Category Archives: Music

Music

Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales Of Hoffman (1880)

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Ger­man author E T A Hoff­mann (1776–1822) was one of the major writ­ers of the Roman­tic move­ment and his sto­ries of fan­ta­sy and Goth­ic hor­ror high­ly influ­enced 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture. For exam­ple, Tchaikovsky’s bal­let The Nut­crack­er is based on Hoffman’s novel­la The Nut­crack­er and the Mouse King, while Delibes’ 1870 bal­let Cop­pélia is based on the short sto­ry, The Sand­man. Inci­den­tal­ly, this excerpt from the lat­ter sto­ry, describ­ing that folk­loric char­ac­ter the Sand­man, amply illus­trates that the term ‘Goth­ic hor­ror’ is no exag­ger­a­tion (in bygone ages we didn’t half spin some hor­rif­ic tales for our young, eh?):

“Most curi­ous to know more of this Sand­man and his par­tic­u­lar con­nec­tion with chil­dren, I at last asked the old woman who looked after my youngest sis­ter what sort of man he was. “Eh, Nat­ty,” said she, “don’t you know that yet? He is a wicked man, who comes to chil­dren when they won’t go to bed, and throws a hand­ful of sand into their eyes, so that they start out bleed­ing from their heads. He puts their eyes in a bag and car­ries them to the cres­cent moon to feed his own chil­dren, who sit in the nest up there. They have crooked beaks like owls so that they can pick up the eyes of naughty human chil­dren.”

The Sand­man (and two oth­er of Hoff­man’s tales, Coun­cil­lor Kre­spel and The Lost Reflec­tion) also inspired the sub­ject of today’s blog, the opéra fan­tas­tique by French com­pos­er Jacques Offen­bach, The Tales of Hoff­man. Offen­bach (1819–1880) was already a famous com­pos­er of around 100 operettas, such as Orpheus in the Under­world (1858) and La Belle Hélène (1864), when he col­lab­o­rat­ed with Jules Bar­bi­er to bring The Tales of Hoff­man to the stage. It proved to be his final work: know­ing he was dying, he wrote to impre­sario Léon Car­val­ho:

“Hâtez-vous de mon­ter mon opéra. Il ne me reste plus longtemps à vivre et mon seul désir est d’as­sis­ter à la pre­mière” (“Hur­ry up and stage my opera. I have not much time left, and my only wish is to attend the open­ing night”)

But it wasn’t to be: Offen­bach died in Octo­ber 1880, four months before the opera’s premiere…nevertheless, his work entered the stan­dard reper­to­ry and is a pop­u­lar piece to this day. Here, lis­ten to Anna Netre­bko and Elī­na Garanča sing the sopra­no and mez­zo-sopra­no duet, the Bar­carolle (Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour) from Act III. You either know it or you think you don’t know it…but you’ll know it!

Jacques Offen­bach
Music

Franz Gruber’s Silent Night (1818)

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It’s Christ­mas time and once again, like many of you, my fam­i­ly and I enjoyed a can­dlelit car­ol ser­vice at our local church. I do like this event each year; it marks the arrival of Christ­mas-prop­er and is the time when you can pause from the mer­ry-go-round that is Christ­mas-in-prac­tice and just enjoy the moment. Car­ols such as O Come All Ye Faith­ful and Hark, The Her­ald Angels Sing are ide­al for a packed church with a rous­ing organ (who doesn’t enjoy blast­ing out those barn­storm­ing Vic­to­ri­an lines such as “Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb” and “Hail th’incarnate Deity”?). The car­ol that I want to write about today, on the oth­er hand, is bet­ter suit­ed to a far more reserved affair: Silent Night is made for hushed tones and a gen­tle accom­pa­ni­ment, and for me is the very epit­o­me of the reflec­tive ele­ment of the sea­son.

