished by its focus on large-scale harmonic structure; he is careful to note that, while his work draws on the Schenkerian concept of prolongation, "rock's prolongational progressions not only take on different forms from those seen in classical practice but also do not generally follow the same design as the deeper structural progressions" (5). The centerpiece of Nobile's theory—and the focus of the remainder of this chapter—is the "functional circuit," which he describes as "a harmonic trajectory spanning a complete formal unit, comprising the syntactical harmonic functions of tonic, pre-dominant, dominant, and back to tonic" (5). He links the functional circuit with notions of stability and instability, and he emphasizes the importance of the temporal nature of the circuit. Nobile notes that complete functional circuits do not appear in all rock songs, but he adds that focusing on syntactical harmonic functions "highlights the relationship between rock's harmonic syntax and that of common-practice tonal music" (13). As he discusses the tonic, predominant, and dominant functions, he elaborates on such prolongational techniques as riffs and pedals, chord shuttles, chord loops, and contrapuntal chords. The chapter concludes with an explanation of cadences, for which he draws on William Caplin's 2004 article; specifically, Nobile asserts that a cadence "requires both formal and harmonic closure" (34), and he contrasts his concept of cadence with that of other rock scholars (Stephenson 2002; Doll 2017; Temperley 2018) whose definitions of cadence "reflect a concept of cadence-as-punctuation" (35).With the concept of the functional circuit firmly in place, Nobile turns to a detailed discussion of verses in chapter 2, delineating two broad categories: sectional verses and initiating verses. In keeping with his analytical focus, he considers sectional verses to contain a complete T-PD-D-T circuit, whereas initiating verses prolong just the initial tonic of a circuit, a circuit that is usually then completed by subsequent sections in the song. Typical formal "thematic layouts" of the two types of verses are explored, layouts in which "the harmony's functional circuit interacts with specific melodic-motivic processes" (39). We learn that sectional verses are often organized as periods, srdc form (statement-restatement-departure-conclusion),4 small aaba form, or twelve-bar blues, and they often include a refrain, which Nobile defines as "a short passage that serves as the melodic and lyrical 'hook' of the verse" (59). Initiating verses usually repeat a melodic idea and harmonic progression two or four times; thus, they "look to later sections for thematic development and harmonic instability" (39).The chorus is the subject of chapter 3. As if to ensure that the reader considers their experience when listening to choruses—and to foreshadow the importance Nobile places on the audience's reaction to chorus types—the prose shifts to the second-person perspective for the opening of this chapter (this perspective is used rarely in the book): "When you think of a chorus, you might imagine an anthemic section you can sing along with, complete with the song's most memorable 'hooks' and a statement of its main message in the lyrics" (70). Nobile goes on to observe that this does not describe all choruses: some "catch you off guard; others seem to be over as soon as they begin" (70). He then presents three primary kinds of choruses of note in his theory. The first is the sectional chorus, which is the kind of "sing-along," autonomous chorus that "you might imagine," as described above. Sectional choruses are usually paired with sectional verses, and they present complete functional harmonic circuits or, less commonly, half circuits, which conclude with a half cadence. The second chorus type is a continuation chorus, which usually follows a tonic-prolonging verse and features the PD-D-T part of a complete harmonic circuit. We are less likely to want to sing along with a continuation chorus; because their identity as a chorus is not always immediately apparent, Nobile describes them as "listen-closely" choruses. The final chorus type is the telos chorus, which acts as a "musical plateau" that prolongs tonic and lacks structural harmonic motion. Listeners experience the telos chorus as a "rock-out" chorus (86–87). Table 3.1 (93) offers a concise summary of the three chorus types, providing for each a description, harmonic layout, audience reaction, thematic structure, and lyrical function.In chapter 4 Nobile completes his survey of song components by examining the prechorus, bridge, and what he describes as auxiliary sections: solo, instrumental break, transition, postchorus, overture chorus, and outro. Nobile notes that the verse, chorus, and prechorus are the essential elements of a song's core cycle, for which there are three possibilities: verse only, a verse-chorus cycle, or a verse-prechorus-chorus cycle. The other sections described in the chapter are optional, but—he takes care to note—they are not unimportant, and they frequently contribute greatly to a song's identity. Prechoruses feature harmonic instability, usually constituting the PD-D portion of a circuit, along with "various non-harmonic momentum-building devices" that increase the song's intensity and drive to the chorus (95). Bridges introduce contrast to a song in one of two ways, as a "classic bridge" or "groove bridge": building on Trevor de Clercq's concept, Nobile considers the classic bridge to increase intensity through harmonic instability, while "groove bridges take the energy level down" (107) by prolonging tonic function and creating the "space to focus on lyrics, texture, and audience engagement" (115). Concluding the chapter, example 4.22 (123) presents a useful flowchart that captures the formal possibilities for a rock song to traverse one of the three core cycles, with the possible inclusion of optional sections. As Nobile goes on to note, however, "figuring out what sections occur in what order is certainly useful, but it says nothing about how a song's component sections relate to one another. . . . We can now start to look at how the map of the song sections—the formal layout—interacts with the content of those sections to create a cohesive large-scale song structure" (124).That is precisely the task taken up with the remaining three chapters. As Nobile explores verse forms (AABA and strophic), sectional and continuous verse-chorus forms, and verse-prechorus-chorus forms, he develops compelling analyses of full songs. Throughout these chapters he emphasizes the ways in which songs dialogue with normative formal structures, focusing on the interaction