How Heart of Stone Works in SIX (ft. Jasmine Forsberg)

Intro I sat down with Broadway's currently reigning Jane Seymour Jasmine forsberg to help me break down her song Heart of Stone from six the musical on the surface Heart of Stone Feels Like a Love Song from Jane Seymour to Henry VII it's a bit of a change of pace for the show which has ridiculed Henry VII up to this point but there's a subtle way in which Heart of Stone actually does diminish Henry VII by Shifting the center of gravity to Jane's love while subordinating Henry VII to her love and it all has to do with this core progression which has a few surprises up its sleeve wa how who hold up oh my gosh you're rocking my world wow okay awesome go off Howard go off this is how Heart of Stone Works but first if the song is Heart of Stone Redefined celebrating Jane's love then why is it called Heart of Stone a phrase that is typically reserved for people who are not loving love me don't call me don't need me don't pay me you a Heart of Stone Jamie then there's party Crouch Heart of Stone sent his own son to ask about take an ey for an ey turn your heart into stor this idea of a Heart of Stone even dates back to Shakespeare's aello and perish and be damned tonight for she shall not live no my heart is turned to stone I strike it and it hurts my hand before Jane Seymour sings Heart of Stone she acknowledges this original me meaning in her dialogue you know people say Henry was stone-hearted uncaring but in an effort to differentiate herself from the other queens who she says were full of fire Jane cast herself as their opposite instead I stood by him like I Was Made of Stone I stood firm no matter his flaws or his tempers no matter my doubts or fears I stayed there by his side which is also why credential insurance has the rock of jalter as its logo or why the mar singing Duo Ashford and Simpson describe their love as and it's also why the stone manipulating people from the earth Kingdom in Avatar are described as Dependable Earth is the element of substance the people of the earth kingdom are diverse and strong they are persistent and enduring in fact this comparison to the other elements of nature continues within the lyrics of the song Heart of Stone itself I mean we go into in the chorus when the fire's burned the wind has blown the water's dried all of those elements are ephemeral they disappear but Stone stays it lasts but there's another way Plain Jane in which the idea of a Heart of Stone actually works to convey the true meaning of the song See stone is denser and heavier than fire air and water so it has more gravity and on stage we see that gravity embodied as Jane Seymour sings the entire song from center stage with no choreography my blocking is to stand on zero I stand and I deliver a number mean I get to stand literally textbook definition Park and bark but Jane's Stillness and simplicity is not just symbolic of her steadfastness and gravity but also hearkens back to the pop Inspirations or queen Inspirations that moss and Marlo base Jane's character on Adele and Seline Deon who are known for their big planted Center Stage vocal performances Jane still is felt even in the music that accompanies her what is so interesting about this music is that it is so simple it's just C cord cord you've got a good heart but I know it changes a minimal striking of one chord per measure heard on just one instrument the piano and you'll notice this one note stays the same in all four chords accentuating that feeling of standing firm plain and simple Jane Seymour Plain Jane her her her motto historically speaking her mot was bound to obey and serve and so if she is serving the music obeying that measure obeying that just steady Rhythm that's what I think of when I think of stone it's just steady it's constant and even though the idea of obeying sounds subservient bound to obey and serve isn't that your mot but the way Jane obeys and serves is entire ly on her own terms she has chosen this role and in an interview with vulture Lucy Moss explains it like this the idea was about the strength of choosing to love someone and committing to someone and that being an equally valid feminist experience see there's two ways of Two Types of Love thinking of love one is that love is like a gift you give someone last Christ you heart and so the recipient of the love then somehow owns that love and can do with the love as they please but the day it in this model the receiver of the love has all the power now if you imagine yourself as the spouse of a king it would be very easy to see that King being the receiver of your love and being someone who can do with that love as he pleases he is the king after all but there's another way of viewing love that love belongs not to the receiver but to The Giver this type of love was explained in the film adaptation where Charlie Kaufman played by Nicholas Cage recalls a time when he saw his brother Donald also played by Nicholas Cage talking to his high school Crush Sarah Marsh I was watching the library window you were talking to Sarah Marsh oh God I was so in love with her it always been really sweet to you I remember that and then when you walked away she started making fun fun of you with Kim connetti again the recipient of the love Sarah Marsh seems to throw Donald's love away but Donald remains unfazed by this I knew I heard them how could we were so happy I love Sarah Charles it was mine that love I owned it even Sarah didn't have the right to take it away the ownership of the love belonged to Donald the giver and not Sarah