The sto­ry goes that the car­ol was first per­formed on the evening of Christ­mas Eve in 1818, in St Nicholas Church, Obern­dorf, in present-day Aus­tria. The young Catholic priest at the church, Joseph Mohr, found him­self in a bit of a pick­le when the church organ became inca­pac­i­tat­ed just before that evening’s Christ­mas Mass ser­vice (in the man­ner of boil­ers break­ing down at just this wrong time of year, I sup­pose). Think­ing on his feet, he remem­bered that he had writ­ten a nice poem a few years before called Stille Nacht, and won­dered if local school­mas­ter and organ­ist Franz Gru­ber might set its six stan­zas to music for gui­tar.

Gru­ber read­i­ly agreed to step into the breach and wrote a melody there and then — and that night, the two men sang Stille Nacht for the first time at the church’s Christ­mas Mass, with Mohr play­ing gui­tar and the choir repeat­ing the last two lines of each verse. Accord­ing to Gru­ber, the organ builder who ser­viced the instru­ment at the Obern­dorf church, was so enam­oured of the song that he took the com­po­si­tion home with him to the Ziller­tal val­ley in the Tyrol where he shared it with musi­cal friends. From there, two trav­el­ling fam­i­lies of folk singers, the Strassers and the Rain­ers, includ­ed the tune in their shows, and its pop­u­lar­i­ty spread all over Europe.

Rain­er fam­i­ly

It’s a very mov­ing and hum­bling song; as a tes­ta­ment to its glob­al pop­u­lar­i­ty, it was sung by troops dur­ing the famous Christ­mas truce of World War I, per­haps because it was the one tune that was famil­iar to all of them. How poignant the words must have seemed at that par­tic­u­lar moment!

Ger­man lyricsEng­lish lyrics
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Alles schläft; ein­sam wacht
Nur das traute hochheilige Paar.
Hold­er Knabe im lock­i­gen Haar,
Schlaf in himm­lis­ch­er Ruh!
Schlaf in himm­lis­ch­er Ruh!Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Hirten erst kundgemacht
Durch der Engel Hal­lelu­ja,
Tönt es laut von fern und nah:
Christ, der Ret­ter ist da!
Christ, der Ret­ter ist da!Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,
Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht
Lieb’ aus deinem göt­tlichen Mund,
Da uns schlägt die ret­tende Stund’.
Christ, in dein­er Geburt!
Christ, in dein­er Geburt!		Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon vir­gin moth­er and child!
Holy infant, so ten­der and mild,
Sleep in heav­en­ly peace!
Sleep in heav­en­ly peace!Silent night! Holy night!
Shep­herds quake at the sight!
Glo­ries stream from heav­en afar,
Heav­en­ly hosts sing Alleluia!
Christ the Sav­iour is born!
Christ the Sav­iour is born!Silent night! Holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radi­ant beams from thy holy face
With the dawn of redeem­ing grace,
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!
Jesus, Lord, at thy birth!

Here is a ren­di­tion by the Span­ish sopra­nos Montser­rat Cabal­lé and her daugh­ter Montser­rat Martí. Mer­ry Christ­mas!

Franz Gru­ber
Music

Dire Straits’ Sultans Of Swing (1978)

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As well as writ­ing about art and cul­ture, your blog­ger has also been known to wield a mean gui­tar (by “mean”, I mean “aver­age”) and, although fame failed to beck­on after the van­i­ty-fund­ed release of the damn fine album Sara­ban­da by The Mavis Trains in 1999, I still know my approx­i­mate way around a fret­board and con­tin­ue to play from time to time in the com­fort of my home. Recent­ly, for a bit of fun, I videoed myself per­form­ing an acoustic ver­sion of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, to mild­ly amuse some select­ed friends. As a result, I was chal­lenged by the son of one of those friends to have a go at that Dire Straits’ clas­sic, Sul­tans Of Swing.

I sus­pect, giv­en Mark Knopfler’s obvi­ous tech­ni­cal prowess, that the chal­lenge was deliv­ered with some­thing of an inter­nal chuck­le and the thought “good luck with that!”. And so, the ensu­ing weeks have seen me watch­ing online tuto­ri­als, scru­ti­n­is­ing line after line of tab­la­ture, and furi­ous­ly prac­tic­ing with a view to bam­boo­zling my imag­ined detrac­tors’ assump­tion of fail­ure. Curse them, and curse Mark Knopfler’s super-fast dex­ter­i­ty and total com­mand of his instru­ment!

