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"September Song" (Kurt Weill): How the Chord Progression Works
A second chromatic chord appears in the bridge, but only briefly. As with the chromatic chord in the verse, the chord that follows the bridge chromatic is the tonic (the C major chord in this example).
One other interesting point about the “September Song” chord progression: the bridge uses only second and third progressions—no fifths.
In the olden days (first half of the 20th Century), many songs had a so-called “verse” followed by a “refrain.” These terms had different meanings from what everybody now thinks of as “verse” and “refrain”. The old-style verse was a (sometimes long) introduction or narrative, a story with its own melody.
Over time, singers and audiences became impatient with the verse and wanted to get straight to the refrain. Eventually, the old-style verse got dropped and the so-called refrain became what everyone considered the whole song.
“September Song,” written so long ago, has a particularly affecting old-style verse that you don’t hear too often. Listen to the Frank Sinatra recording of “September Song” in which he does both verse and refrain with old-style perfection.