This is incredibly important because of what occurs in the harmony. The point here is that the leap from E♭to A♭ firmly establishes the key at the very beginning. I’ll talk about this more in the harmony section because this gets more important to understand when we switch keys or use non-diatonic harmony (notes that aren’t from the key in discussion). As long as you have both of them, you have fully established a key. Arguably, the relationship between dominant and tonic defines a key. It shares one note (in this case E♭) with the tonic, and the other two notes in the chord are only one scale step away from the tonic chord notes.
This chord is also major, so it is represented by a capital five in Roman numerals: “V.” The dominant chord is significant because it creates a strong pull back to the tonic chord. The other important chord is the dominant, built from the fifth note in the scale, in this case E♭. An A♭ major chord is major, so in this key the tonic chord of A♭ major can be represented as “I,” which you can see in the harmony section. We also use Roman numerals as a way of showing whether the chord is major or minor: capital numerals are major, and lowercase numerals are minor. The tonic chord is built from the first note in the A♭ major scale, so it’s called “one.” As a very brief review, a traditional way of representing all of the chords in a key is to assign them numbers corresponding to the scale step on which the chord is built. In functional harmony, tonic refers to the “home chord.” Just like the tonic pitch refers to the home pitch (in this case A♭), the tonic chord refers to the chord built from the tonic pitch, so A♭ major in this piece. The leap up at the beginning from E♭ to A♭ represents the dominant-tonic relationship in this key, A♭ major. There is an important tonal-harmonic relationship that occurs within this melodic arc as well. This is a common melodic contour in Western tonal music, so it’s not surprising. It starts low, gets high in the middle, and ends low: it forms an arc shape when we connect the dots. It doesn’t go all the way down to that original E♭, but it does get close: it ends on F. Then it leaps up to A♭, steps up to B♭, then steps back down toward where it started. This melody, “We wish you a Merry Christmas,” begins on the lowest line of the staff, an E♭. Since each two-measure phrase of the verse is the same, just transposed up each time, we only have to look at one repetition to uncover the contour: Measure 1–2 Melody You can figure this out by playing connect the dots with the notes on the staff. In melodic analysis, theorists often discuss the “contour” of a melody. I’ll discuss them more in the harmony section below. There’s even more repetition within the verse alone and within the chorus alone, but these repeats also serve harmonic functions. Just like most pop music, then, the verses change each time, but the chorus stays the same. Last week in the “Deck the Hall” analysis, I mentioned how carols are often strophic: many verses that repeat form the piece, but “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” is perhaps a more familiar form: verse-chorus.
#We wish you a merry christmas sidenotes full
Repetition means less material to actually learn but still a full piece. Often groups get together and want to learn a lot of music quickly (sometimes memorize it). Most Christmas carols tend to be repetitive because of the way they are used.
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