an essay for the song "Bohemian Rhapsody"

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The Technical Genius of the Song "Bohemian Rhapsody"
composed by 70s arena rock band Queen  &  the pinnacle of their career
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To dissect an animal and learn the secrets of its functionality requires first that the animal be deceased.  No amount of understanding will bring it back.  But it is my contention that the soul of this unforgettable anthem is very much alive... I may find myself defending my curiosity and dry analysis of this piece later in my own career.  If so, so be it.  Let us keep the song alive.

* BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY *

... is a one song "rock opera" in two movements.

... is a "classical or baroque" song, if you will, because it is sophisticated.  It is well-composed.  The harmonies are beautiful, and the more dissonant intervals are jarring but necessary.  It employs a variety of key signatures; progressions in a variety of dramatic modes, both comedic and tragic: inner conflict creates tension, outer conflict provokes action, and false or just resolution allows for comedy and even closure.  ...Progressions use various chords, scales, motifs, and even effects (natural or electric):

It is a "classic rock" song because the sophistication is also intuitive.  If there's one thing about rock music, it's that it's easy to groove to.  Even in the milieu, this one is an earworm ... and even if you don't know what key it is you're singing in, you find yourself singing along.  Like the psychedelic rock songs before it (including "Mr. Tambourine Man", "Lucy in the Sky", even "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which I believe is a crossover hit much like) Queen's B.R. draws you at once into a dreamy & mysterious world:

"is this the real life?  is this just fantasy?  Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality..."

But this world is immediately frightening and fraught with danger.  The narrator gives way to a guilt-ridden protagonist who finds himself bravely moved by this trustworthy harmonic inclusion into breaking out and confessing a crime.  A murder.  He is torn apart and doesn't know what to do, where to go... "if I'm not back again this time tomorrow..."

His existential dilemma makes for a moving rock ballad.  The chorus is the gentle emotional (instrumental) persuasion that keeps his drifting confession at task.

The progressions in the first act/movement are mostly within the natural series of major and minor chords.  The leading man expresses strength and resilience / doesn't want to face his inner turmoil. 

 (the inability to resolve except into tragically minor chords foreshadows the coming dissonance.)  What this youth cannot resolve within drives him to seek the kind of action he needs to face himself... "Goodbye everybody, I've got to go... got to leave you all behind and face the truth..." and when he says "I don't want to die / I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all" the guitar solo sympathizes deeply.  But this is one guitar solo that can't just return to the refrain…

The second movement finds our hero being considered as either worthy or despicable in a surreal moral justice system.  Perhaps the deepening pathos of this subject will "make a man out of him"... Does he deserve to live or die?  His prosecutors and his defense argue forth, in some kind of an archaic dance to test/prove his mettle, "Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will he do the Fandango"... it is confusing, rigorous and maddening to say the least.  The underdog's voice is very small.  But it is listened to and amplified fantastically.

From this little test, his survival response and self-worth rise up, and he goes from ballad to baller.  "So you think you can stop me and spit in my eye.  So you think you can love me and leave me to die..."

Rock on, self-induced Pariah.

The whole thing is emotionally solvent.  Whether or not you yourself have killed a man, you find yourself in this world of truth or justice by force, divided by sympathies and convictions.  Even though the caustic polarity between accusers and victims couldn't be more stark, it is a universal music, and you don't have to or rather cannot pick a side.  To live or die justly or by justice is to sympathize with the victims and to be restless and bored by the superiority of defensible accusation.  Let us say it again, because I can't pick a side;  it seems that there would be no song without both sides.

...But I'm no murderer, ha ha... ha?

The song itself is intuitively complex from the get-go.  On the guitar, it revolves around the tightest melodic tension in western music: a half-step.  In fact it would all be in the key of "A"...  Although yes, it shifts from A-major to A-minor ...  it would  be in "A";  instead it is... a little uptight.  It is capoed up a half-step, to the key of "A#".  This is technically beautiful structure underneath the obvious composition of the song, like a method actor feeling the role they are playing closely, personally.  The A# verses of the song are subtly counter-intuitive, difficult to listen to as they are difficult to play with eyes closed.

Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy...  The world of music is infinite.  The limitations are in our own tools, which are continually developing.  And with those developments, our understandings of what is possible, from what is meaningful, in life and in our dreams... are also developing and one may say evolving.

