Musical Tone

 Let's look at Christmas songs for a minute. Think of one of your favorites. I'll think of Breath of Heaven by Amy Grant. (Really, you can do this with any song, but in the spirit of the season, we're experimenting with Christmas songs.)

Now queue this song up on Spotify, hunt down that CD (do you know what a CD is, dear reader?), or at least look up the lyrics on the Internet. It's the words that matter here, although it's best to listen to the song in order to get a better feel for the meter.

Before you play/read through the song: keep a few things in mind. First, pause the song whenever you can't make out the lyrics. Rewind and listen again. Try to figure out what the artist is saying. Second, whenever you hear a stirring or surprising line, pause again. Write it down or commit it to memory. You'll need it later. Third, pay attention. From what point of view is the song written? What is it about? How does the artist sing it? This is of the utmost importance to this experiment.

Okay, ready? Listen.

Breath of Heaven, or Mary's Song, is sung from Mary's point of view, before Jesus is born, while Mary is en route to Bethlehem.

Amy Grant says in the first line of Breath of Heaven, "I have travelled many moonless nights." If you listen to the song (and I advise it), you'll notice that moonless could easily be mistaken for moonlit. You'll also notice that overall, it shouldn't matter whether she said moonless or moonlit. It wouldn't mess with the meter, and after all, we don't know what the cloud cover or moon phases were like during the real Mary's trip to Bethlehem. So why moonless instead of moonlit? Because moonlit sounds happy and romantic. That is not the tone of this song. This song is Mary's fervent, almost despairing prayer to the Lord for strength and reassurance. Hence, moonless.

Later she says, "In a world as cold as stone." When I first heard this line, I thought she said snow, not stone. It made sense: snow is famously cold, and it's Christmas, after all. Snow is a near-rhyme with the end of the next line, alone. It wouldn't mess with the rhyme or meter. "Cold as stone" and "cold as snow" are both cliches; it shouldn't matter which one she uses. But snow is happy, friendly, Christmassy, and romantic. Snow conjures up images of children sledding and having snowball fights. Meanwhile, stone is hard, barren, and colorless, and it's even more hard, barren, and colorless when it's cold. That's the difference. Mary is not happy. "Cold as snow" has connotations of Christmas joy. "Cold as stone" works for the song.

Finally, later Grant sings, "Help me be strong. Help me be. Help me." She didn't have to do this. It broke the pattern she'd established earlier in the song. If she followed the pattern, she would have sung, "Help me be strong. Help me be strong." But this slow breaking down of her prayer into three prayers ("help me be" having Biblical connotations) is more poetic and shows her despair better than simply repeating the phrase.

How does the artist in your favorite Christmas song build the tone of the song through word choice and other tricks of language?