Hamilton music geekery

[punch_kicker15]

Ok. this will likely seem utterly obvious to people with stronger musical backgrounds than I have, but I've been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack obsessively for the last few months. Yesterday, while I was listening to it at work, noticed a recurring theme:


The Burr-Hamilton interaction theme:

It starts with the three opening notes of Aaron Burr, Sir. I think it's the cello playing them. The notes repeat underneath Burr and Hamilton's conversation. The notes are played on different instruments, and start to sound a bit more sinister at the "Talk Less, Smile More" advice, and continue until the entry of Laurens/Lafayette/Mulligan.

The three notes reappear at 2:28 of Non-Stop, right after Hamilton says, "The new U.S. Constitution?" and Burr says, "No". It continues until Hamilton says, "You're making a mistake" and Burr says, "Good night." Then it appears again underneath "For once in your life take a stand with pride."

It recurs again at 3:11 in The World was Wide Enough, immediately after "He aims his pistol at the sky"/"Wait!" The three notes are on cello and piano (I think?). The chorus picks up the three notes at 3:35. ("I hear wailing in the streets") and continues until 3:59, ("Death doesn't discriminate"). Then the piano (?) picks up the notes again at 4:26 ("Now I'm the villain in your history.") and continues to the end.

So those three notes mark the very beginning of the first interaction between Burr/Hamilton, the very end of the last one, and a little bit of the interactions in between.

There may be more in other numbers, but I did have some work to get done yesterday and couldn't give this issue my full attention.


Ok, now back to wrestling with my story for femslash-minis.

Comments

[snogged.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Nice catch!

[punch-kicker15.livejournal.com]

Thanks!