Lyricist as Analyst: Rhyme Scheme as Music-Setting in the Great American Songbook

Abstract

Although most songwriting teams in the Great American Songbook wrote music first and lyrics second, most studies of music-text interaction in this repertoire still evince a lyrics-first mindset, in which the music is viewed as text-setting. In this article, I propose the opposite approach: considering lyrics as a form of music-setting, in which the lyricist’s superimposition of a verbal form (the rhyme scheme) upon the composer’s pre-existing musical form counts as an act of analysis. I examine in turn: (1) the most common phrase structures and their associated rhyme schemes in songs from 1919 to 1943; (2) Lorenz Hart’s negotiation of the unusual XYYZ phrase structure that Richard Rodgers frequently employed; and (3) special cases where the lyricist contests the composer’s form and the effect that this can have on performers’ choices.