Speak low

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Speak Low is a musical song that Kurt Weill wrote to a text by Ogden Nash and published in 1943. The song, written for the Broadway musical One Touch of Venus , became a hit in 1944 and has later established itself as the jazz standard .

Function and characteristics of the song

In the musical, the song is Venus' declaration of love to the male hero Rodney. The title line of the song ("Speak low when you speak, love") takes up a classic sentence from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing , which Don Pedro speaks there ("Speak low, if you speak love"). The song is later recorded again in the musical when it is certain that Venus will return to Olympus, but she once again commemorates her love with Rodney in a nostalgic review.

The 56-bar song is in F major and the song form AA'BA "; the B part only comprises 8 bars." In bars 33 and 37, the motif of the B part initially only sounds in the accompaniment and becomes only half a bar later canonically picked up by the singing voice . ”The song ends with a“ quasi- parlando ”:“ In the last few words ('Low to me, speak love to me, and soon') the melody only consists of a d repeated nine times. "The song ends on the major sixth instead of the root note ." This ending seems strangely floating and underlines the mysterious atmosphere of the musical. "

Reception of the song

In One Touch of Venus, which premiered on October 7, 1943, the song is interpreted by Mary Martin . In the same year, the first recordings of the song by Mary Martin and Kenny Baker were made , which were published in 1943 on the original album One Touch of Venus . In a cover version by Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians with singer Billy Leach, the song hit the American charts in 1944, where it reached number 8. In 1948 the musical was filmed as Venus Affair with Ava Gardner as Venus and Robert Walker as Rodney Hatch. Speak Low was sung for Gardner by Eileen Wilson ; the song is interpreted in the film as a special highlight by Dick Haymes .

Speak Low was also part of the off-Broadway revue Berlin to Broadway with Kurt Weill (1972) and LoveMusik , a biography musical that deals with Weill's love story with Lotte Lenya . Lotte Lenya recorded the song several times herself. In 1954 Les Baxter interpreted the song. Barbra Streisand recorded it in an arrangement by David Foster for her album Back to Broadway . The Young Gods , who previously had Weill's September song in their repertoire, recorded Speak Low for their album Knock on Wood in 2008 . The song played an important role in Christian Petzold's film Phoenix (2014).

The way to the jazz standard

Carmen McRae recorded Speak Low in 1952 , followed by Nat King Cole and The Hi-Lo’s (1955), before Billie Holiday (1956) also interpreted the song . Anita O'Day followed in 1960 in an arrangement by Bill Holman ( Incomparable!). Even before other singers like Ella Fitzgerald (especially in the duo of Joe Pass 1983) took the song into their repertoire, it was also accepted as an instrumental piece. Laurindo Almeida and Bud Shank highlighted Latin rhythms; Barney Kessel and Bob Cooper conquered the piece in 1954 for West Coast jazz, as did Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan . Bill Evans followed in 1956, Sonny Clark with John Coltrane in 1957 , Hank Mobley with Lee Morgan in 1958 , before Stan Kenton showed in 1959 that the piece (in an arrangement by Johnny Richards ) was also suitable for big bands. Some musicians like Bobby Jaspar (1958) or Grant Green (1965) could not exhaust all the subtleties of the song and replaced the seemingly floating ending with a fade out .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Baumgartner Venus in Manhattan: Contrasting Spaces in Kurt Weill's ›One Touch of Venus‹. In: Jürgen Schebera, Stefan Weiss (Eds.) Street Scene: The urban space in the music theater of the 20th century. Münster 2006, p. 82
  2. ↑ a b Schaal Jazz Standards p. 453.
  3. ↑ Version directory on secondhand songs
  4. ↑ a b song portrait www.jazzstandards.com
  5. ^ Barbra Streisand Archives: Records / Back to Broadway.
  6. ↑ Hank Mobley feat. Lee Morgan: Speak Low .
  7. ^ Grant Green: Speak Low .