SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal
SMT-V is the open-access, peer-reviewed video journal of the Society for Music Theory. Founded in 2014, SMT-V publishes video essays that showcase research in music theory in a dynamic, audiovisual format, presented so as to have the potential to engage both specialists within the field as well as interested viewers outside the music theory community. The journal features a supportive and collaborative production process, and publishes three to four videos per year. Read more about SMT-V here.
Latest Issue: 7.4 (June 2021)
I Don’t Care if I Never Get Back: Optimism and Ascent in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game”
Michael Buchler (Florida State University)
The chorus of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” (Von Tilzer and Norworth, 1908) is familiar to anyone who has attended baseball games in North America. However, relatively few people are aware that there is an introductory verse that poetically and contrapuntally motivates and anticipates the well-known chorus. This video article demonstrates some relationships between the verse and chorus and also challenges an earlier analysis that views this song through the lens of common-practice melodic norms.
Keywords: baseball, Tin Pan Alley, Schenkerian analysis, ascent, Broadway songs, narrative
DOI: http://doi.org/10.30535/smtv.7.4