To begin with, there’s a heavy feeling of loss and emptiness yet melancholy. The minor tone, that is carried out throughout the whole song, almost entices you to be quite reflective and sit in your emotions.
The arpeggio’s repetition almost feels like even the music is lost and that it’s going back and fourth in search of something. Even though it’s very repetitive, the chords actually change after each bar. With a time signature of 6/8 and a slow tempo, the whole composer is quite abstract and contradicting to each other but it’s very thought provoking because he uses rubato. Rubato is when the whole score is flexible and allows a lot of freedom so you can conclude more emotions and expressions, this is why you can feel a lot of thing’s at once when listening to this.
Texture plays a huge role in creating strong emotions, through the use of crescendo and decrescendo. As crescendo falls into play, emotions because almost overwhelming because with the piano, 2 violins, cello and viola creating a very melancholy sound, the whole score really unravels the story of the tv show it’s used for, a young boy mysteriously murdered. However, just as you begin to get overwhelmed, we get a decrescendo which allows you to just sit in your thoughts and emotions, and reflect as it returns back to the piano solo we had in the intro.
The harmonic rhythm is actually quite simplistic with it being diatonic, staying within just one key, but the time signatures accompaniment really indulges a complexity of emotions and thought provoking sounds with it not being 100% clear when he changes chords, which really causes an edge to your emotions as if you don’t know when something new is going to come in and switch thing’s up.
The main difference between this song and “Beth’s theme” is that this one has lyrics. Lyrics, to some extent, restrict how flexible and free your emotions can be because they kind of speak the story and so you just sort of listen to his story or relate to the story whereas in the previous one, you chose what to feel because the piano just guided a story instead of telling it.
There’s a repetitive beat that is consistent throughout the whole song, no matter the different layers, which set quite a chilled atmosphere. Even though the beat is quite chill, the lyrics are quite meaningful and, from my perception, about someone he’s fallen in love with. This contrast allows a lot of people to be drawn to the music because a lot of people go through the same issues surrounding love but the chilled beats doesn’t force them to sit in the sad side of love, rather it allows them to just contemplate, subconsciously or consciously.
We do get a little variation in texture when we get the doubled up vocals, one being softer and higher whilst the dominant one is much deeper, this projects more emotions but not in the way that inflicts emotions onto them, rather just allows them to deepen their thoughts softly.