As I mentioned in last week’s post that featured the composer’s signature song, Night and Day, Cole Porter was far from an overnight success. When I began to do some research for today’s selection, I discovered that one of the composer’s steps to songwriting success came two years earlier with the Broadway show Wake Up and Dream which included What Is This Thing Called Love?
In his book, Now Discover Your Strengths, author Marcus Buckingham cites Cole Porter as one of his excellent examples. He uses the composer to illustrate how a well-known person took advantage of his strengths rather than focused on his weaknesses. He stated that Cole Porter focused on composing great songs. Because these were so strong, the composer was able to compensate for his somewhat weak characters and plots that made up his Broadway shows.
As I’ve mentioned many times, I learn a great deal from my students. Knowing that one of my Hudson adult students is a director, actress, teacher and vocalist, I asked her if Marcus Buckingham’s assessment of Cole Porter’s song writing strength verses his show writing weakness had any validity to it. After thinking about it for a moment, she confirmed the author’s assessment.
Knowing this about Cole Porter’s songs, we can see how What Is This Thing Called Love? played a big part in the composer’s success. He returned from Paris and reintroduced his music to Broadway in 1928. Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love), You Do Something To Me, What Is This Thing Called Love? and Love For Sale are the four songs that preceded popularity of the composer’s 1932 signature song, Night and Day. ”Not too shabby”, as they say. All five of these songs are still played, recorded and enjoyed today.
In the process of teaching my students how to play songs from the American Popular Songbook, I have often shared a particular observation with them. Most of these standards share several similarities: they are 32 measures long, they use only a few specific structures and they employ the wonderfully rich ii-V-I chord progressions for their harmonic language. There is one more factor which unifies this material. The composers worked with a variety of lyricists throughout their careers.
Like Irving Berlin before him, Cole Porter wrote both the music and lyrics for his songs. I make it a point of identifying this fact to a student as he begins to work on one of this composer’s pieces. The reason for this is that the length, structures and even some of the chord progressions often differ to some degree from those of his contemporaries. For example, Beguine the Beguine has 108 measures and I’ve Got You Under My Skin has 56 measures.
Although What Is This Thing Called Love? is 32 measures long and follows the customary A-A-B-A (verse-verse-bridge-verse) form, the composer challenges the piano student to accept the fact that this song is in the key of C Major (no sharps and no flats). Beginning with the first note of the song, the melody surprises you with a B flat, soon followed by an A flat and later by an E flat. Even though all three verses resolve to the tonic (home) key of C Major, Cole Porter’s mastery was already manifesting itself less than two years after his return to Broadway.
As I’ve mentioned many times, I listen to many versions of the featured song as part of my preparation for each blog post. Despite the fact I enjoyed the many jazz versions of What Is This Thing Called Love? I was surprised by the fact that only a couple of the performances took advantage of this standard’s possibilities when played with a Latin rhythm.
I hope you will enjoy my beguine rhythm recording of What Is This Thing Called Love? I’ll return to the music of Cole Porter after the holidays. So if you have any particular favorites by this wonderful composer, please leave the song titles in the comment box below this post. In the meantime, I’ll finish out the month of November with three more beguine blog posts. But this time, the selections will come from the works of Kurt Weill, Johnny Mercer and Rodgers & Hart.
As you probably know by now, whether I am writing a blog post, recording a standard or creating a music theory lesson for my website Music Theory pages, I want to help you understand how music works so you can enjoy it even more.
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