In all seri­ous­ness though, Hugo (for it was he), Sul­tans Of Swing is a great shout; it’s a tremen­dous song. It was inspired appar­ent­ly by a real-life encounter with a jazz band in an almost emp­ty pub in Dept­ford on a rainy night in 1977. Amused by the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the band’s non­de­script and shab­by appear­ance (I’m imag­in­ing Chas and Dave types) with their grandiose name (“we are the Sul­tans of Swing!”), Knopfler began to pen what would become his band’s debut sin­gle in the fol­low­ing year.

Knopfler wrote the song on a Nation­al Steel gui­tar (a spe­cial kind of res­onator gui­tar used by the Blues­men of old before the days of elec­tron­ic ampli­fi­ca­tion) but it wasn’t until he played it on a Stra­to­cast­er that the song took on the vibran­cy with which we asso­ciate with it today: “It just came alive as soon as I played it on that ’61 Strat … the new chord changes just pre­sent­ed them­selves and fell into place”.  It cer­tain­ly came alive: let’s hear it again in all its glo­ry, below.

Dire Straits
Music

Sam & Dave’s Soul Man (1967)

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In the six­ties, just as Berry Gordy up in Detroit was dri­ving the Motown sound, down in Mem­phis the most influ­en­tial cre­ator and pro­mot­er of that crossover of blues/soul/pop music known as the Mem­phis sound was Stax Records, found­ed in 1957 by Jim Stew­art and Estelle Axton (Stewart/Axton = Stax). Unprece­dent­ed in that time of racial ten­sion and strife in the South, Stax’s staff and artists were eth­ni­cal­ly inte­grat­ed, includ­ing their leg­endary house band Book­er T & the MGs, who played on hun­dreds of record­ings by artists includ­ing Wil­son Pick­ett, Otis Red­ding, and Bill With­ers.

Book­er T & the MGs c. 1967 (L–R): Don­ald “Duck” Dunn, Book­er T. Jones (seat­ed), Steve Crop­per, Al Jack­son Jr.

Anoth­er suc­cess­ful Stax act was Sam & Dave, made up of har­mo­nious­ly-com­pat­i­ble soul singers Samuel Moore and David Prater, and today let’s enjoy their 1967 record­ing, Soul Man, writ­ten by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. Hayes had found the inspi­ra­tion for the song in the tur­moil of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. In July 1967 he had watched a tele­vi­sion news­cast about the after­math of the 12th Street riot in Detroit, Michi­gan, and not­ed that black res­i­dents had daubed the word “soul” onto their build­ings in the hope that the riot­ers would pass them by – anal­o­gous to the bib­li­cal sto­ry of the Passover, it was their way of say­ing “Please don’t wreck my build­ing, I’m one of you” (so to speak). The idea mor­phed in Hayes’ mind into an expres­sion of pride and defi­ance: “I’m a soul man!”.

The MGs were draft­ed in to record the song, with the help of horns from that oth­er reli­able Stax house band, the Mar-Keys, and the result was an instant smash that would enter the Gram­my Hall of Fame. Sam and Dave take it in turns to sing the vers­es, join­ing in togeth­er for the cho­rus­es, and com­ple­ment­ing each oth­er seam­less­ly. One of Steve Cropper’s gui­tar licks is intro­duced by the excla­ma­tion “Play it, Steve”, a nuance that was repeat­ed some years lat­er when Soul Man was includ­ed as one of the soul clas­sics paid trib­ute to by the mak­ers of 1980’s The Blues Broth­ers movie (in which Crop­per makes an appear­ance).

Here’s a TV appear­ance by the duo singing Soul Man (sans Crop­per and thus sans the “Play it Steve” snip­pet but hey…) to an audi­ence that does­n’t quite yet know how to move to the rhythm!

