McCartney’s Expressive Appoggiaturas
So what is an appoggiatura?
It is an expressive device where a melodic note, which lies outside the harmony, is played on the beat. The creates a temporary clash or “dissonance” which is then resolved up or down. It can also be called an accented passing note.
Mozart was quite fond of appoggiaturas, as we can hear at the beginning of his Sonata in A Minor. It begins with a fast style of appoggiatura (called an acciaccatura) which rises from D# to E over A minor. In the second bar, you can hear a true appoggiatura that resolves down from A to G# over a dominant harmony.
The Psychology Of Appoggiaturas
The British psychologist John Sloboda conducted an experiment that asked participants, to identify passages of songs that evoked a physical reaction, such as goose bumps or tears. He found that eighteen out of twenty passages contained an appoggiatura. Although Sloboda’s study did not explain why the note caused a physical reaction, his research does provide a clue about the properties of appoggiaturas.
My Own Findings
In my two-volumed work, Paul McCartney After The Beatles: A Musical Appreciation I have continually stressed that McCartney’s most expressive ballads, such as My Love and Only Love Remains are based on the principle of tension and release. This tension is sometimes in the form of harmony, such as the use of a diminished chord near the beginning of Only Love Remains. In My Love and The Long and Winding Road, tension is achieved by the tactical delaying of the tonic until the end of each verse. In other songs, appoggiaturas do indeed act as an expressive part of the tension/release dynamic in his songwriting.
Appoggiaturas in The Beatles
Undoubtedly the most famous use of an appoggiatura occurs at the beginning of the song Yesterday (1965). The song is in F major (although McCartney tunes his guitar lower and uses G chord shapes) and the opening word “yesterday” is an appoggiatura of G3 to F3 over the chord of F major.
However, that song seems to have been analysed to death, so let’s have a look at another Beatles song penned by McCartney, And I Love Her. This song was recorded in February 1964 and released on A Hard Day’s Night.
And I Love Her
The vocal melody is full of passing notes and appoggiaturas. Right from the beginning of the verse, the melody falls onto D#4 at the end of the first bar on the word “all”. This note belongs to neither chord of F# minor or C# minor, but resolves onto C#4 on the word “my”, before rising to E4 (another chord tone) on the word “love”.
Can you hear the tension/expression on the word “all” and the release on “my love”?
Perhaps the effect is even more obvious on the word “do” at 0:16, where the D# falls to the tonic of C#.
By the end of the verse, there is a notable release of tension from 0:24. The harmony, which has moved between the more secondary minor chords now moves towards the reassuring territory of chords IV and V, followed by the E major tonic. Over the chord of IV (A major), the melody is formed from the chord tones of E – C# – A. The word “to” is formed from a meslisma that falls to F#3 squarely at the arrival of B7.
Even non-musicians will hear the lightening of atmosphere from 0:24. These changes in mood and emotion within the space of a few short bars point towards a master craftsman at work.
Let’s Love
Let’s Love is a song that McCartney wrote for Peggy Lee in 1974.
Just like the song Yesterday, Let’s Love begins with an expressive descending appoggiatura
Two bars later, Peggy Lee sings another appoggiatura, but this time it expressively rises to D4, before falling to Bb3 over the tonic chord of G minor.
Appoggiaturas are not the only expressive device in Let’s Love, but are another effective element in a well-crafted song. Let’s Love is clever as it vacillates between the keys of C minor and G minor. The first verse seems to end in G minor at 0:33, but a surprising parallel major chord at at 0:37 steers the song back into C minor.
Live and Let Die
It would be too simplistic to associate the use of appoggiaturas solely with expressive ballads. In McCartney’s 1973 Bond theme tune, the word “die” is formed from an A3-G3 appoggiatura that packs a powerful punch. The preceding chromatic descent from Bb3 adds a palpable sense of suspense and danger:
Conclusion
Appoggiaturas are used as an expressive device by McCartney in many songs both during and after The Beatles. Although their use is most commonly associated with expressive ballads, McCartney uses appoggiaturas to evoke a sense of drama in tracks such as Live and Let Die.
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