of formal process and the harmonic circuit. Often, these full songs have appeared earlier in the book in the context of a discussion of a particular formal section, creating the effect of a spiral curriculum: we encounter quite a few songs multiple times throughout the book, each time from a different and ever-expanding perspective. This strategy engages the reader effectively in that the familiarity of the material offers a kind of payoff and reward for devoting time to reading, listening, and studying examples carefully in earlier chapters.For example, Queen's 1978 song "Fat Bottomed Girls" appears in four chapters and is represented in two examples, 6.4 and 6.8. In chapter 3 we learn that the song has an overture chorus (76), a topic that's expanded in chapter 4 (120). In chapter 6 we learn that it has sectional verse-chorus form in which the verse and chorus contrast but retain some structural similarities: the verse contains a period structure with I–V and I–IV–V–I underlying progressions, while the chorus projects an srdc structure, yet the second half of verse and chorus have same chord progression and similar cadences (153–54). Later in chapter 6 we learn through a Schenkerian graph that "the verse's functional circuit is subsumed within a larger circuit spanning the entire cycle" (159). In other words, the verse in actuality prolongs the tonic. Finally, in chapter 8 there is a reference to the sparse accompaniment in the song's overture chorus, a textural approach that is "often heard in sectional verse-chorus form" (221).Not only does the book's spiral approach facilitate learning Nobile's theory, but it also means that to engage fully with the book the listener must engage fully with the repertoire, and this strikes me as the most problematic aspect of the book. I noted at the outset of this review how Nobile defined his target of "small-r rock" repertoire for this study, making a convincing argument for the delimiting years of 1963–91. Beyond this introductory discussion, however, Nobile does not explain his selection of particular songs. This is unfortunate. After reading the book closely, listening to the chapter playlists, and studying the two comprehensive song indexes provided in the book's back matter (one organized by artist and one by song title), it is difficult to overlook its overrepresentation of male artists and white artists, as well as a seeming inattention to material that may be viewed as offensive, such as "Fat Bottomed Girls." Nobile is not alone in this. In her review of Temperley's (2018) The Musical Language of Rock, Nicole Biamonte (2021: 377) identifies a similar issue regarding the repertoire Temperley uses, noting that it is "heavily white and male."Nobile clearly has an impressive knowledge of the rock repertoire. By my count, he cites a total of 301 songs in the book by 184 different artists, some just a single time in passing and others multiple times. In addition to "Fat Bottomed Girls," songs that are discussed prominently and repeatedly throughout the book include the Beatles, "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (six chapters, one musical example), "From Me to You" (six chapters, two musical examples), and "Misery" (four chapters, two musical examples); Big Brother and the Holding Company, "Piece of My Heart" (four chapters, three musical examples); Jimmy Buffet, "Margaritaville" (three chapters, four musical examples); Culture Club, "Karma Chameleon" (four chapters, three musical examples); Huey Lewis and the News, "Hip to Be Square" (three chapters, four musical examples); Michael Jackson, "Bad" (three chapters, two musical examples); John Mellencamp, "Hurts So Good" (four chapters, four musical examples); and Survivor, "Eye of the Tiger" (five chapters, two musical examples). The Beatles are by far the most heavily featured musicians, with twenty-seven songs appearing in the book. Michael Jackson is the most heavily featured Black musician, with nine songs appearing in the book, and Madonna is the most heavily featured female musician, with five songs. The distribution by gender and race demonstrated in the songs I list above roughly mimics that of the 301 songs mentioned throughout the book.To read this book carefully is to live in this sonic world for an extended period of time. Some readers may relish this, while others will surely not. Nobile does not ever seem to acknowledge the gender and racial imbalance of the music he studies. He refers briefly just twice to differences in musical practices between white and Black artists. In the introductory paragraph of chapter 5, on "AABA and Strophic Forms," he offers the cursory note that in the 1960s these forms "seem to have been more popular with white artists than black artists" (125) before launching into a detailed explication of those forms. Nobile refers back to that discussion in chapter 6, adding that "black songwriters prefer[ed] verse-chorus forms much earlier than rock as a whole" (169). He then moves into an analysis of the initiating verse-telos chorus form of The Temptations' "Just My Imagination" (170–71).At a time when the field of music theory is moving toward greater inclusion and diversity, challenging received traditions and canons, and embracing popular musics from all over the world, I hope that we will recognize the danger of forming a rock canon that is nearly as exclusive as the very classical canon we are challenging. I hope that we will resist perpetuating the problematic notion inherent in music theory's "white racial frame" that, to borrow Philip Ewell's (2021: 325) phrase, "music and music theories of white persons represent the best framework for music theory."Nobile's brief conclusion offers a very concise summary of the book's contents, along with a passage that instructs and inspires the reader to implement his theoretical and analytical approach. Nobile states that his "methodology and theory are intended to provide a starting point for analyzing any rock song," recommending that one consider how a song's harmonic structure "unfolds across the song's verses, choruses, and other sections," as well as the degree to which a song engages with conventional models (235). He reminds us of the importance of close listening: "I am here to offer both an invitation to listen—actively—to such structural-harmonic matters and a guide to opening up that mode of perception" (236). His final passage, "Looking Ahead" (236–38), offers preliminary ideas for the analysis of newer music, noting the increasing importance of timbre and texture. I am eager to see how Nobile's thoughtful, convincing, and engaging analytic approach will transition to such newer—and hopefully more diverse—music.