Sam and Dave

 

Music

The Eagles’ Hotel California (1977)

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Decem­ber 1976 saw the release of the Eagles’ Hotel Cal­i­for­nia album, with its epony­mous sin­gle released in the fol­low­ing Feb­ru­ary. This was right in the mid­dle of a sem­i­nal time for me in terms of musi­cal flow­er­ing (the release of the records strad­dled my 14th birth­day) and it hit the spot just as sure­ly as songs by the likes of Deep Pur­ple, Led Zep­pelin, Cat Stevens and David Bowie had in the year or two pre­vi­ous­ly. I loved the way the song told a sto­ry (a slight­ly dis­com­fit­ing, odd sto­ry at that) and how it auda­cious­ly includ­ed an exquis­ite and lengthy gui­tar solo (2 min­utes and 12 sec­onds) that would become the bane of radio pro­duc­ers bred to keep musi­cal offer­ings short and sweet (the whole song is six and a half min­utes long).

Hotel Cal­i­for­nia was the Eagles’ fifth album and they were already the biggest band in Amer­i­ca when they embarked on its record­ing. Sad­ly, per­son­al rela­tion­ships in the band had already bro­ken down (a repeat­ing theme in the life of the band, despite which, amaz­ing­ly, the band endured); nonethe­less, per­son­al enmi­ties nev­er stood in the way of the band cre­at­ing ground-break­ing music. Gui­tarist Don Felder came up with the Hotel Cal­i­for­nia riff, which was then devel­oped by Don Hen­ley and Glenn Frey. Frey’s lyrics were inspired by an attempt to “expand our lyri­cal hori­zons and try to take on some­thing in the realm of the bizarre, like Steely Dan had done”.

He cer­tain­ly nailed it: the brood­ing imagery around this fad­ed hotel in the mid­dle of nowhere (the hotel in The Shin­ing about sums it up in my head) is mag­nif­i­cent­ly evoca­tive and the lyrics are pep­pered with killer lines. I can­not con­ceive of a bet­ter line, giv­en the pre­ced­ing lyrics and lead­ing into the icon­ic gui­tar solo, than “you can check out any time you like but you can nev­er leave”. Then again, have there ever been two open­ing lines – “On a dark desert high­way, cool wind in my hair” – so evoca­tive of a place and milieu? I could go on (“some dance to remem­ber, some dance to for­get” et al), but let’s instead just enjoy the whole piece and its won­der­ful duelling gui­tars at this live per­for­mance at Largo, Mary­land, in 1977.

The Eagles
Music

Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 Adagietto (1902)

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Although Gus­tav Mahler (1860–1911) is right up there in the pan­theon of com­posers, his music gained its true cur­ren­cy only well after his death. Sure, he was famous in his life­time as a con­duc­tor but his com­po­si­tions were large­ly neglect­ed and indeed banned in Europe dur­ing the Nazi era (Mahler was an Ashke­nazi Jew), and it was only after 1945 that a new gen­er­a­tion of lis­ten­ers redis­cov­ered his music and turned him into one of the most fre­quent­ly per­formed and record­ed com­posers which has sus­tained to the present day.

Mahler com­posed his Sym­pho­ny No. 5 between 1901 and 1902, most­ly dur­ing the sum­mer months at his hol­i­day cot­tage at Maiernigg in Aus­tria (his “com­pos­ing hut” is now a lit­tle muse­um). At near­ly sev­en­ty min­utes long, it’s a musi­cal can­vas with some seri­ous scope, but today we’ll look at the fourth move­ment or Adagi­et­to, a ten­der piece of music that was said to have rep­re­sent­ed his love for Alma Schindler whom he mar­ried in March 1902.

The Adagi­et­to is undoubt­ed­ly the sin­gle most well-known piece of Mahler’s music. Leonard Bern­stein con­duct­ed it dur­ing the funer­al Mass for Robert Kennedy at St Patrick’s Cathe­dral in New York in 1968, but it was its use in Luchi­no Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice that sky­rock­et­ed it to fame.

