Quick Analysis: "Far Too Late" from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella

There hasn't been much new theater to criticize in a while, so here’s a quick low-level musical analysis of “Far Too Late,” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, released this morning.

A little surprise for you all. Here is Far Too Late from my new @ALWCinderella, performed by @CarrieHFletcher in an empty Her Majesty's Theatre. - ALW pic.twitter.com/e3ZP4ftahF

— Andrew Lloyd Webber (@OfficialALW) September 13, 2020

First off, this is a sad ballad in a major key. Bb Major.

The verse starts with one two-bar phrase, repeated, slightly varied, three times. First, it’s a slightly elaborated outlining of the tonic chord, with the odd passing tone.

Chord tones highlighted in blue.

The second time through the phrase takes us down to the minor vi chord, pretty standard move, establishes us as sad. The repeated phrase is almost the same in its outlining of the chord, but now it overshoots the top note, and has to come back down. So we've got a non-chord tone on a stressed beat, adds a bit of tension, and varies the phrase, but not by so much as to be conspicuous yet.

Chord tones highlighted in blue. Stressed non-chord tones highlighted in orange, and with an 'x' over.

The third time through ups the ante further. The new chord is the minor ii chord, again, fairly standard move, this moves the vocal line up, while still keeping us in a minor key. But this time, the melody doesn’t go up and then back down again. It actually just barely undershoots the top note an octave above the starting note, and has to keep reaching for it. The sharp 1 (a B natural in this key) very much adds to the reaching feel, as it not only is a non-chord tone, it’s a non-scale tone, and one that keeps pulling upward into Cm.

Chord tones highlighted in blue. Stressed non-chord tones highlighted in orange, and with a little 'x' over. Stressed non-scale tones highlighted in red and with a big bold 'X' over. I am neither a creative nor particularly good highlighter, but note that each non-chord tone used this time, unlike last time, is a leading tone, which gives the phrase a lot of upward pull. Note also that the non-scale tone used is a semitone above the root of the key, which is an especially jarring note to use.

Then there’s a transitional phrase where the melody walks down from G to Bb, and when it hits that Bb, it is the beginning of a new cycle, repeating the same three melodic phrases.

This isn't really illustrating anything.

That all repeats, and then there is the same down-walking phrase, which this time walks right into the next section of the song.

The vocal line resolves to a Bb here, but the chords move on, stepping from BbM, through BbAug, into Gm, thus defying our resolution. The melody then slowly inches down the scale, to a C, where we get a CM chord -- that is, another non-scale chord. This unexpected major II chord coincides with Cinderella discussing positive hypotheticals (e.g, “If I could, I would show you how I’m sorry, how I long to clean the slate"), so we get that slight implication of optimism in both the music and the lyrics, which then gets rejected (“but it’s far too late”) as we pull back down to BbM -- still a major chord, but the tonic chord of a key in which we've been hearing an awful lot of minor, and which rebuffs the happier move to CM which was just attempted.

The chords resolve to BbM, but the vocal line, which has been slowly moving down the scale, stops just short of the tonic and circles back to D, which then cycles back into a repeat of this B-section. This time, finally, both the melody and the chords resolve at the same time, a resolution which has been delayed this whole minute-long verse, which is very satisfying.

I couldn't quite figure out how to divvy this up. Note the walking-down transitional phrase at the top, the octave jump, and the continued walking down into the B-section. The descending scale is highlighted in green, and with green 'v's above the relevant notes. The chords I drew attention to -- the BbAug and the CM, are highlighted in orange and with an orange 'x' above. I forgot to notate a variation in the melody on the second time through, and some of the chords might be wrong. I transcribed this by ear, and I'm not actually that good at that.

Then this whole thing gets repeated because the song has multiple verses.

(Note: In the first line of the B-section in each verse, while Cinderella is holding that C, there is a passing chord which I neglected to notate, which transitions from the II to the V. I believe it is different in each verse, being a ii7 in the first verse, an iidim in the second, and nonexistent in the third. Again, I am not the best transcriber, so I may be wrong.)

This analysis was pretty hastily put-together, and done entirely for fun. I don't think it's exceptionally illuminating, but I do think that, in the case of this particular song, it's a demonstration of how simple musical tools can be used effectively. The melody doesn't try anything crazy, and the harmonies only step out of the usual scale chords twice, one instance of which is a fairly typical instance of an augmented passing chord. But using just extremely slight variations on a melody in the verse, each repetition more tension-filled than the last, it ramps up the emotion quite effectively. The chorus is essentially just an elaboration of a descending major scale, but it uses that directionality to build a lot of anticipation -- note how the descent starts with five notes straight down, and then gets more and more delayed through the remaining bars. And even though the tune goes on for a long time before hitting a full resolution, it remains so simple that you can hum it after one hearing. I would say this is absolutely in the vein of a classic Andrew Lloyd Webber ballad, showing that an awful lot really can be done with awfully little.