This post is more poetics than Frozen. But I am a poet, and as a poet, I discovered that Frozen II‘s ‘All Is Found’ follows a surprisingly regular metre, which I don’t feel in the other songs.
That’s not to say that regular metre doesn’t exist in the other songs. It does. But the difference is that in the other songs, regular metre adds emphasis. In ‘All Is Found’, the regular metre runs through the whole song (cos it’s short).
That’s also not to say that the other songs don’t have rhythm. I will distinguish rhythm from metre in this way: rhythm is the beat of a song, while metre is the stress patterning of the words in that song.
Take these excerpts from ‘Into The Unknown’:
YOU’RE not a VOICE (4)
you’re JUST a RINGing in my EAR (8)
AND if i HEARD you, which i DON’T (8)
i’m SPOken for, i FEAR (6)
WHAT do you WANT (4)
‘cos you’ve been KEEPing me aWAKE (8)
are you HERE to disTRACT me (7)
so i MAKE a BIG misTAKE? (7)
The numbers at the end of each line tell you how many syllables there are in the line, and the parts in capital letters are where the stress would fall (according to my interpretation) if these lines were spoken aloud, rather than sung.
As you can see, the stress pattern is not 100% regular across these two parallel stanzas when it’s sung, in the sense that every line has 2 or 3 stressed syllables, but in theory it doesn’t really matter where exactly you place them – there can be 1, or 2, or 3 unstressed syllables between stressed syllables. The syllable count per stanza is the same, because the rhythm for both stanzas is the same, but only the first lines of each stanza fully mirror each other. This irregularity is fine, though, because it imitates normal speaking, and gives the song a nice sense of normalness (if you ignore the strangeness of being yelled at by a spirit).
But compare this to how ‘All Is Found’ is sung:
WHERE the NORTHwind meets THE SEA (7)
THERE’S a RIver, FULL of MEmoRY (9)
SLEEP, my DARling, SAFE and SOUND (7)
for in this RIver ALL is FOUND (8)
IN her WAters, DEEP and TRUE (7)
LIE the ANswers, AND a PATH for YOU (9)
DIVE down DEEP into her SOUND (7)
but not too FAR or YOU’LL be DROWNED (8)
The rhythm and melody of these two stanzas is the same, of course, so it’s no wonder that the stress patterns are similar. But see how it’s always stressed-unstressed-stressed-unstressed? Admittedly, this is up for debate, so instead I’ll focus on the last 2 lines of each stanza: if you exaggerate it a little you’ll find that there’s a pretty regular pattern of one unstressed syllable in between every two stressed syllables:
COME my DARling HOMEward BOUND (7)
when ALL is LOST then ALL is FOUND (8)
The bridge stanza is also quite regular internally regular:
yes, SHE will SING to THOSE who HEAR (8)
and IN her SONG all MAgic FLOWS (8)
but CAN you BRAVE what YOU most FEAR (8)
can YOU face WHAT the RIver KNOWS? (8)
Disclaimer: the last line is actually sung with a slightly different rhythm from the rest, because the stress pattern is CAN you FACE what the RIver KNOWS (stress on ‘can’ and ‘face’ rather than ‘you’ and ‘what’). But if I had to read this like a poem (since every line is exactly 8 syllables), the pattern of the first three lines strongly suggests to me to repeat the pattern for line 4. And I think stressing ‘you’ and ‘what’ works just as well – it just gives a different interpretation of the song’s overall meaning.
I discovered this pattern while I was trying to convert ‘All Is Found’ to a poetic metre so that I could use it in the Saga, and I quickly realised it was super easy, since I could just bandwagon on the existing metre and change some words to make it more old-timey. Here’s an excerpt from the Saga version of the lullaby:
where MEET the NORTHwind AND the SEA (8)
FLOWS a RIver of MEmoRY (8)
the Oceans THEREto TIdings BRING (8)
KNOWS the SPirit there OF all THINGS (8)
go SEEK there, THOSE who SEEK the TRUTH (8)
and a PATH when ALL is conFUSED (8)
dive DOWN, deep DOWN, inTO her SOUND (8)
but NOT too DEEP, lest THOU be DROWNED (8)
Yes, I know lines 2 and 4 are the same as each other but not the rest; yes, I know line 6 is completely off-metre; but hey, Shakespeare gets away with it sometimes.
But what really struck me was how well the last two lines of each normal stanza in the song match with the bridge stanza. It’s really no wonder that the lines I love most in the song is
Dive down deep into her sound / But not too far or you’ll be drowned.
It has everything: internal alliterative effects on D, T, and R; internal rhyme in into, too, you and down, sound; and as I read dive down deep, the open space in my mouth feels like it’s gradually decreasing with each word. Aesthetics is a field somewhat beyond Linguistics, which is my actual field of study, but there is certainly something to be said for these words. This is a golden line, and it’s no wonder I basically copied it for the Saga.
Addendum on metre
A final comment on metre: as with the last line of the ‘All Is Found’ bridge, it’s possible to read ‘Into The Unknown’ with a regular metre at times:
and IF i HEARD you WHICH i DON’T i’m SPOken FOR i FEAR (14)
are YOU here TO disTRACT me SO i MAKE a BIG misTAKE? (14)
But the thing that the song isn’t sung that way. I could take these two lines are literally drop them verbatim into the Saga and make them stressed this way (I could even sing them according to this stress pattern) – I would have regularised the metre of the line. The way the last 2 lines of each stanza of ‘All Is Found’ is actually sung, though, has an already regular pattern.
And the reverse is true: you can take two things with the same metre and give them different rhythms and melodies in songs. Fun fact: the original German Ode to Joy and the German national anthem are poems written in exactly the same metre (trochees, 8-7-8-7 syllable pattern). You could sing Ode to Joy to the tune of the German national anthem and literally not miss a beat, and vice versa.
Queendom of the Crocus 