In the course of one of those I-haven’t-heard-that-song- in-a-while iTunes purchases, indeed I discovered something new the other day. (New for me, anyway — it’s probably over 30 years old.) I’m talking about the song “Guinnevere” by Crosby, Stills and Nash, which I idly sampled recently while downloading “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, previously the only song of theirs I’d really known.

What a gorgeous song! It seems designed to appeal to me directly. It opens with an almost Sondheim-like chromatic vamp, which turns into a beautiful repeating Dorian-mode figure before the vocals come in. This use of modality is something in common with other music that I like, particularly Reich and early Adams. Do you think David Crosby was sitting around with the score to Ravel’s Mallarmé Songs, turning pages between bong hits?

Then there’s the vocal writing. It’s your standard CSN three-part homophonic harmony at first, which is lovely as usual. But there’s a nifty mixing trick at the end of each verse. The two higher voices are faded in (muted trumpets if I were orchestrating it), holding D and F# (we’re in E dorian, by the way), and they step down in thirds, crossing the remaining voice who has the melody. Some wonderful dissonances result naturally from this, and it’s a terrific effect.

The melody is particularly expressive. It’s rhythmically complex in that it often avoids landing on the beat, which is something I find myself doing a lot in my own music. This is easy for a solo vocalist to pull off — Sinatra is most famous for it — but hats off to these guys for accomplishing it in three parts.

Here’s an excerpt that illustrates everything I’ve described. Stick with it until the end to hear those descending parallel thirds.

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Update: (12/2/08)  See Roger Bourland for a fascinating alternate version of this song, plus a great story.