Texts

VARIATIONS ON A SONG

On the creation of “Variations on a Song”
by Oscar Levant (music) and Edward Heyman (lyrics)
(“Blame it on my Youth”)
for keyboard

The prehistory

The self-imposed isolation during the 2020 - 2022 coronavirus pandemic shutdown was also a phase of creativity, albeit a forced one. This included intensive engagement with the musical offerings on the YouTube channel.

After I had finished my musical mourning work for the death of my wife with my “3 pieces for piano”, I returned to the YouTube channel almost daily. I came across a rehearsal video of the very young Spanish-Catalan singer and trombonist from Barcelona, Rita Payés, who, accompanied by Davis Whitfield on the piano, sang a song by Oscar Levant and improvised on the trombone: “Blame it on my Youth”.

As a trombonist, the first thing I wanted to do was find out more about Rita and gradually got to know and appreciate the musical environment in which the young lady moved. At the municipal music school in the Sant Andreu district of Barcelona, under the direction of the spirited Joan Chamorro, there was a jazz band in classical big band formation made up of music students of unusual quality. They were young people between the ages of 8 and 18 who sang and/or improvised on their instruments with stylistic and intonational confidence. They mainly used titles from the swing to hard bop era, songs from the “Great American Songbook” and Latin American music.

This included the song “Blame it on my Youth”, composed in 1934 by the Schönberg student, concert pianist and actor Oscar Levant and written by the musical librettist Edward Heyman.

The song

It was mainly the lyrics that appealed to me. I liked the succinctly formulated poetic power that describes the state of mind of a loving young person looking back.

The review consists of a list of misjudgements of love based on illusions. The realization that reality is something completely different is a process of waking up that involves tears. Something is added here that is only mentioned once in the lyrics, although it plays a decisive role in all misjudgements like a helmsman of our feelings: our heart. However, it would be unfair to accuse this heart of the error of love. With the plea “Don't blame it on my heart, blame it on my youth.” the lyrics end.

Oscar Levant's music is appealingly simple, but too long to be used as a model for variations in the classical sense. It is ideal as a template for jazz improvisations, as examples of guitarist Martin Taylor accompanying Jamie Cullum, double bassist Gary Peacock in pianist Keith Jarret's trio, but above all trumpeter Art Farmer and pianist Brad Meldau show.

The text shapes my musical arrangement. The variations are not classical, in which the musical model is subjected to all kinds of changes. Rather, they are musical interpretations of the textual content, as we are familiar with from a character piece. That is why each variation has the opening line of the text as its motto.

An example: The motto of the first variation contains the text “If I expected love when first we kissed”. The following music is based on the jazz waltz and is a dance-like, rapturously exuberant piece.

Another example: the motto of the fourth variation contains “If you were on my mind all night and day” and is musically based on the chaconne form, i.e. the form in which a bass figure returns again and again like a nagging thought that you can't get rid of.

In addition to the multitude of inventions, there is another musical motif that appears in various guises at the end of each variation and persistently reminds us of what I would call the “heart motif”. From variation to variation, it pushes its way to the foreground, finally becoming the introduction to the original by Oscar Levant that is heard at the end.

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