Death In Venice was Ger­man author Thomas Mann’s 1912 novel­la about a famous and enno­bled writer, Gus­tav von Aschen­bach, who is sojourn­ing in Venice for health rea­sons and becomes increas­ing­ly obsessed with a young hand­some Pol­ish boy, Tadzio, who is stay­ing in the same hotel on the Venet­ian island of Lido.

In the movie, Vis­con­ti turns von Aschen­bach (Dirk Bog­a­rde) from writer to com­pos­er, which allows the musi­cal score (which also includes music by Beethoven and Mus­sorgsky) to rep­re­sent Aschen­bach’s work. The end­ing scene in which the dying com­pos­er watch­es Tadzio strolling and wad­ing through the sea­wa­ter to the enrap­tured tones of Mahler’s Adagi­et­to (before von Aschen­bach prompt­ly keels over dead) is strik­ing. You can go watch the movie (despite the spoil­er!) but for now, lis­ten to the music itself:

Gus­tav Mahler
Music

Miles Davis’s Soundtrack to Elevator To The Gallows (1958)

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Rolling Stone described him as “the most revered jazz trum­peter of all time, not to men­tion one of the most impor­tant musi­cians of the 20th cen­tu­ry” and it’s hard to argue with that appraisal of Miles Davis (1926–1991) the Amer­i­can trum­peter, band­leader, and com­pos­er. Not to everyone’s taste for sure (and cer­tain­ly not to the oth­er adult shar­er of my house­hold, who pret­ty much loathes the entire genre of jazz) and chal­leng­ing at times to even the most will­ing of new lis­ten­ers, but he is one of the most influ­en­tial and acclaimed fig­ures in the his­to­ry of jazz.

Born in Alton, Illi­nois to a well-to-do fam­i­ly (he was born Miles Dewey Davis III), Miles went to study at the cel­e­brat­ed Juil­liard School in New York, but dropped out and sought out, befriend­ed and soon joined sax­o­phon­ist Char­lie “Bird” Park­er’s bebop quin­tet, col­lab­o­rat­ing with him from 1944 to 1948. Short­ly after, he record­ed the ground-break­ing Birth of the Cool ses­sions which would become the defin­ing record­ing of the “cool jazz” genre, and in the ear­ly 1950s he record­ed some of the ear­li­est “hard bop”, the funky off­shoot of bebop music. Ever inno­v­a­tive, he was always push­ing the enve­lope and invent­ing gen­res along the way.

Davis signed a long-term con­tract with Colum­bia Records, and record­ed the album ‘Round About Mid­night in 1955. It was his first work with sax­o­phon­ist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Cham­bers, key mem­bers of the sex­tet he would lead into the ear­ly 1960s and with whom he would rule the jazz world. Dur­ing this peri­od, he alter­nat­ed between orches­tral jazz col­lab­o­ra­tions with arranger Gil Evans, and band record­ings, such as Mile­stones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959), the lat­ter record­ing sell­ing over five mil­lion copies in the US.

The piece I have sin­gled out for our delec­ta­tion today is a piece of cin­e­mat­ic cool, com­bin­ing Miles Davis’s musi­cal sound­scape with some typ­i­cal­ly moody French art-house aes­thet­ic pro­vid­ed by leg­endary screen god­dess Jeanne More­au. This scene is from the 1958 crime thriller movie Ascenseur Pour L’échafaud (Ele­va­tor To The Gal­lows), direct­ed by Louis Malle. The sound­track was record­ed in one night, and impro­vised by Davis and four oth­er musi­cians while they watched the rel­e­vant scenes from the film. Jazz crit­ic Phil John­son described it as “the loneli­est trum­pet sound you will ever hear, and the mod­el for sad-core music ever since”.

