Maria sings that in B-flat, then the music rises to D-flat for the
repeat of A.
A
Tonight, tonight,
There’s only you tonight,
What you are, what you do, what you say.At this point the harmony could return to the original key of
B-flat or remain in D-flat. But instead, the soaring effect is in-
tensified by a half-step rise in the melody, from F to G-flat,
which is sustained by a new key, also G-flat. This is the bridge
or B in the AABA format, utterly conventional in structure but
leaving the impression of a breakthrough in feeling.
B
Today, all day I had the feeling
A miracle would happen,
I know now I was right.This is a marvel. At the beginning of B the peak note of the
melody occurs with the second syllable of “today,” a surge of
the singer’s voice that seems spontaneous, impassioned, young,
and the lyric even supplies a sudden excess of rhyme. “Today”
at the start of the bridge picks up “say” from the end of the
previous section just as the harmony changes to G-flat. The
AABA ordinariness of the song is hidden by this blending,
so that the melody seems to be generated from within the
singers.^4
Then the return to A, which is also a return to the original
key of B-flat:
A
For here you are,
And what was just a world
Is a star—
Tonight.CHARACTER AND VOICE OF THE MUSICAL 57
(^4) Knapp, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity, p. 212
and p. 333n24, discusses the flatted sixth in this song as the subjunctive.