the receiver and her response to his gift of love made no difference to him because he owned the love not her in other words he shifted the center of gravity of his love away from the recipient Sarah to The Giver himself similarly though Jane knows that without her son without my son your could disapp she also says I know it isn't fair but I don't care cuz my life will still be here a perfect encapsulation of the shift from her being in his orbit to him being in hers and in Heart of Stone Musical Center of Gravity songwriters moss and Marlo convey the same idea in the music they shift the center of gravity in the song away from the recipient of Love Henry the to its Giver Jane Seymour but how and what does it mean for a song to even have a center of gravity well I'm glad you asked because that's what the next part of this video is about and it's going to involve looking at the chords within Heart of Stone and how they portray Jane's love and the most basic center of gravity for most pieces of music is what's called a key Center that has many names home chord tonic chord one chord it's all referring to the same thing all right guys uh listen this to blues riff and B watch me for the changes and try and keep up okay if Marty McFly is telling you the song is in the key of B major BL R and he's saying that B major is the song's home chord it's tonic chord which means it's based around the tonic note of B and that the entire song is based on a hierarchy where B major sits at the top it's literally known as the number one chord so in a way it's the king of chords and you can spot this one chord by the way it either begins a section of music or ends it or both which is what we have with Heart of Stone which begins its verse and ends its chorus with the same chord the one chord you got a good my heart and starting and ending with the one chord makes sense because this song is directed at Henry VII the U being addressed in the lyrics and if that's the case the second most important chord in this hierarchy is the five chord and it achieves this status because of the way the five chord supports the one chord it's a second in command if you will grab a friend that's your second the lieutenant when there's Reon to be reckon and this five chord is so dominant in this hierarchy that in music theory it is even called the dominant chord because of the way it supports the one chord or tonic chord you don't understand trumpets and D tonic and dominant it goes with a Harmony yes yes [Music] yes and this 51 relationship isn't just true in Mozart's music it's also the reason shaving a Haircut Two Bits sounds complete only if you resolve this five chord back to the one chord or why the ending of Mer's second Symphony that I talked about in my last video about Leonard Bernstein has an ending that feels so so [Music] [Applause] [Music] satisfying throughout musical history the 5:1 progression is one of the most common ways to end musical [Music] phrases that [Music] in musical Theory terms this is the strongest ending or strongest Cadence it's so common that hook Theory's database of over 50,000 songs even shows that statistically the five chord most often leads back to the one chord in music theory this is one of the basic building blocks of what's called functional Harmony in Heart of Stone the chord agression of the chorus ends on a five chord leading us to expect a resolution on the one chord that would sound like this unable but that's not what happens in the song instead the five chord is followed by the four chord which sounds like this unable in other words the four chord is somehow overshadowing the one chords resolution and you can even tell how badly it's going for that one chord because the only way that the one chord can regain control of the song is with this insistent five chord pounding away heart until the one chord and by extension the king is back in power so in a way the four chord represents an alternative to the king a center of musical power outside of the one chord and so in a way this four chord represents the other Center of power power in this song Jane Seymour and her incredibly enduring love but what does Four Chord Dreams it mean to Center the music around the for chord well let's look at some songs which Center the four chord while barely ever going to the one chord Teenage Dream by ktie Perry begins on the one chord as we expect but once the base enters the one chord never returns and instead we get this chord progression over and over and thanks to hook Theory's piano playback option I could play it for you hear easily without getting into copyright trouble a chord progression which like the chorus in Heart of Stone centers on returning to the four chord almost like the song is trying to avoid the one chord which is what Owen pallet pointed out in his slate article analyzing Teenage Dream and in it he describes how the chord progression creates a feeling of suspension because the song never arrives at the one chord and in Teenage Dream this conveys a sense that ktie Perry longs to stay forever suspended in this Timeless dreamlike state of being a teenager forever it is an expression of a desire for this fantasy the four chord essentially alternates with the five chord remember the five chord is supposed to take us home so this move from the four to the five suggests a movement towards greater resolution ution we've gone from second base to third base so to speak and if the song went to the one chord here's what it would sound like but instead of going to home base the progression goes back to the