Sentential Lyric-Types in the Great American Songbook

Abstract

This article investigates the musico-poetic role played by the sentence in songs of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Frederick Loewe, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. The phrase-type can be understood as an architectural frame for both composers and lyricists, fundamental to both musical and lyrical designs and crucial to the interaction between the two. This study classifies lyrics that display sentential characteristics of repetition, intensification, and cadence and explores their correspondence to those features of musical sentences. The result is a more detailed picture of text-music relationships and phrase structure in the Great American Songbook.