Waltz for Mary and John - Another sign of three
Multiple metas have been written about the various groups of three found in TSOT - from the most literal, to the most subtextual.
The episode is riddled with threes - the three Watsons; the love triangle between John-Sherlock-Mary; the groups of three deductions (two conscious efforts and one that just “spills out”) that Sherlock makes during the episode; the three people that love John (Sherlock, Mary and Sholto)... The list goes on and on. (I will try to link everyone to their OP).
Now let me present to you another “three” - the Waltz for Mary and John.
The “Waltz for Mary and John”, which incidentally is called “Waltz for John and Mary” on the Series 3 Sountrack , is introduced as a piece that Sherlock wrote and played as a wedding present for Mary and John.
Such a nice gesture, isn’t it?
But as far as waltzes go, it struck me as a little bit... well, dry. Comparing to the other piece written by Sherlock - Irene’s Theme - the waltz is poorer in melody and dynamic, emotional weight and technical complexity.
We can argue that Irene’s Theme was born of a troubled emotional state, where Sherlock was trying to deal with what he was experiencing emotionally through music. “Thinking”, as he put it; “Writing sad music” as John put it. It is quite short, I give you, but at the same time has some technical flourishes, contrasting dynamic, dramatic upward and downward glissandos, etc.
The waltz, on the other hand, was a conscious effort to write something nice for John and Mary. And nice it is, appropriately soft and sweet. But, in my opinion, decidedly plain for a man who can play Bach’s Sonata n1 in G minor.
Let’s talk about the 3 three’s in the waltz:
Like most waltzes, the time signature is multiples of three. That means that you will have three beats per mesure. Without getting too technical, you can recognize a waltz by its triple time, that is, a beat that goes “one-two-three, one-two-three”.
In our waltz, you have a 3/4 signature. It means that you have 3 units in each mesure (the upper number) and that the unit is the crotchet, or quarter note (the lower number).
Below is the first mesure of the waltz. You can see the 3/4 signature at the beginning of the score. The three beats are in the orange squares. This pattern will continue through the whole music.
In music theory, a phrase is a melodic sequence that has a “complete musical idea”, like a sentence in a text. It will end in a candence, which will sound like a period in a text. In our waltz we can identify three phrases, which I divided in orange.
If you listen to the soundtrack, you can find the end of the sentences roughly at 0:16, 0:48 and at the end of the track.
The last four mesures of the waltz repeats a downward arpeggio three times. That means a sequence of three notes of a chord, going down (see orange boxes).
But the rhythm forces us to divide the last sentence a bit differently. Some people have commented how it sounds a bit like “I love you, I love you”. We would expect a third repetition of this structure, a third “I love you”, if you will, but instead of the three notes, the waltz ends with just two notes.
I’ll leave you to your deductions...
Thank you very much for reading all the way through the end. Here’s my present for you. I transcribed the Waltz as best as I could. It may not be exactly the same as you see on the screenshot, but I think it’s just a matter of notation. I’m pretty confident that I got the notes and the rhythm right. My musical knowledge is moderate, but as I said, the Waltz is pretty simple.
Anyway, no copyright infringement intended, the composition is not mine, it’s David Arnold’s and Michael Price’s. I just transcribed it so I could play it on my violin for fun. Any mistakes are my own.
I hope you will enjoy it.
@sarahthecoat @devoursjohnlock @elldotsee @fellshish @disregardedletters @tjlcisthenewsexy @spenglernot @thejohnlockoutlet