four chord this lack of resolution to the one chord Keeps Us wanting more like dangling a carrot in front of us conveying this sense of longing and desire for an unattainable dream in the song Dreams by Fleetwood Mack we also get this push and pull between two [Music] cords which represents a feeling of unfulfilled desire in this case someone left in suspension after a lover has gone away the lyrics now here [Music] I are mirroring the idea of this repetitive Loop representing a vision or dream going nowhere hook Theory categorizes these chords as the six and seven chords because dreams is in a minor key but if it were in a major key they would be the four and five chords in Hades town the songs epic 1 Epic 2 and epic 3 are all built around a similar chord progression vacillating between two chord chords sort of like a four and a five chord which evoke a similar longing for an idyllic past however there is a further twist in the Hades Town progression one that is so interesting that I will have to explore it in a future video so please subscribe for that now these four to five progressions that I've just discussed in Teenage Dream dreams and epic 1 23 are similar to the way the chords in Heart of Stone work but there's a slight difference she is is not weightless instead she is like a stone full of mass and weight and gravity which is another word for seriousness and authority and you can hear that in Jane's chord progression unlike the Breezy Teenage Third Leaps Dream heart of Stone's chorus does not avoid the one chord but instead we go from four to six to one to five unbreakable that's right the one chord is right there so how is this a shift in gravity it's because the resolution we expect is thwarted five doesn't resolve to one but goes to four and the one chord becomes a mere satellite in orbit around Jane Seymour's love instead of being arranged around a standard 5:1 resolution the main organizing principle of this chord progression is the third leap up in the base the third leap up is essentially just a fancy way of saying the Bas Skips a note going up to the next chord because if you count the current note as one then skipping a note would be 1 2 3 hence a third I previously talked about the meaning of the third leaps up in my video about the my shot Court progression from Hamilton there it also represents a striving for something more which is very similar to how it's being used in Heart of Stone which we shall soon see now before I break it down let's hear how this Baseline Works in relationship to the melody you up can tear down you try but unbreakable going from the four chord to the six chord means going up from a skipping B to C Shar minor which is a third above then the sixth chord goes to the one chord skipping dsharp and going straight to e this agression even spells out the notes in the four chord A C sharp and E further cementing the four chord as the center of gravity the last chord goes back to the five chord breaking this pattern of upward third leaps as it tries to return the one chord to our musical center of gravity but fails and instead returns us back to the four chord and here is that entire sequence again you can build me up you can tear me down you can try but I'm unbreakable and now the stage is set for something remarkable in one of the most Climax profound moments in the song Jane takes away the power of that five chord how does she do that well remember when I said the five chord has to forcefully assert itself to break the pattern of this chord progression and the bridge right before the anticipated climax of the song we get another instance of the five chord forcefully inserting itself building toward a big arrival point that we expect will land on the one cord the tension grows and grows and the home cord feels closer and closer and closer [Music] until the big anticipated arrival on the one chord never comes and instead we get the softest and simplest four chord establishing that Jane has in fact become the center of gravity in the song but instead of heading straight into the climax Marlo and Moss give us a mysterious Silence with these sparse piano cords and no singing I think that is the the point of no return for Jane if I were to Envision what's happening those the silence uh before the big climax is when Henry leaves with Edward he's gone I've just said my final goodbyes that moment where there's nothing going on besides that piano is me saying saying like goodbye before letting the dam burst and letting myself do do you ever have those feelings where you hold it together you save face as much as possible while somebody's there and then the second you walk into an apartment you you close the door or something you just let it you just it all you like it collapses around you type of thing that's that's kind of how I feel in that moment while also still trying to hold it together and Empower myself at the same time indeed what comes next after this quiet moment of just simple piano chords is an explosion into the climax of the song where Jane repeats her affirmation of [Music] self-empowerment and it's at this point her chord progression comes back with a vengeance and by Vengeance I mean this instance of the Court progression is deliberately undermining the power of the five chord and it all has to do with those quiet chords right before the climax see the climax actually fills climactic because a key change has occurred now this key change actually reinterprets the chord that came right before it and what was the chord that came right before it the five chord