Stevie Wonder's "Contusion" is the best rondo written in the last fifty years (a brief essay for the 50th anniversary of Songs in the Key of Life)

Okay, having done a fairly detailed analysis on Matiegka's Op. 23, II not too long ago, I wanted to really change gears, seeing as we're approaching the 50th anniversary of Stevie Wonder's epic double album Songs in the Key of Life, by discussing my favorite later 20th century rondo.

Not that you really asked me, but if you did ask me “What is the most important rondo composed in the last fifty years?”, I would immediately say Stevie Wonder's "Contusion" from Songs in the Key of Life. 

 

Why?  Because it is a five-part rondo.  For those who don’t already know, a rondo is a musical form in which a refrain alternates with contrasting episodes.  People normally think of this as entailing something like ABACA or ABACADA, but that's not strictly required.  It's possible to obtain the effect of a five-part rondo just alternating a refrain with a single episode, which is exactly how Wonder organized "Contusion"

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xDSTP3uecE

 

Intro:               00:00 to 00:24

Refrain (A)       00:25 to 01:04

Episode (B)      01:05 to 01:34

Refrain (A)       01:35 to 02:14

Episode (B)      02:15 to 02:44

Refrain (A)       02:45 to 03:18

Coda                03:19 to 03:47

 

The song ends on an unresolved half cadential gesture that prepares the entrance of the next track “Sir Duke”, which makes the end of "Contusion" the most spectacular transition in the history of American popular music, as far as I'm concerned.  Now "Sir Duke" was discussed earlier this year by Ethan Hein,  and I couldn't resist suggesting Ellington's "Warm Valley" as a possible inspiration for its chorus.  So "Contusion" is an amazing track within the context of its full album, but I want to mention that more in passing, because this is a piece that is fun to hear entirely on its own terms, too, and I'd like to explain a little of what I have come to love about it over the course of my life. Yet to do that I feel like I need to situate it between two different extremities in basically white rock musical trends. 

 

Across the 1970s you had the emergence of art rock or progressive rock (we’re not going to count jazz fusion here even if many could legitimately argue that “Contusion” is an example of jazz/rock fusion in the manner of Miles Davis or maybe Weather Report).  There was also the reaction movement known as punk.  We can think of the extremes as being exemplified by Yes and The Sex Pistols.  I didn’t warm up to either of those bands. While prog rock generally had so many ideas you couldn’t actually keep track of them all, punk embodied what was, for me, an essentially reactionary and punitive rubric of “authenticity” in which the more raw and simple the music the more “real” it was.  That is nonsense and has never been aesthetically compelling to me.  Both prog rock and punk erred in opposite directions.

 

This would be where “Contusion” has stood as an alternative.  If you’ve heard it you can hear that its surface is quite complex in terms of rhythm and modal mutations.  I will, frankly, leave it to someone like Ethan Hein (if he has time and opportunity) to tackle a more detailed analysis if that’s something he’s game for.  I’m a classical guitarist and hobbyist composer so I don’t have the score for “Contusion” on me, alas.  

But what I can tell you is that the sheer complexity of Stevie Wonder’s surface is balanced by the elegant simplicity of his approach to form.  You get a two-part refrain alternating with a two-part episode.  As each refrain is presented there is more room for improvisation or rocking out.  We’ve heard the refrain enough times that more liberties can be taken in performance without the listener being at a loss for “where” we are in the musical form.  In that sense it’s not at all like a song by Rush such as, oh, “Zanadu”, which you can’t even start mapping out without getting far enough into the alphabet to get to E through G.  Wonder’s rondo, by contrast, is as simply and perfectly put together as a rondo by, say, Haydn (and I am very much a Haydn fan).  Haydn’s complaint about many of his contemporaries was they swamped listeners with so many ideas there were none of them that stuck in the memory long enough for the listener to have any emotional resonance with any of those ideas.

 

I submit that Stevie Wonder has never had that problem.  He avoided the Scylla and Charibdys that were exemplified by prog rock and punk, styles of 1970s rock that strained too far in the direction of complexity and simplicity in the name of "seriousness" and "authenticity" without necessarily achieving either.  Wonder's formal instincts have always been impeccable, so impeccable, in fact, that when we listen to his music we are not likely to do “structural listening” because we’re having fun.  I think I can go out on a limb and say that both Haydn and Stevie Wonder would want you to have the fun first and then come back for a more analytical take on what’s going on in the music later.  

 

So in that sense, too, “Contusion” has been the best rondo written in the last fifty years.