Plunging Into The Second Measure
A hymn, the Beatles, and a swollen stream
Beatles And Hymn Openings Strikingly Similar
About ten years ago I did my own little study of what are my favorite hymns, and why. Great is Thy Faithfulness came in first. After some consideration, I decided part of the appeal was the surprising shift from the first to the second measure, from the tonic (central or main) chord to an unusual chord, in musical terms a major seventh of a four chord. The melody retains a tenuous continuity through the chord shift underneath it.
The hymn would run through my head periodically, and I started to realize there was another song I knew with a very similar beginning. It was You Never Give Me Your Money, by the Beatles. Of all things! I’ll play just the beginning of each here:
[I am covering here the beginnings of Great Is Thy Faithfulness, music by William M. Runyan and lyrics by Thomas O. Chisholm.]
There are differences between the songs that I won’t go into here, but their beginnings have a strikingly similar feel. Their jumps to the same unusual chord in the second measure feel like little plunges into uncertainty. The effect is heightened by the lyrics. In the hymn, we jump from “Great is thy” to “faithfulness,” an abrupt and frank acknowledgment of the singer’s dependence on help. In the Beatles tune, after “You never give me your” we are hit with “mo-ney.” What might have been about love, is instead stepping into a different, blunt and awkward topic. The hymn, with the bass dropping five, actually has a stronger plunge than the rock song where it goes up four instead.
Plunging Toward Our Own Identities
Let’s see if we can recreate the plunge in the second measure: I offer here swept down to a bank of a stream. It’s a song about a broken branch with its seeds becoming a new tree. It’s also about the mostly involuntary formation of one’s identity.
Consistent with the song’s humility about how we are formed, you might notice that the lyrics describe a bank of a stream, not the bank of the stream as they might. One time I was telling my wife I had caught the bus from Seattle at a certain time, and then realized: how egocentric! Mine wasn’t the bus, it was one of hundreds in our area. So, where I am formed, by various forces and factors, is just a bank of a stream. You have your own story.
Yeah, the idea of this song is a little out there. It’s one of the first I wrote, but I held it back ’til I was decently established here as making some sense. (Or maybe I haven’t accomplished that.)
May music color your day.
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Lyrics of swept down to a bank of a stream:
I was swept down to a bank of a stream, I was many things…
A branch torn off by the wind in late fall,
You’d think it too bad if you didn’t know all;
Rushing water, the rain torrential,
Tossed up on the bank having no potential;
Boys and girls and working for money,
Easy and difficult, sad and funny;
We lay there quiet as winter came through,
Deceptively dormant & giving no clue;
Mud and me, and leaves of other trees,
Bugs, and microbugs no one could see;
Things can combine to tear and bury us,
Darkness prevails and the future’s unsure-ious;
Some rain and some sun came to us in the spring,
The mud and the bugs kept on doing their thing;
Mother Nature was stirring the pot,
All this gave nurse to the seeds I had brought;
Things can be working when we think they’re not,
Multiple forces determine our lot;
The warmth of summer brought further advance,
Still unseen and seeming by chance;
Started by storm, making good of it all,
A seedling with hope of surviving the fall;
Everyone struggles and struggle we must,
Those who thrive are those who adjust.
