(Generally not one of my favorite standards; only Sinatra juiced its rather flat melody with aplomb).
His cover version, which he recorded in 2014 after performing it live for nearly a decade, shaves off some of the original's eeriness – with its purposely flat, unresolved melodies – and sneaks in a little more sentimentality.
This second theme, a hymn-like E-flat major melody in four-part harmony, greatly contrasts with the first, though its melodic contour is prefigured in the sudden A-flat major departure.
His limpid tone in Godowsky's arrangement of Schubert's "Morgengruss," his pointillistic turn in Moszkowski's "Etincelles" and the gentle ache he effortlessly evokes in Paderewski's Melody in G flat all work toward establishing this music's merit.
The turmoil continues as the bass struggles up a dominant from C to G, invoking a new clash between snare drum and percussion; the attempt at struggle fails as the bass is foiled at G flat when the ominous violin melody is distorted and disintegrates.
Elgar: Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 "I've a got a tune that will knock 'em – knock 'em flat," wrote Elgar of the central melody of his first Pomp and Circumstance March.
Fifty years ago this month, a failing songwriter sat down at his piano in his Paris flat and furiously bashed out the melody of a new song.
But she filled the set with a lot of flat soul-jazz that lacked decent melody; not even the bassist Christian McBride, who plays funk really well, could save it.
Along with the appendices and an "archive" of materials at the University of Dundee (an ongoing installation by her artist sister Merran Gunn), these blur the fictional boundaries and disrupt the main melody with a suitably flat fastidiousness.
His style was often to mismatch melody and words, or sing flat, or comment as if he was on the sidelines, rather than in the song.
The inability or failure to resolve a melody contour is indicated by "flat" responses when the presented contour was not "flat".
