At The End Of The Day from Les Miserables

?

At The End Of The Day from Les Miserables

  • The song sets the scene of the poor and working class.
  • The introduction is a link from the last movement for example there is a descending scale in the bassline, parallel movement and triadic movement in the melody and bassline.
  • Verse A1 goes into the poor theme and is in F minor, where the harmony is much more defined. The melody has a small range.
  • When the people sing "And that's all you can say for the life of the poor" onwards, the Harmonic Rhythm doubles.
1 of 4

At The End Of The Day chorus

  • Throughout the song the melody is repetitive, which reflects the workers lives.
  • There is no cadence into the chorus for example it goes from D flat major and an F minor suspension chord. This shows the hopelessness of the poor and that there is no functional harmony in the piece.
  • The Harmonic rhythm decreases in the chorus. 
  • The 2nd chorus becomes major (F major) and consonant and is diatonic.
  • There is unprepared dissonance/Chromatisism when the people sing "And the sun in the morning is waiting to rise". Then in the 2nd chorus the vocals split into 2, which creates a counter-melody, becomes more disjunct and has a wider range. After that there is an extension of 2 bars where there is a circle of fifths in the accompaniament and everything moves up a semitone, which is typical for pop songs.
2 of 4

At The End Of The Day Versus

  • There are verses that are identical to each other, for example verse A1 and verse A2, which shows the repetitive life of the poor.
  • There is a perfect cadence from C major to F minor in verse A3 to show transition into Phantine's theme.
  • When  Girl 5 sings "and what have we here, little, innocent sister?" there is no accompaniament until it anwers back, antiphonally, after she has finished the sentence.
  • There is a bar after "God she has nothing to fear, she has nothing to hide" where there is massive dissonance and false relations. There are diminished octaves, for example is an A flat in the first chord along with an A natural and this creates a dissonant sound.
  • When the males sing, there is a different melody. For example the tonality is in F major and when Valjean sings "Not a Circus" it falls a minor 6th. There is also repetition.
  • When Valjean sings"now come on Ladies settle down" it ascends and scales up in minor 7ths.
  • The Foreman's section is more dissonant but the harmony is also clear (Simple Harmony).
3 of 4

Les Miserables and the ending

Les Miserables blended influences from pop music and classical music.

Ending

  • There are parallel harmonies (Parallel 5ths, parallel 4ths) which are chromatic and sound dissonant.
  • The changing time signatures show how the piece is linking to another place and also this is when the ascending quavers come in. The ending sends us into 'I dreamed a dream'.
4 of 4

Comments

No comments have yet been made

Similar Music resources:

See all Music resources »See all Developing Musical Understanding resources »