falsettos - the case of harmonizing
I've been recently obsessed with Falsettos (2016) yet again, and I have a lot of thoughts. Pls note that i haven't had music classes since i was 12 so i might be completely wrong but if YOU know the answer to my question please comment and talk to me about it !!!
As we all know, music and melody is an important theme in this musical, especially in the first act and while ive been listening to the soundrack i started to wonder: how important is harmonizing? To be more precise: how important harmonizing is for MARVIN'S character?
So, in Tight Knit family Marvin states that "[he wants] a group that harmonizes". But as the musical progress he rarely actually harmonizes with the group he wants to: Trina and Jason.
Its evident in Everyone Tells Jason to See a Psychiatrist. At first, Trina and Marvin try to convince Jason to see Mendel using completely different arguments, while Jason rejects the idea - they are all singing different melodies and lyrics:
When they finally start siging together, they sing exactly the same notes and exactly the same lyrics:
It shows how they finally all agree on something for a second, but it's that the family is a mess and nothing more.
Then the intresting part happens:
While they do use the same words, they sing it in harmony, that appears to be "clashing" and simply umpleasant. It highlights how they can't seem to understand each other and how, against Marvin's wishes, they do not harmonize nicely. While the progression uses chromatic scale which consists of minor seconds (which are forms of dissonance) it also uses perfect fifths and perfect forths. Both are perfect and consonance (which means in theory they should sound pleasant) but it's worth noting that perfect forths are concidered "stylistic dissonance". I believe (but might be wrong) that also diminished fifth is used, which enhances the unpleasnt harmony (in middle ages it was forbidden to use such progression as it was so unpleasant it was believed to be evil, almost devil-like.
It's also interesting to me that the one creating this dissonance is Trina - Marvin and Jason sing the same melody. Perhaps, it's highliting the fact that Trina is a woman, therefore it expands on the gender roles theme, OR it's showing how Marvin is trying to get his son to love him and communicate with him; here, he is very close to that. It's just a shame this is the only thing they're agreeing on at this point of the musical.
Here, Marvin and Trina finally agree on how to talk to Jason, use the same arguments and sing unisono - they're on the same note, literally and metaphorically.
To digress for a moment, I want to focus on this fragment:
In contrast to Marvin's attempts, Mendel almost immediately sings with Trina and Jason unisono. It showcases how Mendel will get the "nice, tight family" and Marvin will keep wishing for the "tight-knit family". (on a side note, I love the connotations that come with tigh-knit and how it's reversed in reprise with "nice, tight". I love that reprise in general it's so good.)
Bonus points because rel and also "tired" it's sang in major third which is concidered to be a happy interval and "one of the most consonant intervals".
Except for those examples, I don't think Marvin, Trina and Jason sing a lot together, just the three of them. But whenever they do, they disagree, and it's showed through lyrics but also through melody. Marvin does get "a group that harmonizes" but it doesn't happen until second act. Anyways, I love Falsettos, I hope this is not total bullshit
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