in suspension a suspended five chord basically is a five chord that has one note that our ear is anticipating what will resolve to give us a true five chord but here Marlo and Moss use the suspended five chord in combination with the key change so that when the suspended five chord resolves the resolved chord actually becomes the four chord in the new key Center this key change one step up means that the entire numbering system is shifted by one and what was once the five chord in the old key is now the four chord and here's what the key change sounds like and pay attention to how the chord actually hasn't changed except we hear the five chord as the four chord in the new [Music] key in case you couldn't hear that it's the same chord here it is with A New Chord! strings the key change takes this chord that once served an adversarial function and flips it into an ally what this means is that here in the song's biggest moment the four chord Reigns Supreme in other words Jane has completely wiped away the five chords importance and thus the king's importance and we are left with Jane's gravitational pull taking over in fact Jane's gravitational pull is so great the chord progression changes in the final bars of the song to get rid of the five chord entirely this change is so profound and yet so subtle that I even surprised Jasmine when I demonstrated how the court progression changes in the climactic ending of the song the chords actually change at the end I don't know if you're no no okay no tell me more I I could just play it for you a little [Music] bit right like so that's like the normal chord progression but then for the last page or whatever you're like up down bre can't break me oh that's a chord that wasn't there before so whoa W hold up you're rocking my world this is what my channel is all about wow okay awesome go off Howard go off all right Jasmine here I go the reason for this change in the court progression is to demonstrate just how huge Jane's gravity has become a musical metaphor for the way her body itself became powerful through an increase in Mass her pregnancy see this court progression is a series of leaps up by a third until the five chord would disrupt the pattern and attempt to restore the one chord or the king as the center of gravity but in the final version of this chord progression when Jane breaks away from the king's gravity and continues going up and this time we get not the five chord but the two chord which represents the Fulfillment of the purest version of Jane's chord progression because that two chord is a third below the four chord completing the circle of these upward third leaps that represent her Ascent to the status larger than even a king pushing the king aside to assert her own worth that doesn't depend on him or anyone else it's no longer a conversation of her with her and Henry it's a conversation for herself it's almost like she's looking in a mirror hyping herself [Music] Tragic End up but sadly her gravity does not last she dies a mere 12 days after giving birth to Edward and along with her her dream of love with Henry VII or does it and that's when you realize it was there all along that Heart of Stone was not just a metaphor for her love it's an actual real thing before Henry VII died he requested to be buried with Jane Seymour it is my desire to be buried next to the body of my true and loving wife Queen Jane Seymour so in a real sense Jane does Have a Heart of Stone with the love that is engraved forever into her gravestone mirroring Jane's tragic ending the end of the song brings back the five chord which then brings us back to the home chord as we expect but with a [Music] Twist the home chord here is not the full three note Triad as we expect from a solid stable home chord it is in fact missing a note it's missing the center note leaving a gaping hole where Jane Seymour once was the center of gravity if you like learning more about this type of musical analysis I recommend checking out this video sponsor hook Theory hook theory is an educational platform designed to make music theory accessible and practical for everyone it features tons of resources powered by their database of over 50,000 chord and Melody analyses for popular songs you know and love it graphically showed me representation of the different parts of the song you get representations of the melody the chords underneath a grid so that you can see the Rhythm and a keyboard which will illustrate how to play the melody or the chords note by note for yourself and an option to switch to guitar if you want to learn how to strum it but aside from this amazing database they also have a fun ear training game called cord crush and hook pad a songwriting sketch pad with a built-in music theory engine that Mak Smart Suggestions in real time so you can always find the next best note or chord for your new song hook theory is great whether you're a seasoned musician or a beginner and even if all of this still looks unapproachable hook theory has you covered with its books feature that teaches you music theory lessons from basic to advanced concepts and if you go to hook theory.com Howard ho you can enjoy 20% off the hook Theory skills bundle or your first year of CTC Crush premium at the link in the description go to hook theory.com Howard ho for 20% off thanks for watching the video please subscribe for more musical analyses I'd also like to thank my patrons on patreon including my newest Patron Nancy hang I'd also like to thank my special guest Jasmine forsberg and I'll see you in the next video peace