Composition
The title song is about a nostalgic searching of the past in order to capture a magic moment almost lost in memory. "The Lion This Time" is a continuation over thirty years later of "Listen to the Lion" that first appeared on his album Saint Dominic's Preview. There is a nursery rhyme quality to it as with its predecessor and a delicate use of a classical string arrangement. Thom Jurek with Allmusic says: "The acoustic 'The Lion This Time' is one of the finest ballads Morrison has cut in decades. Period." "Gypsy In My Soul" is also reminiscent of a song "Gypsy" from Saint Dominic's Preview. "Just Like Greta" and "Stranded" have similar themes of being lost in an alien world with only oneself to rely on. "Celtic New Year" is reminiscent of Irish Heartbeat, an album with The Chieftains. An Allmusic review calls it "trademark Morrison; the long, loping, repetitive line that is his trademark fuels this one. It's carried by the interplay between Morrison's acoustic and Foggy Lyttle's electric guitar fills, and aided by Chieftain Paddy Moloney's whistle." "Carry On Regardless" is a singing list of "Carry On Films" that Morrison seemed to have a special fondness for. The title track, "Magic Time", uses the peculiar time signature 9/8, not used often in popular music.
Read more about this topic: Magic Time (Van Morrison album)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)
“The naive notion that a mother naturally acquires the complex skills of childrearing simply because she has given birth now seems as absurd to me as enrolling in a nine-month class in composition and imagining that at the end of the course you are now prepared to begin writing War and Peace.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)