(MTO 23.4: Ferrandino, Voice Leading and Text-Music Relations in David
Voice Leading and Text-Music Relations in David Bowie’s Early Songs * Mahew E. Ferrandino NOTE: The examples for the (text-only) PDF version of this item are available online at: h+p:/,www.mtosmt.org,issues,mto.17.23-2,mto.17.23.4.ferrandino.php 3E45 RDS: Roc6 Analysis, Pop Music, Voice Leading, David Bowie, Text and Music ABSTRACT: In this paper, I explore how voice-leading analysis can illuminate text-music relations at both structural and foreground levels in three songs by David Bowie: ;Life on Mars,” ;Five 4ears,” and ;5e Are the Dead.” The analyses provide a way of relating seemingly disparate stylistic examples through text-music relations applicable to a wide variety of roc6 music. Received May 2017 Volume 01, Number 2, December 00.7 Copyright > 00.7 Society for Music Theory Voice Leading and Text-Music Relations in David Bowie’s Early Songs ?1..@ Over the course of his five-decade career, David Bowie experimented with diverse musical genres, from fol6 and roc6 to soul, Bazz, and electronica. Though stylistically disparate, many of his songs exhibit consistent musical and lyrical connections that lend continuity to his uniDue compositional voice. For instance, there are several cases where a trac6’s tonic is purposefully obfuscated, a compositional techniDue that Mar6 Spicer calls “absent tonic,” which supports lyrical descriptions of alienation ( Spicer 2016 ). Such relationships between text and music can be illuminated through the use of reductive voice-leading graphs. Structural musical components can be contextually compared to the text of the trac6 as well as intertextually to other trac6s.
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