Miles Davis
Music

Sir Edward Elgar’s Nimrod Variation (1899)

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Both patri­ot­ic and mov­ing in equal mea­sure, Sir Edward Elgar’s Nim­rod vari­a­tion is a sta­ple of British patri­ot­ic events such as the Last Night of the Proms, the open­ing of the 2012 Olympic Games in Lon­don, and the coro­na­tions of Eliz­a­beth II and Charles III, whilst its som­bre nature lends itself equal­ly well to the Remem­brance Day ser­vice at the Ceno­taph, and funer­als such as those of Princess Diana and Prince Philip. It is the ninth and best-known vari­a­tion in Elgar­’s Enig­ma Vari­a­tions, an orches­tral work of four­teen vari­a­tions on an orig­i­nal theme com­posed between 1898 and 1899.

Each vari­a­tion is also a musi­cal sketch of mem­bers of Elgar­’s fam­i­ly and close cir­cle of friends and con­tains, in Elgar’s words, “a dis­tinct idea found­ed on some par­tic­u­lar per­son­al­i­ty or per­haps on some inci­dent known only to two peo­ple”. Thus, each vari­a­tion con­tains a per­son­al expres­sion from Elgar of an aspect of each subject’s per­son­al­i­ty, or an event they shared, and the sub­jects are iden­ti­fied by either ini­tials or a nick­name: for exam­ple, the first vari­a­tion is “CAE” (Elgar’s wife, Car­o­line Alice); oth­ers include “RBT” (Oxford clas­si­cist Richard Bax­ter-Town­shend), “Troyte” (archi­tect Arthur Troyte Grif­fith) and so on.

Vari­a­tion IX (Ada­gio) “Nim­rod” is a por­trait of Augus­tus J. Jaeger, Elgar’s edi­tor and pub­lish­er, and close friend. Nim­rod is the great hunter of the Old Tes­ta­ment, and the piece is so named through a play on words: Jäger in Ger­man means ‘hunter’. This serene vari­a­tion rep­re­sents the years of advice and encour­age­ment giv­en to Elgar by Jaeger, when Elgar was suf­fer­ing depres­sive episodes and lack of con­fi­dence in his work. Jaeger had remind­ed him that Beethoven had had sim­i­lar anx­i­eties and yet his music had only increased in beau­ty; in trib­ute to this moment, Nim­rod’s open­ing moments evoke sub­tle hints of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 8.

The piece builds through long phras­es of swelling dynam­ics and rip­pling melody, and the emo­tion­al cli­max comes slow­ly but sure­ly. Solemn and evoca­tive, Nim­rod has every­one reach­ing for their han­kies. Enjoy this ver­sion fea­tur­ing Gus­ta­vo Dudamel con­duct­ing the Simon Boli­var Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Sir Edward Elgar
Music

Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune (1894)

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When I was a boy I got some piano lessons from my grand­ma, whose creaky piano had been a fea­ture of her back room for as long as I could remem­ber, and although my progress was lim­it­ed (and per­ma­nent­ly arrest­ed at age thir­teen when I dis­cov­ered the gui­tar), I retain some vivid mem­o­ries: my grand­ma singing the music hall favourite Two Love­ly Black Eyes in her trade­mark falset­to, as well as Edel­weiss from The Sound Of Music and the mil­i­tary march song Men Of Harlech (after which, for a peri­od, she would address me as Dai Bach, or ‘lit­tle David’ in Welsh, as if recall­ing famil­ial roots that nev­er exist­ed). I would faith­ful­ly learn these songs on the piano, whilst leav­ing the unique singing to her.

Anoth­er piece of music I recall prac­tis­ing in those years was Claude Debussy’s Clair De Lune. No doubt every erst­while piano stu­dent does. It’s a haunt­ing and love­ly tune, for sure, and lat­er I was to learn that Debussy was a ver­i­ta­ble mas­ter of the haunt­ing and love­ly tune. He had an aston­ish­ing abil­i­ty to trans­late the nat­ur­al world into sound for orches­tral and solo piano music. Lis­ten to La Mer, for exam­ple, one of many pieces Debussy wrote about water: it’s easy to dis­cern the ‘sound’ of the play of light on water. The evoca­tive musi­cal imagery cap­tured so clev­er­ly in such com­po­si­tions as Rêver­ie, Images, Préludes, Études and Noc­turnes led him to be dubbed the first Impres­sion­ist com­pos­er, the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of Mon­et, Cézanne and Renoir (he was none too hap­py with the term by all accounts, but I’d have tak­en it).

