Research Methods and Scholarly Practice

MUM800
Annotated Bibliography
Dr.Rebecca Gunnell

Kaewalin Prasertchang
MA in Music Education
K0733740
Deadline Date: 19 November 2007
John Lennon's harmonic language

This topic can be analysed by separating the topic into two elements which are “John Lennon”

and the “Harmonic Language”. John Lennon is immediately recognized as a member of the famous

pop band “The Beatles”. Most of The Beatles' music was composed by John Lennon and Paul

McCartney. For this reason, the understanding of John Lennon issue can be represented through The

Beatles. Furthermore, the term “Harmonic Language” is linked to music theory. There are books and

articles explaining about the harmony, both in classical music theory and the analysis of Beatles’ music.

In the similar way, instead of emphasizing research from the books and articles, the other way to find

the detail about the harmony is to analyse by listening to CDs and watching DVDs. After searching the

sources, for instance books, articles from website, DVDs and CDs. Most useful four sources that

related to the John Lennon's Harmonic Language are as follows.

 The first source is the book 'The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles' written by Dominic Pedler

in 2003. There is useful information and detail about the compositions of The Beatles. In my opinion,

this book considered as the theory book for composition. The structure of this book is easy to read and

understand as one can see in the contents. There are the facts about the musical theory that was used in

the popular music style, which is important for the music students and the people who are interested.

Pedler analyses of The Beatles' music scores, music notation and explores the technique of the

composing in each song. Furthermore, there is a great deal of interesting music notation with the full

chord analysis that can be understood clearly.

The reason that this book was chosen as a useful source is because of the facts given in the

book. Firstly, there is the chapter 'Harmonisation in Focus'. This is the chapter that contains an

explanation of what the harmonisation is. There is the information about the harmonisation and

explores several important issues. For instance, the issues that explains about the basic principle of

harmonisation in western music. It seems that Pedler provides some idea about traditional harmony.

Pedler researches the variety of harmonic forms that were used in The Beatles' music such as vertical

intervals, thirds formula and melodic fourth. There is the music notation with the full descriptions in

this chapter that is given as an example.

Secondly, there is the appendix 'An Introduction to Harmonisation’ at the end of this book.

Pedler observes that this appendix was used as an example to show the relation between the melodies

and the chords in The Beatles' music. These are the details from the introduction that gave all the

explanations, so the people who would like to get more details can understand when looking at this

appendix.

The second source is the article 'Patterns of Harmony' written by Allan Moore in 1992. Moore

makes the point in this article that to study traditional harmony is a useful focus for songwriters. The

subject of the article is harmonic analysis of rock, pop and soul music which is presented in the
appendix lists at the end of the article. Moore analyses the harmony by deviding it into the categories

from Class A to Class O. In the study, some of The Beatles' music has been used as the example in this

article, for instance, 'Penny Lane’, ‘All You Need Is Love’ and ‘I Want To Tell You'. Moore focuses on

the influence of harmony and the general view of the harmony in popular music. At this point, this

article identifies the differences between rock, pop and soul harmony.

After The Beatles formed the band in 1956, they were the band represented the Rock and Roll

music that called British rock . The British rock was born out of the influence of rock and roll music

and the rhythm and blues from the United States. Since American Rock and Roll music had and impact

to the world in 1950s, John Lennon started to absorb this rock and roll music culture into his idea.

(Everett 2001, p.20-22). So the reason that this article was chosen as a useful source is because to

know about rock music harmonic patterns is useful to get the knowledge and the understanding of John

Lennon's music during his time after 1956.

The third source is the online article 'The Harmonic Language of the Beatles' from the STM-

Online written by KG Johansson in 1999. This article analyses the Beatles' music and also shows the

specific focus on the study of rock music harmony. Even though it does not mention John Lennon

directly, it is generally recognized from many sources that John Lennon composed most of the Beatles’

songs. For this reason, this article was chosen as a useful source. In the article, Johansson shows the

references and the primary sources from many books and articles that refer to the topic and gives a

brief detail of each source. The article flows smoothly from one point to the next, another important

term is that Johansson also shows the musical details and also the arguments about The Beatles' music

are presented. It is a good way to encourage the people who are interested in the topic to find out more

information. At the end of the article, Johansson provides a clear list of bibliographical and

discography.

Furthermore, in the article Johansson particularly analyses the structure of the Beatles' music,
for instance the form of the song, the harmonic rhythm, chords and modulation. There are some

diagrams that show analysis of the chord structure used in most of the Beatles' music. One important

point that supports the idea of this essay is that Johansson mentions the reason for using the harmony in

the Beatles' music. He asks the question in his article 'Why did the Beatles' harmonic language turn out

this way?' (Johanson 1999, p.7). Then he explains the idea and offers the answer by giving a study of

functional harmony. It is the idea of comparing traditional harmony and the Beatles' harmony to show

the differences. To sum up, this article has useful details and information about the harmonic language

of the Beatles. But there is some lack of explanation of the relation between the Beatles and rock

music.

The last source is ‘The Beatles Anthology’ which comprises two Digital Video Discs (DVDs).

The Beatles Anthology contains 5 DVDs plus 1 special DVD, of which only two DVDs were used for

this study. The first DVD is Episodes 1&2 between July 1940 and February 1964 and the other one is

Episodes 3&4 between February 1964 and August 1965. The DVDs start by following the life from

childhood to the end of The Beatles' members from 1942 to 2003. One of the interesting aspects of this

collection of DVDs is that there are the collection of The Beatles'

works, self-video which was recorded by the members of The Beatles, an interview of The

Beatles' members and the people who were linked to the story.

