Composition
The song is in moderate time in C major, and is characterised by the bassline moving stepwise downwards in a repeated pattern throughout. In classical music this is known as a ground bass. The harmonic structure is identical for the organ melody, the verse and the chorus, except that the chorus finishes with a cadence. The main organ melody appears at the beginning and after each verse/chorus. But it is also heard throughout, playing variations of its theme and counterpointing the vocal line. The vocal and organ accompaniment reach a crescendo at the beginning of the chorus "And so it was, and later ..."; where the organist rapidly runs his finger down and up the entire keyboard. The final instrumental fades out to silence - a common device in pop music of the time.
The Hammond organ line of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" came from Johann Sebastian Bach's "Sleepers, Wake!" and "Air on the G String" - both of which use a similar stepwise bass motion. The similarity is referred to in the 1982 play The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard and 1991 film The Commitments. A yet closer melodic influence that is seldom cited can arguably be found in the organ choral prelude "O Mensch bewein dein' Sünde groß" (O Man, Lament Your Sin So Great), BWV 622, from Bach's Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book). The music also borrows ideas from "When a Man Loves a Woman" by Percy Sledge.
Read more about this topic: A Whiter Shade Of Pale
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“It is my PRIDE, my damn’d, native, unconquerable Pride, that plunges me into Distraction. You must know that 19-20th of my Composition is Pride. I must either live a Slave, a Servant; to have no Will of my own, no Sentiments of my own which I may freely declare as such;Mor DIE—perplexing alternative!”
—Thomas Chatterton (1752–1770)
“When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Every thing in his composition was little; and he had all the weaknesses of a little mind, without any of the virtues, or even the vices, of a great one.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)