Alone Together

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Alone Together is a pop song by Arthur Schwartz (melody) and Howard Dietz (text) from 1932. The mostly medium-tempo ballad has developed into the jazz standard since the 1940s .

Features of the song

In the song, the common love is sung about, which is as deep as the sea and as great as love at all, and thus distinguishes the couple from their environment. The text is written in Iamben and arranged in stanzas of 7 lines. The melody, written almost entirely in D minor, is arranged in the song form AABA '. The first two parts are respectively A-14 clocks in length, but lead to major - tonic , while the third A-part, which is only 12 cycles is long, in the tonic in the home key ( minor dissolves). The melody developed gradually, with the note spacing never being greater than thirds . While each A section rises and falls like an arc, the B section uses long sustained notes that fall off.

History of origin

Alone Together was the author team for the Broadway - Musical Flying Colors (. Eg with film background and rotating stage) was produced in 1932 very complex equipped written. The piece was therefore only moderately successful despite 188 performances. Jean Sargent sang the number there while Clifton Webb and Tamara Geva danced. In 1932 Leo Reisman recorded the song with his orchestra and reached number 9 in the American charts.

Further effect

In 1939 Artie Shaw recorded the song with his orchestra for the musical film Symphony of Swing ; In 1941 he recorded it on record, reinforced with strings. The cover version by Dizzy Gillespie (1950) was in a similar mood , while Miles Davis chose a modernist approach for his album Blue Moods (1955). Other versions of the next few years were made by Art Blakey , Pepper Adams , Julie London , Dorothy Ashby , Chet Baker or Kenny Dorham . In the Hard Bop led Alone Together Sonny Rollins a ( Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders 1958).

Since 1960 singers such as Ella Fitzgerald (with Nelson Riddle ) and Betty Carter (with Ray Charles ) have created multifaceted new interpretations. The instrumentalists Eric Dolphy and Lee Konitz (1991) used the song for long harmonic explorations, as did the duo of Chris Anderson and Charlie Haden (1997). The aggressively fast version by Brad Mehldau (2000) leads far away from the ballad mood .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Information on jazzstandards.com
  2. ↑ Allen Forte The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era, 1924-1950: A Study in Musical Design Princeton 1996, pp. 284ff.
  3. ^ A b Ted Gioia The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire Oxford 2012, p. 18
  4. ^ A b Ted Gioia The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire Oxford 2012, p. 19