The strength of this collection of DVDs and the reason to choose it as a useful source are

because to look in the DVDs, it is good to see and listen to the live performances. The DVD shows the

video that recorded the discussion between The Beatles' members and their band manager. Some parts

of the DVDs show that John Lennon worked together with Paul McCartney and discussed about

harmony in their works. On the other hand, these DVDs do not provide much detail about the

theoretical aspect of John Lennon's work. Most of the information is about the history and biography

of The Beatles. Only some sections refer to the topic of this essay. This collection of DVDs is a
unique and wide-ranging collection about The Beatles, which enables one to get the idea about The

Beatles and the members of the band.

In conclusion, all the sources stated above are examples of the bibliography that was used to

disscuss the topic “John Lennon's Harmonic Language”. Concerning the many uses of the term, there

are several books, journals, DVDs, CDs, and articles emphasize about John Lennon and the harmony.

Some of them are useful and have all the information related to the topic. By contrast, some of them

have only a few sentences relerant to the topic. Moreover, some books can be used to find the

information, they provide an accurate information that allows the reader to finding more about the topic

that they interested. Many discussions in the sources are similar, but some time have diverging points

of view, so when searching the most important issue is to try to understand the topic given.

Word Count: 1,551

Bibliographies (by MHRA)

Everett, Walter, The Beatles as Musicians : The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2001)

Holm-Hudson, Kevin. ‘Book Review: “Every Sound There Is: The Beatles’ Revolver and the

Transformation of Rock and Roll’, Psychology of Music, 33 (2005), 217-20 < HYPERLINK

"http://pom.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/33/2/217.pdf"http://pom.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/33/2/2

17.pdf> [Accessed 03 October 2007]

Johansson,KG, 'The Harmonic Language of the Beatles', STM-Online, 2 (1999)

<http://www.musik.uu.se/ssm/stmonline/vol_2_1/KGJO/index.html [Accessed 28 September 2007]

Lennon, John and McCartney, Paul, 'A Hard Day's Night' in The Beatles : complete scores (London ;

New York : Milwaukee, WI : Wise Publications ; Exclusive distributors for U.S.A. and Canada, H.
Leonard Pub. Corp., 1993), pp. 359-64

Mathieu, W. A., Harmonic experience : tonal harmony from its natural origins to its modern

expression (Vermount: Inner Traditions, 1997)

Moore, Allan, 'Patterns of Harmony', Popular Music, 11:1 (1992), 73-106 < HYPERLINK

"http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0261-

1430(199201)11%3A1<73%3APOH>2.0.CO%3B2-1"http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0261-

1430%28199201%2911%3A1%3C73%3APOH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1> [Accessed 03 October 2007]

Pedler, Dominic, The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles (London: Omnibus Press, 2003)

Sessions, Roger, Harmonic practice (New York : Harcourt, Brace and World, 1951)

Tamm, Eric, 'Beyond Strawberry Fields: Lennon's later style', in The Lennon Companion: twenty-five

years of comment, ed. by Elizabeth Thomson and David Gutman (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1987)

Tillekens, Ger, 'Baroque and folk and ... John Lennon : Some folk and classical elements in the songs

of John Lennon', Journal on Media Culture, 1 (1998), < HYPERLINK

"http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME01/Baroque_Folk_Lennon.shtml"http:/

/www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME01/Baroque_Folk_Lennon.shtml> [Accessed 28 September

2007]

Tillekens,Ger, 'The Sound of Beatles', Journal on Media Culture, 1 (1998), < HYPERLINK

"http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME01/The_sound_of_the_Beatles.shtml

"http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/VOLUME01/The_sound_of_the_Beatles.shtml> [Accessed 03

October 2007]

The Beatles Anthology Episodes 1&2 July '40 to February '64 [Digital Video Disc]. Geoff Wonfor.

Apple Corps. 2003. 4 9297 0 9

The Beatles Anthology Episodes 3 & 4, February '64 to August '65 [Digital Video Disc]. Geoff Wonfor.

Apple Corps. 2003. 4 9297 1 9

The Beatles, A Hard Day's Night. 1964. The Beatles. Compact Disc. Parlophone. CDP 7 46437 2

The Beatles, Rubber Soul. 1987. The Beatles. Compact Disc. EMI. CDP 7 46440 2

Zuckerkandl, Victor, 'Theoretical Harmony and the Understanding of Music', Bulletin of the American

Musicological Society, 8 (1945), 17-18 < HYPERLINK "http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1544-

4708(194510)0%3A8<17%3ATHATUO>2.0.CO%3B2-C"http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1544-

4708%28194510%290%3A8%3C17%3ATHATUO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C>

[Accessed 03 October 2007]

Dominic Pedler, The Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles (London: Omnibus Press, 2003)

Allan Moore, 'Patterns of Harmony', Popular Music, 11:1 (1992), 73-106 < HYPERLINK
"http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0261-1430(199201)11%3A1<73%3APOH>2.0.CO%3B2-
1"http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0261-1430%28199201%2911%3A1%3C73%3APOH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1>

Walter Everett, The Beatles as Musicians : The Quarry Men through Rubber Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

Johansson,KG, 'The Harmonic Language of the Beatles', STM-Online, 2 (1999)

<http://www.musik.uu.se/ssm/stmonline/vol_2_1/KGJO/index.html>

The Beatles Anthology Episodes 1&2 July '40 to February '64 [Digital Video Disc]. Geoff Wonfor. Apple Corps. 2003. 4
9297 0 9

The Beatles Anthology Episodes 3 & 4, February '64 to August '65 [Digital Video Disc]. Geoff Wonfor. Apple Corps. 2003.

4 9297 1 9
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