Last night I played at a nice little christmas show on a typical german "christmas market". It was freezing cold on stage, but the atmosphere was cheerful and contemplative.
Amongst the songs we were playing was Bruce Springsteens rendition of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town", which continues our little tour through the charateristic harmony of christmas songs (if something like this really exists).
Just like Bryan Adams "Christmas Time" that we examined last week "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" is in the key of C major. So let's start again by looking at the diatonic chords of C major:
The verses are 12 bars long and mainly follow the simple
I-IV-V cadence while the bass pedals on the root note “C”. In the last 4 bars
we encounter a so called “Turnaround Progression” which is I-VI-II-V.
Originally coming from Jazz this progression is now widely used in a variety of
popular music styles ranging from R & B to Gospel, Rock etc.
The second verse has a little variation at the end:
The C7 chord in bar twelve is a secondary dominant leading
to F major and in fact the following Pre-Chorus can be analysed as being in the
key of F major at least for the first four measures:
The second half of the Pre-Chorus is leading back to C major
with the aid of the secondary dominant D7 which resolves to the actual dominant
of C major “G”.
The chorus is essentially just oscillating between tonic (I)
and subdominant (IV) concluding again with the “turnaround progression”.
After a saxophone solo and another pre-chorus the following chorus displays an interesting variation of the I-IV progression.
Linked together by a descending bassline the chords can be reinterpreted as I - V/VI - IV and IVm. Starting from the tonic C major the bassnote Bb on beat 3 of the first bar implies a C7 chord, which is a secondary dominant to the IV chord F major (played in first inversion with A in bass). Stepping down to Ab on beat 3 in the bass makes this chord a subdominant minor chord (Fm), which we encountered already in the analysis of Bryan Adams “Christmas Time”.
As yet we have the following common elements of the two examined christmas songs:
- frequently used secondary dominant chords
- subdominant minor chords
- descending basslines
- the key of c major
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