The music I selected for this week isn’t related to any holidays or events upcoming. Normally that’s where I draw my inspiration, but I was hitting some writer’s block this week and so I decided to just fall back on a song that I really enjoy listening to. When I was in high school, my crush was a big fan of the movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s. Naturally, I watched it with her, and while I was not as big of a fan of it as she was, I did fall in love with the song Moon River. While we are probably all familiar with the iconic recording of it that Audrey Hepburn sang, you might not be familiar with a much more recent arrangement of it by Jacob Collier. This has been go to listening to me, particularly through the pandemic.
Before I get into that, let’s lay down some foundation on the background of the song. Written by Henry Mancini, it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, as well as the 1962 Grammy for Song of the Year. As seems somewhat regular with great songs, there were suggestions that the song wasn’t good enough, or didn’t fit in the movie. A Paramount Pictures executive suggested removing it after a poor Los Angeles preview. Hepburn was extremely insistent that it would remain, and it’s a good thing she was!
Jacob Collier’s version of Moon River, is quite a different take on the piece then Mancini’s original version. First, it is nearly entirely acapella, meaning that there is nearly no instrumental accompaniment. Second, it’s quite a bit longer than the original, clocking in at almost 9 minutes. Finally, it uses much more adventurous musical techniques and is on a much more ambitious scale than the original. It’s similarities are rather few. Beyond the same lyrics and melody, Collier’s version has also won a Grammy. Aside from that, it really is quite a distinctly different feel to the original.
The introduction to the piece lasts an entire minute and a half! There are 144 brief cameos from other singers before the song proper even begins. Collier had sent out a request to friends to sing the word ‘moon’ on a single note. He took those 144 notes, and layered them on top of each other to create a feeling of peace. To me it sounds like a placid body of water, shimmering from lights from a night sky. It is completely out of time as the harmonies morph, nearly imperceptibly, to set up the first iteration of the melody.
The first verse begins with simplicity. All voices humming, the melody at the top, and a chorus underneath supporting it. Every now and again, we’ll have a complex chord underneath, or a unique harmonic move. This verse alone, even with it’s more bare bones approach compared to what’s coming, has so many delightful harmonies in it. In many ways, the harmonies don’t function in a similar way to anything else that I have heard. This is quite purposeful from Collier. His approach to harmony is melody driven instead of chordal. So the harmonies we hear in each moment are created not by Collier choosing an individual chord to occur, but by stringing together many different melodies together. In music we often have a contrast going on between the sound in the moment (the vertical sound), and the sound as it evolves (the horizontal sound). Collier’s focus is very heavy on the horizontal sound.
At the 2:45 mark, Collier begins to use rhythm. The end of the verse begins to build momentum, leading us into our first real build in the music. Finally bringing us to the lyrics in the piece. Here we have a much brighter sound, with almost a Gospel style accompaniment. Collier has lots of riffs and virtuosic responses to the melody. The melody itself is presented very close to its original Mancini form. There are tons of fascinating moments in this verse, using some incredibly inventive accompaniment techniques. It would probably not be terribly interesting to get into the minutiae, but I would just draw your attention to how natural Collier makes the harmonies seem, even if they truly are original and different from anything that I have heard.
Again we have a build at the end of the verse to bring us into the next. Here are the moments that truly blow my mind when I listen to this. Up to this point, Collier has moved through a handful of different keys, but has had Bb Major as the home key. At 5:42, he begins a modulation that any other person would end in Eb(or D#) Major. However, using some incredible tuning tricks, he lands us in D Half sharp major. This key does not exist on the piano. I am one of the lucky individuals who possess a skill called perfect pitch. When my ears get to this section, it’s like the music is in a whole different world than any I have been in. Of course through the verse there is still tons of fascinating music happening on top of it, but I can’t help but just focus on the key that he is in.
Collier still has one incredible trick up his sleeve that absolutely astonished me the first time I listened to it. He begins another keychange, but I have never thought a keychange like this could work. At the 7:55 mark, he begins gradually raising the tuning. The pitch keeps transforming upward. For 30 seconds, the pitch just slowly rises, as if someone was just twisting a dial. This sets up the last chord, in the key of A half sharp, again a key that doesn’t actually exist on the piano.
Throughout all of this, Collier uses harmony and melody in a way I have never heard before. I have probably listened to this song dozens of times, but it never gets old as everytime I hear it, I am simply astounded. I hope you get similar enjoyment of this classic song, transformed by Jacob Collier!
-John