Thursday, February 7, 2019

"Don't You Feel Small"

In "Don't You Feel Small," the "all" in the line "Who's the biggest fool of all" is sung with a melisma (B A B, I think), musically giving a sense of number or amount.  In the next verse, "more" in the line "Understanding, nothing more" is sung with the same melisma for a similar effect.

In the third verse, "voice" in the line "Time is now to spread your voice" is sung with the same melisma yet again, but here, there's a musical sense of that "spread[ing]" since the word is sung to more than one note.

The fourth verse begins with the line "See the writing on the wall."  Although the phrase "the writing on the wall" has taken on a larger meaning, it originally refers to an event in the Bible, specifically in Daniel 5.