Food For Thought: Charlotte and Cordelia

Okay so! Finn is a musical genius and I’ve noticed that with lots of characters in Falsettos, you can tell who does work well together and who doesn’t work well together by the harmonies they have.

Examples include (but are not limited to):

Love Is Blind

Trina and Marvin have harmonies that partially go together but sound eerie, symbolizing they still have some sort of connection with each other (expressed more in I Never Wanted to Love You), but it’s starting to fade away as they grow more apart due to Marvin’s homosexuality and the deceit and their overall situation.

The Thrill of First Love

While we all love how “blended” Andrew and Christian’s voices are (I love them too don’t worry), we notice when they sing together, their harmonies clash — specifically at 3:52 when they sing “ion dies” and 4:05 when they sing “love” — which foreshadows the idea that they’re NOT good for each other in Act I and ultimately leads to their break after The Chess Game

This Had Better Come To A Stop

When Trina and Whizzer sing together at 1:16 at Marvin, their voices meld together in some oddly fashioned concoction of nut-worthy harmony, which symbolizes the fact that despite them being on each other’s “enemy” list (they’re not really, hence the “”), and they both are rooted under the same principles and they’ve both been deceived by Marvin.

Not to mention, at the end, the voices all sound WONDERFUL together... UNTIL Marvin brings in his harmony, meaning that everything is going to be because of him.

A Tight-Knit Family (REPRISE)

This one is very obvious. During Marvin and Mendel’s argument, their voices clash at 2:44, 2:50, 3:07, and 3:37, showing the obvious tension between the two of them, and it shows how their tension is going to grow, as at each time stamp above, it gets more and more discordant.

After this, melodies start to meld together in Act II because they’re starting to become more friendly and the relationships are more healthy.

Except one relationship.

Charlotte and Cordelia’s.

During A Day In Falsettoland, Cordelia literally says:

You save lives and I save chicken fat, how am I supposed to deal with that? {original: I can’t f-u-cking deal with that}

This is after Charlotte starts talking about her day at the hospital and how great her life is and how wonderful she feels, and we see Cordelia looking... rather upset.

This gives us our first hint as to their strife.

The second hint? Something Bad Is Happening.

Cordelia’s trying to get Charlotte to try her dish and Charlotte harshly goes “Stop.”, which makes Cordelia’s face go sour for a moment before she goes into what I call “Damage Control” mode, trying to calm her down when she’s discussing the AIDS epidemic.

Third hint:

Unlikely Lovers

also the bleND OF WHIZZER AND MARVIN’S VOICES MEANING THEY HEALED

When the lesbians make their entrance into the hospital room, they say at 3:02 “we’ll come in”. Their voices don’t match enough to be considered harmonious.

Now, whenever people’s voices were discordant and otherwise non-harmonious, that symbolizes turbulence in a friendship, relationship, or kinship.

ARE THE LESBIANS OKAY?