Oliver Schroer – Victory of Love

Victory of Love is the opening track of Oliver Schroer's 1993 album Jigzup. The liner notes set the scene: “A fiddle party gets hijacked by a Brazilian street band. All join forces in the end and march off in an exuberant celebration of life, love and music.” I’ve included scores and musical excerpts for several passages below; I encourage you to check out my entire transcription and listen to the full track.

Personnel

• Oliver Schroer – 4- and 5-string fiddles, voice, percussion
• Shelley Berger – Bass
• Mark Duggan – Tambourim, percussion
• Alan Heatherington – Congas, percussion
• Don Ross – Guitar
• David Travers Smith – Flugeluba, trumpet

Form

Victory of Love is made up of a series of 8-measure sections.

Section(s)	Measures	Comments
Intro	8
AA’	16	(beginning of first tune)
B	8
AA’	16
BB	16
AA’	16
I	8	vocal break - 3 voices
II	16	vocal break - 4 voices
CC	16	(beginning of second tune)
DD	16
CC	16
DD	16
AA’	16	(partial reprise of first tune)
C’C’	16
C’C’	16	with added trumpet countermelody

Victory of Love includes two distinct but interrelated tunes, each with two sections. The two sections of the first tune are labelled A and B in the table above, while the two sections of the second tune are labelled C and D. Sections A and B are established as a single tune through their alternation at the beginning of the track. Notably, the B section is repeated only once during the first time through the tune, while it's repeated twice during the second time through the tune.

Following several repetitions of the first tune, there is an a cappella vocal break, with three and then four voices singing syncopated lines.

The second tune is introduced after the vocal break.

Following two repetitions of the second tune, the A section returns, but in the place of a B section, four varied C sections are played. The final two of these varied C sections include an added countermelody, played on the trumpet.

Relationships between Sections

As mentioned above, A and B sections form a single tune in my mind because they’re played in alternation at the beginning of the track. The C and D sections form a pair, partly because they are played in alternation, separated from the A and B parts by the vocal interlude, partly because they each open with an ascending G major arpeggio, and partly because they share a melodic formula that closes each section.

The various sections that make up Victory of Love share some musical features that connect them. Most notably, the B, C, D and C’ feature implied melodies - smooth lines that emerge when you listen for local high points in the tune. The notes of these implied melodies fall on the beats (rather than on offbeats), and Schroer tends to accent them in his playing.

• The B section features a three-note line outlining an upper neighbour motion: A-B-A
• The C section features descending three-note lines: B-A-G and C-B-A
• The D section features descending three-note lines—B-A-G—and the same A-B-A motion as the B section
• The C’ section features the same descending lines as the C section, but several of the intervening notes are skipped, causing the implied melody to occur more quickly

The descending lines in the second tune are prefigured in the vocal break, where the third voice from the bottom sings the notes of the implied melody of Section C.