My favourite evo­ca­tion, though, as a fan of the pas­toral and bucol­ic, is Prélude à l’Après-Midi d’un Faune. Based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s sym­bol­ist poem of the same name, the Prélude con­jures up a dream-like world of idyl­lic wood­land thick with sum­mer haze, in which sprawls a lethar­gic faun, wak­ing from rever­ie. If you don’t know it from its title, you’ll know it when you hear it from the excerpt below (it’s been used all over the shop). Oh, to be a faun in a mytho­log­i­cal Greek sum­mer land­scape! Beats work­ing…

Claude Debussy
Music

Cole Porter’s You Do Something To Me (1929)

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There’s a scene in the 1972 movie Sleuth, where­in eccen­tric mil­lion­aire crime writer Andrew Wyke (Lau­rence Olivi­er) has invit­ed his wife’s lover, Ital­ian hair­dress­er Milo Tin­dle (Michael Caine), to his man­sion, under false pre­tences, and pro­ceed­ed to shoot him dead in what he believes to be the per­fect mur­der. He struts self-assured­ly around his kitchen, busy­ing him­self in prepa­ra­tion of a cel­e­bra­to­ry cham­pagne-and-caviar sup­per to the strains of Cole Porter’s song You Do Some­thing To Me piped in from a dis­tant gramo­phone. Now, the movie itself deserves a blog all to itself, since it is a grip­ping and bril­liant­ly-writ­ten piece of dra­ma with bravu­ra per­for­mances from the two afore­men­tioned greats of the sil­ver screen, but this is not about the movie but the song.

The song is typ­i­cal of Cole Porter (1891–1964), Amer­i­can com­pos­er and song­writer not­ed for his wit­ty, urbane lyrics and writer of many a song that would find suc­cess on Broad­way in the 1920s and 30s, and become part of what we now call the Great Amer­i­can Song­book. His songs trip off the tongue: You’re The Top; Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love; Any­thing Goes; I Get A Kick Out Of You; Begin The Beguine; I’ve Got You Under My Skin; Let’s Mis­be­have; Ev’ry Time We Say Good­bye; Who Wants To Be A Mil­lion­aire? et al. His songs have of course been cov­ered by, well, everyone…and so I attempt­ed to find out which artist had record­ed the par­tic­u­lar ver­sion that we hear in Sleuth (below)…

Sure­ly a straight­for­ward google-able task? But not so: hav­ing failed to find the iden­ti­ty of the artist from the obvi­ous sources, I was led instead and cir­cuitous­ly to this forum of musi­cal sound­track enthu­si­asts (below). Start­ing in 2006, one “glo­ri­ot­s­ki” kicks off the thread with the same ques­tion that was on my lips, but “coma” sets the ensu­ing tone with “I’ve checked all avail­able sources but nobody real­ly seems to know”.

Oth­er ama­teur musi­cal sleuths, deter­mined to crack the mys­tery, steam in, with the sug­ges­tions rolling in: Fred Astaire, Al John­son, Mel Tor­mé, Al Bowl­ly, Pat O’Malley, Sam Browne (indeed, vir­tu­al­ly every­one except Mar­lene Diet­rich)? But the years tick by, and one by one each con­fi­dent sug­ges­tion has been debunked, right up to 2021 when we seem to have got no fur­ther:

Per­haps we’ll nev­er know…but I can live with that (in fact, I’m rather glad that the mys­tery has endured) because in the course of my research I came across this won­der­ful ver­sion record­ed by Har­ry Reser’s Clic­quot Club Eski­mo Orches­tra, with vocals by Har­ry “Scrap­py” Lam­bert. Enjoy!

Cole Porter