Excellent analysis. I've thought about this motif in West Side Story and it always seems to indicate anger and conflict, whereby the love songs never employ the jarring and seeming dissonance of the tritone. There are tens and hundreds of millions who admire and love Bernstein's music, particularly that which he wrote for this show. However, few have a deep understanding of just what the extraordinary depth of his genius he was. His use of the tritone to express negative emotion is a perfect example of how a brilliant composer creates magic.
What brilliant observations, and the capacity to gently and logically analyze Mr. Bernstein's work for West Side Story. It moved me when I was all of 11 years old back on Long Island; at 69, it still moves me and excites me on an even deeper level... ROB
Thank you for this - very informative. How the tritone functions or rather it's emotional impact is a function of the scale in which it is imbedded and how it is resolved. In Maria, the scale is the Lydian mode. In many of the other songs it's a blues scale or an altered Lydian scale. With each, the resolution is different and hence the emotional impact varies. This shows how versatile is the interval, and it was genius how Bernstein highlighted this. To some, the lydian mode is the most beautiful mode of all precisely because of how the tritone resolves so beautifully to the fifth (again Maria). That resolution is pure heaven to some. At other times, the tritone resolves to the seventh (prologue) which is more ambiguous and unsettling and hence reserved for the bluesier numbers with tension. Only when the tritone is not resolved at all is it the "devils interval". OK, my story: As a french horn player, I had the opportunity to play in a community theatre production of WSS. The greatest challenge of my life was playing the three note tritone motif (also the whistle motif) in the prologue which at its climax requires the horn player to glissando from a high F to a B natural at extreme volume (triple FFF), an extremely difficult move to make without flubbing the second note. This I had to do night after night. On many recordings of WSS , the horn player is clearly not up to it. But in any case, that was Bernstein's showcasing the tritone interval in its most glorious moment in the prologue, and the French horn played a key role in adding the necessary power to those two notes.
There's no comparable analysis to do. Gershwin's Rhapsody is pretty much slapped together with the emphasis on empty flash not on structure or meaning. A far cry from what Bernstein was doing in WSS. Will that do?
Nor are many of them Protestants, I agree. That point is moot however given that the Jets are meant to be of Polish ancestry, not Irish (they're described as "Polacks" a number of times by the Sharks). The term WASP has taken on a much more generic meaning in North America (particularly on the East Coast) to refer generally to all of principally white European ancestry (indeed, I believe Bernstein referred to himself on occasion as a WASP, even though he was Jewish) but I take your point.
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"West Side Story," incomparable work of art! Superb analysis! Well done. Thank you. Best wishes.
Excellent analysis. I've thought about this motif in West Side Story and it always seems to indicate anger and conflict, whereby the love songs never employ the jarring and seeming dissonance of the tritone. There are tens and hundreds of millions who admire and love Bernstein's music, particularly that which he wrote for this show. However, few have a deep understanding of just what the extraordinary depth of his genius he was. His use of the tritone to express negative emotion is a perfect example of how a brilliant composer creates magic.
I agree - i consider Bernstein to be a much underrated composer.
What brilliant observations, and the capacity to gently and logically analyze Mr. Bernstein's work for West Side Story. It moved me when I was all of 11 years old back on Long Island; at 69, it still moves me and excites me on an even deeper level... ROB
Thank you for this - very informative. How the tritone functions or rather it's emotional impact is a function of the scale in which it is imbedded and how it is resolved. In Maria, the scale is the Lydian mode. In many of the other songs it's a blues scale or an altered Lydian scale. With each, the resolution is different and hence the emotional impact varies. This shows how versatile is the interval, and it was genius how Bernstein highlighted this. To some, the lydian mode is the most beautiful mode of all precisely because of how the tritone resolves so beautifully to the fifth (again Maria). That resolution is pure heaven to some. At other times, the tritone resolves to the seventh (prologue) which is more ambiguous and unsettling and hence reserved for the bluesier numbers with tension. Only when the tritone is not resolved at all is it the "devils interval". OK, my story: As a french horn player, I had the opportunity to play in a community theatre production of WSS. The greatest challenge of my life was playing the three note tritone motif (also the whistle motif) in the prologue which at its climax requires the horn player to glissando from a high F to a B natural at extreme volume (triple FFF), an extremely difficult move to make without flubbing the second note. This I had to do night after night. On many recordings of WSS , the horn player is clearly not up to it. But in any case, that was Bernstein's showcasing the tritone interval in its most glorious moment in the prologue, and the French horn played a key role in adding the necessary power to those two notes.
Your knowledge is a real gift. Thank you so much for sharing with such patience and clarity.
Thanks so much for this lucid and completely convincing analysis! I enjoyed it immensely.
Thanks so much!
What an analysis! Thank you very much!
My new favorite video ever made. Well done!!!?
Thanks Helen!
Any chance you might do an analysis soon of "Rhapsody in Blue"?
There's no comparable analysis to do. Gershwin's Rhapsody is pretty much slapped together with the emphasis on empty flash not on structure or meaning. A far cry from what Bernstein was doing in WSS. Will that do?
Excellent video!!
Be my music theory teacher you’re amazing
The Irish are not Anglo Saxons
Nor are many of them Protestants, I agree. That point is moot however given that the Jets are meant to be of Polish ancestry, not Irish (they're described as "Polacks" a number of times by the Sharks). The term WASP has taken on a much more generic meaning in North America (particularly on the East Coast) to refer generally to all of principally white European ancestry (indeed, I believe Bernstein referred to himself on occasion as a WASP, even though he was Jewish) but I take your point.