039 - Another Mephisto Waltz

We’re so used to nice eight bar phrases in our music it’s difficult to escape them. I’m as guilty of that as anyone. Many of the tunes in this collection are in nice, regular, eight bar phrases. What’s worse, in my part time gig as a ballet accompanist, if I happen on a piece that isn’t nicely divided into eight bars I have to either skip it, or modify it on the fly.

Somewhat less common but all over the blues and some rock are twelve bar phrases - 12 bar blues for instance.

Wasn’t always this way. Find some older tunes - especially baroque, renaissance or medieval, and you’ll find about every possible way to divide phrase lengths in interesting ways that often sound awkward to contemporary ears used to eight bars.

Other than the coda, this piece is in multiples of three bars, generally six bars per phrase.

If you apply the number 6 to half steps, you get the tritone - the so-called devil’s interval.