It’s a rare phenomenon when any song—even a huge hit—has such emotional power that it affects people worldwide for generations. Paul Simon’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” accomplished that feat, sending ripples around the globe that are still present today. Within a month of its release in January 1970, it sailed to the top of the Billboard charts and stayed there for six weeks. The album of the same name topped the charts for 10 weeks in the United States, and 33 weeks in the United Kingdom. To date the album has sold 25 million copies around the world, with 5 million purchases in America alone. In February 1971, it also won four Grammy Awards.

When “Bridge” hit the airwaves, American society was in turmoil over the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia, which was spilling out in protests onto America’s streets. The quiet assurance of Simon’s lyrics delivered in Garfunkel’s sometimes gentle, sometimes soaring, tenor to the accompaniment of Larry Knechtel’s gospel-infused piano also subtly connected to the period’s racial struggles and to the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968. The turbulent decade of the sixties that had witnessed the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy had just come to a close. For millions, “Bridge” served as a musical emollient for life’s public and personal struggles.

Much has been written about the songs gospel inspired harmony. Paul Simon had been listening to gospel at the time, notably The Swan Silvertones 1959 recording of Mary Don’t You Weep. It contains the line "I'll be your bridge over deep water if you trust in my name". Bridge over Troubled Water certainly contains a number of non-diatonic chords which we will look at next week. But the song hinges around three chords – the primary chords that we investigated when we analysed Bucharest by George Ezra.

What are the Primary chords in C major? ____ _____ and _____

What degrees of the scale are these founded on (use Roman numerals)? ____ _____ and

_____

There is an easier way to figure these out in any key if you know your circle of fifths which we looked at briefly last week.

If we remember that the Dominant is a fifth above the tonic and the Subdominant is a fifth below the tonic then the primary chords will always be adjacent on the circle of fifths. In G major the primary chords are C, G and D. In D major the primary chords are G, D and A.

What key is Bridge Over Troubled Water in? _______________________

What are the primary chords in this Key?

Chord I is _________________

Chord IV is ________________

Chord V is _________________

These are the most important chords in Bridge Over Troubled Water. In fact they are used in almost every bar of the song. Can you find the two occasions when these chords do not occur (for two bars each time?

You may notice that chords I and IV occur the most frequently. They tend to alternate. We call this a plagal relationship and it occurs often in pop music, American folk music and Blues. When a phrase ends with chord IV and I we call it a plagal cadence. The other important cadence is chord V to I. This is called a perfect cadence. There is a very good example of this cadence where the lyric “I will lay me down” is harmonized with Ab Bb Eb (IV, V, I) at the end of the first verse. Every other time these lyrics occur they are harmonized G7 Cm – a passing modulation to C minor (the relative minor) BUT still a perfect cadence!

Just to recap, the three secondary chords are all minor. These occur on degrees _______, _________

and ____________ (Use Roman numerals).

This leaves chord vii. This is the triad built on the leading note. It is neither major, nor minor but

___________________. This is because it’s fifth is a semitone lower than a perfect fifth.

Now go to a keyboard and play all these triads in C major, G major (remember to use F#) and F major (remember to use Bb).

Building seventh chord extensions

So far we have concerned ourselves only with triads. That is, chords with three notes, each a third above the last.

What if we add another third on top of these triads?

These are all extended chords or chord extensions. The interval between the new top note and the root is a seventh. All these chords are seventh extensions. We could carry on adding thirds on top to get 9^th and 13^th extensions. But today we will focus on 7^th extensions.

We now need to figure out whether the extensions are major. Minor or diminished sevenths. This is quite easy to do if we remember that a major seventh is a semitone below the octave of the root.

A minor seventh is two semitones (one tone) below the root.

A diminished seventh is three semitones below the root.

Summary of findings:

In a major key....

All the minor triads have minor sevenths.

All the major triads except one have major sevenths.

Chord V has a major triad with a minor seventh. This very important chord is called the dominant seventh.

Chord vii is a diminished triad with a minor seventh. This chord is called a half diminished seventh.

There is one more 7^th chord to consider. In a minor key, chord ii gives a half diminished seventh chord but chord vii gives a full diminished chord. This very special chord is not found as a diatonic chord in major keys but it is often “borrowed” because of its special quality. The full diminished chord is like piling three minor thirds on top of each other. It is completely symmetrical.