The suspension of A sharp is held by the capo through the first movement.  Then through some melodic miracle-working, it works its way down to the more comfortable key of A natural.  It would be comfortable, natural, if we hadn't already gotten familiar with this character who is living in a wistful/evasive A#.  Now we come to the just key of A natural, and the narrator reveals the ultimate crux of this song, one that is introduced halfway through it and never fully resolved:

I see a little silhouetto of a man

In a morally universal sense (Biblical, if you prefer) life would be endlessly pleasurable (Adam and Eve would have been immortal) if innocence could be protected and kept true (could it have been?  What a strange way to begin the book of Genesis.)  It makes sense as a myth, and it doesn’t take a biblical scholar to extract some true ethical principles.  The myth answers the question "why are we not gods?" The fairy tale begins with the first man and woman who were formed from the clay and then breathed life into, and became the first humans.  In a sense, they were God’s first children, and made “in God’s image”.  If that was the end of the story, we could rest assured that we are all humans, made to be like God, so essentially we are Gods.  And immortal.  But each one of us has the seed of “original sin” within us.  It’s in our DNA – because from the beginnings of the human race, the very first chance we had to be perfect like God, we blew it.  That is the legacy of humanity… “we’re only human”.  It’s a two-sided story… comforting and petrifying.

When we all make big, scary mistakes, not unlike our tragic hero in Queen’s anthem, it may be some consolation that every single human that has ever lived has been susceptible to this heritage of imperfection, impurity, mere humanity.  What is unique in this song, this modern fairy tale, is that a very functional dream-world of Godlike Jurors come to the rescue, and breath in a toxic and healing cocktail of condemnation and hope.  To be human means to defend yourself…

In the spirit of this song, it may be some help to realize this call-to-power consciously (with our awareness), conscientiously (with a conscience, our sense of right and wrong) and vigilantly (passionately, persistently, with our whole being – not just mind but body, heart, existence and spirit).  The reading of this analysis may only involve the first two (consciousness and conscience).  But awareness is an excellent precedent for active engagement.  Thus, if you love this song, you may find yourself living it sooner or later.

Perhaps in a world where humans had never “sinned”, and somehow failed to form a sense of right and wrong, this powerful drama would have no place.  We would fly about along the heavenly gardens of Eden realm, creating nothing but celestial beauty and doing no harm… no need to resolve any tensions, for no conflict would have ever incurred such wrathful pains.

You have to love this song, though.  Even though the just intervention of the A-natural crux at the beginning of the second movement falls back to the defensive (although surprisingly defiant if suffering) fourth verse in A#... (that is the “devil put aside for me”) it becomes a rocking fight song toward the end of the second movement.  And all things considered, the exercise of that power when it is most needed, is strong, heroic, worthy.

Late Medieval royalty and aristocracy may have listened to elegantly composed chamber music, operas, inventions and symphonies for their courtly entertainment.  Such works may have been proposed to be transcendent, and certainly the virtuosity is undeniable in the classical greats like Bach and Beethoven, Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky and Mozart.  But how great is the virtue when it tends to mask the inequities in the corners of the castle and all over the Kingdom?

This is just an essay and it must come to a close.  Consider this the divine intervention – the voice of reason.  You are innately sub-divine – at your best, you are infallibly Human.  May this essay, which admittedly is more a studied tribute than a fussy high-minded “critique”… may this essay relay the lesson studied from this song.  Learned?  Good God, one can only hope.

If and when things go wrong, and when your very self-worth is in question, stay honest, stay true, don’t fight the feelings!  Okay, here is the critique.  To be fair, the song is only a fictional scene, not necessarily representing the story and views of its authors.  The tragedy of this underdog hero is that he abandons his friends and family, in search of… or if all else fails, outright inciting… the intervention of unusual sources of condemnation and, God willing, power.  But to feel that level of desperation and loneliness is itself a crime.  “Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth...” but where else should truth be found but in your fellow man – in our friends and family?  It may be the hardest thing in the world to face up to – not your self-worth – but the esteem of the world that cares about you and supports you: your family, your friends, even your co-workers and acquaintances and the public at large.  When that falls away, you are one half-step away from losing everything.

Practice random acts of kindness and beauty.

Do I believe in God?  I believe.  I believe in God.  And I believe in the mystery.  But I believe that the ongoing story of the human race – the Human Family – is one that has not yet been written.  Like a life in progress, we have the past to look back on, but it doesn’t necessitate a repetition in our future.  I suppose I am more Judeo than Christian in this sense – that I believe the life and lessons of Jesus were precious, yes.  Timeless and unparalleled, maybe even to this day.  But I would consider them more as modern prophecies, not the ultimate be-all, end-all lesson.  Because as time progresses (for better or for worse) we need new ones.  We need people to keep dreaming of, interpreting, inventing and recreating the Message of God.

Is Bohemian Rhapsody a modern day testament?

I don’t know, can Jesus play guitar?

Nothing really matters

Anyone can see

Nothing really matters

Nothing really matters

To me…

Any way the wind blows.

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