Samba Em Prelúdio

Handling of Forces

• Features a female alto voice (uses her chest register), acoustic guitar, and acoustic bass guitar
• Female vocalist plays and sings the bass guitar, however there is no credit for a second acoustic guitar player
• A second acoustic guitar player is featured in the guitar solo, however in live performances it is simplified to just one guitar (acoustic bass) part.
• Female vocalist covers a range of a minor tenth (from E bellow middle C to G above)
• Vocal line is set syllabically, containing many leaps and complex rhythms: triplets, semiquavers.
• Female vocalists uses Rubato in performances whilst keeping mostly to the score.
• Bass part is very active: piece opens with a virtuosic bass solo featuring double stops, rapid semi-quaver passages, wide leaps, a mordant, and a harmonic.
• In places during verse 1 (before the entrance of acoustic guitar) the bass guitar appears to be playing two parts at once, with lower bass notes contrasting higher chords
• Acoustic guitar enters in bar 23 onwards and play a virtuosi solo from verse 2 to bar 89
• As an accompaniment, the acoustic guitar plays plucked chords and small melodic passages
• The acoustic guitar imitates vocal line (25-27 “que vonta de de ver”)

Tonality

• Key of the piece is in B minor
• A minor key is typical of Bossa Nova’s
• Despite complexity of the harmony, the song does not modulate

Texture

• Introduction is homophonic, apart from the occasional double stops (2+ notes played at once)
• The majority of the piece is homophonic, however at times the acoustic bass guitar becomes so complicated it could be its own melody
• Passage at bars 89-104 is polyphonic as the two melodies of the piece are combined

Harmony

• Harmonies are tonal
• Complexity of harmonies inspired from Jazz and American pop
• Frequent chord extensions - extra thirds piled up on the triads to produce sevenths, ninths, elevenths, thirteenths
• Features diminished sevenths (bar 35)
• Flattened fifth chords (bar 44)
• Chromatic chords - C#7 (bar 31), C and F major chords (bar 27/28)
• Cadences not used in typical way - however most phrases tend to end on V (bar 11), or on tonic with a more conventional V-I perfect cadence (bar 52-3 “nin guém”)
• Descending chromatic chord progressions seen in bass line (bar30-38)

Melody

Two main melodies heard first then combined (bar 89-104):

Verse 1 (A) - 4-19

• Eight bar idea (4-11) which is repeated from 12-19 with developed rhythmic changes and a different ending
• A series of phrases linked together by common rising arpeggios “(Eh sem voce”)
• Long downwards sequence effect - each phrase starts a semitone lower than the previous
• Unusually, melody line moves by leaps (disjunct) of thirds and occasionally sevenths (8-9)
• All phrases have span of a seventh, except the first which has span of a minor sixth
• Melody changes in bar 18 where a jazz-like flattened fifth is used to descent to the tonic

Verse 2 (B) - 23-54

• Increase in tempo at bar 19 causes value of each note to double
• Similar to (A), a 16 bar idea is heard from 23-38, and then repeated from 39-54 with different endings
• Contrasting (A), melody is entirely conjunct in this movement
• Sequence in bars 23-26, which is then heard again in bars 31-34 a fourth lower
• Bars 34-35 repeat flattened fifth idea twice, the second time being a note lower to move away from the tonic to set up a repeat

Tempo, Rhythm, Metre

• Tempo in bars 1-3 is very free, difficult to recognise a stable tempo
• Verse 1 has a slow tempo with a lot of rhythmic rubato
• Bar 19 bass guitar begins Bossa Nova tempo and overall tempo almost doubles
• Free tempo returns at 88
• The piece is wholly in 4/4 quadruple time, but from bar 19 there is a 2/2 feel to the piece whilst still being in 4/4
• Vocal melody is extremely complicated yet still stays on beat
• Phrases separated by triplets and rests
• Bass part has a more complex part than vocal in Verse 1 using a lot of syncopation, only occasionally using Bossa Nova type rhythms
• Verse 2 vocal note consists of typically longer note values, except for the ends of the phrases which tend to be syncopated
• Verse 1 contains more triplet rhythms than verse 2
• From bar 23 onward, bass part plays more typical Bosa Nova rhythms (dotted crotchet and quaver pairs) whilst still keeping some element of syncopation
• Guitar part features syncopation to add interest