Thanks to all of you—Keith, Christine, and David—for pointing out this literature to me. I will look into these leads.

Best,

Mark

Ben:

Sorry for the extremely slow reply! I don’t think that one can give a generic answer. The concept of a chord relating more to ones that come before or after seems to me to be wrapped up in so much additional context that making such a determination on the basis of chord changes alone doesn’t make sense. Think of Gershwin’s original: in this…[Read more]

Hello Mark,

You might also check: John Graziano, Compositional Strategies in Popular Song Form of the Early Twentieth Century,” in A Music-Theoretical Matrix: Essays in Honor of Allen Forte (Part V), ed. David Carson Berry, Gamut 6/2 (2013): 95–131. It’s online.

As Graziano writes: “In this essay, I am interested in exploring the expansion of…[Read more]

Mark, there is a lot of stuff on form more generally, which may contain info about bridges within each article. (The only one I know entirely about the bridge is the one that Keith mentions above.) Check out the stuff on form in our bibliography: https://hcommons-staging.org/docs/popular-music-bibliography/

Hi Mark

The first thing that comes to mind is Steve Larson’s article “What Makes a Good Bridge,” from the Dutch Journal of Music Theory (8: 1–15). If memory serves, it explores ‘bridge’ as a metaphor, and uses Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” as an example. Perhaps this isn’t the repertoire you’re really looking for, but it’s worth reading.

Best of luck.

Hello! Inquiring if there has been any update on the examples database? Thank you for your work! Peter

To clarify (because of the font change): that progression is I-V-I-V, with one chord per bar.