When You Wish Upon A Star Your Melody Ascends: Aspirational Disney Songs and the Ascending Urlinie
Michael Buchler (Florida State University)
“When You Wish Upon A Star,” “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” and “You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!” all end high, ascending to their respective final tonics, and all explore the upper tetrachord (scale degrees 5-6-7-8) to a far greater degree than the lower pentachord (scale degrees 1-2-3-4-5). Upper-tetrachord songs such as these often depict escalating intensity, anxiety, and joy and they sometimes even marry the conceptual metaphor of pitch height to other metaphors involving height. These songs also run afoul of the well-known core principle (especially attributable to Schenker) that structural closure is brought about by a stepwise descent to tonic at or near the end of a work. This talk explores both structural and affective trends in upper-tetrachord songs from the mid-century Disney songbook.
Conference: Annual meeting of the Society for Music Theory, St. Louis, October-November 2015. Link to information and program.
