"La Sagrada Familia"

I listened to Gaudí this morning because to-day marks the 100th anniversary of Gaudí's death.  I noticed the parallelism in the line "The war is won; the battle's over" in "La Sagrada Familia" and realized that this device is fitting for the song's theme (a basilica) since some sections of the Bible have a similar structure:  for example, Proverbs 16:18:  "Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

"La Sagrada Familia"

I noted before that in "La Sagrada Familia," "tears" in the line "And for all those years our eyes and ears were filled with tears," is sung with a melisma (D C# B F#) for a sense of amount, but a couple months ago, I discovered that "filled" is also sung with a melisma (Bb A) for a similar effect.

"Tears" is also sung with a melisma in the stand-alone "Filled with tears," although it's the same pitch (F# F#).

"La Sagrada Familia"

I listened to Gaudi two days ago and noticed a small feature in "La Sagrada Familia."  In the line "And for all those years our eyes and ears were filled with tears," the "tears" is sung with a melisma (D C# B F#).  That it's sung with a number of notes gives a sense of amount and of "fill[ing]."

"La Sagrada Familia"

Backdated, archival post

[link to original on tumblr]

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Collection Audit:

The second thing I noticed while listening to The Essential Alan Parsons Project this morning is in "La Sagrada Familia," originally from Gaudi.  There are two recurring lines: "La Sagrada Familia for the lion and the lamb" and "La Sagrada Familia there's peace throughout the land."  These two lines reminded me of two things: first, Elvis' "(There'll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)" and second, Isaiah 11:6-7:

The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

I wrote about "(There'll Be) Peace in the Valley (For Me)" earlier this year, specifically how that Isaiah text appears to be the source of one of the verses:

Well, the bear will be gentle, and wolves will be tame
And the lion shall lie down by the lamb, oh, yes
And the beast from the wild shall be led by a child
And I'll be changed, changed from this creature that I am, oh, yes

It seems that Eric Woolfson (the main writer for the Alan Parsons Project) took some inspiration from one or the other of these sources, but I'm not sure how familiar he was with either (if he was familiar with them at all).

There's a spoken part at the beginning of "La Sagrada Familia" that talks about a cathedral that Gaudí was building, so it would make sense to quote from the Bible when writing about a cathedral, yet while a lamb and a lion are both mentioned in the Isaiah text (along with peace, although not blatantly), they're not mentioned together like they are in the Elvis song.  So while it seems that either (or both) of these could have inspired those lines in "La Sagrada Familia," I'm not sure if that's really the case.