Analysis of Something’s Coming: West Side Story Essay Example

the end of the chorus there is a bar of 3/4 that has used accents to give a 2 feel even though it’s in 3 (like an inverse hemiola).

This delays the melody and builds up tension and excitement to its entry, bringing focus to the lyrics, “gonna be great”. And emphasising Tony’s hopefulness, successfully transferring a sense of optimism to the audience. The second time bars of the chorus modulate up a tone (from F to G) reflecting Tony’s heightened level of excitement and indicating that this time the music will move on, as it does: modulating to the dominant at the end of the repeat of the chorus then moving into a whole new section with a completely different feel to the rest. This section gives a dreamy feel that implies Tony is in a world of his own.

The dreamy feel is achieved by chromatisicm in the accompaniment that hides any sense of time or place and by the triplets in the melody as the cross-rhythms make the piece seem like its floating and not joined together. Or, rather, that Tony is not bound to the accompaniment, whose short repeated riffs enforce the rigid structure of society, yet he is not held by all that and wants to be separate. This section features tremolo in the strings that sounds like humming; a small use of word painting when listening to the lyrics, which say, “the air is humming”.