Night and Day is a popular song by Cole Porter. It was written for the 1932 musical play Gay Divorce, specially adapted to the vocal range of Fred Astaire.It is perhaps Porters most popular contribution to the Great American Songbook and has been recorded by dozens of artists. Fred Astaire-as I wrote before- introduced Night and Day on stage, and his recording of the song was a #1 hit. He performed it again in the 1934 film version of the show, renamed The Gay Divorcee, and it became one of his signature pieces. Porter was known to claim, that the Islamic call to worship he heard on a trip to Morocco inspired the song. Another popular legend has it he was inspired by the Moorish architecture of the Alcazar Hotel in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The song was so associated with Porter, that when Hollywood first filmed his life story in 1946, the movie was entitled Night and Day. Song structure The construction of Night and Day is unusual for a hit song of the 1930s. Most popular tunes then featured 32-bar choruses, divided into four 8-bar sections, usually with an AABA musical structure, the B section representing the bridge. Porters song, on the other hand, has a chorus of 48 bars, divided into 6 sections of 8 bars — ABABCB — with section C representing the bridge. Harmonic structure[edit] Night and Day has unusual chord changes (the underlying harmony). The tune begins with a pedal (repeated) dominant with a major seventh chord built on the flattened sixth of the key, which then resolves to the dominant seventh in the next bar. If performed in the key of B♭, the first chord is therefore G♭ major seventh, with an F (the major seventh above the harmonic root) in the melody, before resolving to F7 and eventually B♭ maj7. This section repeats and is followed by a descending harmonic sequence starting with a -7♭5 (half diminished seventh chord or Ø) built on the augmented fourth of the key, and descending by semitones — with changes in the chord quality— to the supertonic minor seventh, which forms the beginning of a more standard II-V-I progression. In B♭, this sequence begins with an EØ, followed by an E♭-7, D-7 and D♭ dim, before resolving onto C-7 (the supertonic minor seventh) and cadencing onto B♭. The bridge is also unusual, with an immediate, fleeting and often (depending on the version) unprepared key change up a minor third, before an equally transient and unexpected return to the key centre. In B♭, the bridge begins with a D♭ major seventh, then moves back to B♭ with a B♭ major seventh chord. This repeats, and is followed by a recapitulation of the second section outlined above. The vocal verse is also unusual in that most of the melody consists entirely of a single note — the same dominant pedal, that begins the body of the song — with rather inconclusive and unusual harmonies underneath.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 08:50:42 +0000
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