Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life by Victor Herbert

Overview

Key: B♭ major · Chords used: 13 · Sections: 3

Form: A Section → B Section → B Section

Where these chords come from: a lead sheet of this public-domain song, contributed by a musician to the Wikifonia archive and preserved in the OpenEWLD lead-sheet collection (Simonetta et al., 2018). It describes the song as written, not any particular recording. This page shows that lead sheet as-is: the analysis below is generated directly from it by code, not written by AI. Consecutive repeats of a chord are shown once, and the piano voicings are our playable arrangement of each chord symbol, not a note-for-note transcription.

Section by section

A Section

• B♭ – Cm7 – F7 – B♭ – B♭m – F/C – C – C7
  I – ii7 – V7 – I – i – V⁶₄ – II – II7

B Section 1

• F7 – B♭ – Cm7 – F7 – B♭ – G7 – Cm – E♭m – B♭/F – Cm/E♭ – Dm
  V7 – I – ii7 – V7 – I – VI7 – ii – iv – I⁶₄ – ii⁶ – iii

B Section 2

• B♭ – Cm7 – F7 – B♭ – G7 – Cm – E♭m – B♭/F – Cm/E♭ – Dm – B♭
  I – ii7 – V7 – I – VI7 – ii – iv – I⁶₄ – ii⁶ – iii – I

Chord vocabulary

Harmonic highlights

• B♭m (i) is borrowed from the parallel key, B♭ minor.
• E♭m (iv) is borrowed from the parallel key, B♭ minor.
• G7 acts as V/ii: it resolves to Cm.

Sources & accuracy

• Chords: the OpenEWLD lead-sheet collection (Simonetta et al., 2018). Community-contributed lead sheet (chord symbols over the melody) from the Wikifonia archive, MIT licence. Title and songwriter credit as written on the sheet.
• Section names: detected by code from repeated 8-, 12- and 16-bar phrases (letters such as A and B mark different phrases; a phrase that comes back keeps its letter). Lead sheets rarely print section names.
• Not verified: only one lead sheet of this song is available, so it hasn't been cross-checked.
• Rhythm and chord durations aren't shown; each step is one chord change.