Beethoven’s 3rd (Eroica) Symphony has an odd C-sharp, in the context of the key of E-flat major, within the first phrase. That note, which sticks out in the beginning, keeps coming back in more and more interesting ways, as if Beethoven had an odd idea that he couldn’t get rid of.

Chopin’s E-minor piano prelude, Op. 28, No. 4, is obsessed with falling half-steps, which saturated both melody and harmony. Near the end, the remarkable deceptive cadence could be heard as, in the bass, an inversion of these half-steps.

The Pixies’ odd, short song Ana also has an obsessive character, perhaps appropriate to a song with a moderately-hidden (if not exactly deep) meaning. The obsession is depicted through at least two musical elements: a constant return to the note D-flat/C-sharp, and, like the Chopin, lots and lots of half steps.

Perhaps the more obvious of these characteristics is the D-flat. The voice melody starts there, and keeps coming back to it, never straying far–it goes up a major third at 0:10 and down a major third at 0:19. This makes the more active part at around 0:33 really stick out.



But the obsession with D-flat goes beyond the melodic emphasis. Below are the opening chords, from 0:00–0:30.

E Bbm A Db (Ab) Gb A Bbm A Db (Ab) Gb A Db

Every one of these chords includes a D-flat except:

1. the very brief A-flat major chords in parentheses (incidentally, they’re not even marked in the tabs on this site)

2. and the opening chord… except that, as you can see in the very simplified transcription below, the Pixies add a D-flat there too in the melody.

The other element of obsession is the saturation of half steps. Usually we think of these as melodic intervals, but the melody actually doesn’t highlight them. Instead, they’re all over the accompaniment, in how the chords are connected. The simplified reduction below has the chords respelled and rearranged to show the half-step motion. For example, every time B-flat major and A major (or, as spelled below, B-double-flat major) are juxtaposed, as in the first two measures at box A or the first three measures of the second line, the root and fifth of the chord just slide up or down by half step. The third voice remains the same. (The stable note? You guessed it–D-flat.) It really seems like the rules of harmonic progression here are dictated by two considerations: which chords have D-flat in them? And how can we move between them in ways that emphasize half-step slides?

This opening section (called the Intro and A in the score above) is followed by a brief “B” section. As shown below, this at first sounds like it’s become more tonal, giving us a progression in D-flat minor (i V VI). The V chord doesn’t even have D-flat in it! Exciting! Except that V to VI motion again emphasizes half steps… and brings us back to our old friend A/B-double-flat major, which in turn slides into B-flat minor and reintroduces the intro.

Note the key signature change at the end of the excerpt. The key changes from B-flat minor/D-flat major (it’s a little ambiguous) up… a half step!… to B minor/D major. The three “verses” (the text is the same for both vocal “verses”) are laid out tonally below, with “flats” standing for the original B-flat/D-flat key area and “sharps” standing for the B/D key area.

Instrumental: Intro in flats A in flats B in flats

Vocal: Intro in flats A in sharps B in flats

Vocal: Intro in flats A in flats B in sharps Intro in sharps!

So that slide from B-double-flat major to B-flat minor and back (see the first example above, second line, first three measures) is played out on a larger scale by these similar key-area slides by half step between the “flats” and “sharps” tonal areas. Pretty cool.

How does one end a song like this? Apparently, with a surprise. The end is the first and only time we hear B and the Intro up a half step. It’s as if we’ve finally realized the half-step promise we’ve been getting, obsessively, from the beginning.

Incidentally, it also makes it fun to listen (obsessively) on repeat, to hear the juxtaposing of the ending intro and the starting intro, a half-step apart.