Crooning.

Abstract

<italic>Crooning</italic> is a love song without words. Its inspiration is the golden age of American popular song brought to life and (re)interpreted by performers Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Joe Williams, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and of course, the chairman of the board Frank Sinatra. The art and craft of great arrangers such as Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Manny Albam, Gil Evans, Michel Legrand, Henry Mancini, and Nelson Riddle also inspired the composition of <italic> Crooning.</italic> Using their skill and imagination to transform and animate existing material enough that it often results in newly conceived works, arrangers are among the unsung heroes of popular music. <italic>Crooning</italic> is not an arrangement of any preexisting piece, but a composition whose material is drawn from that of American popular song in general, including such common-practice elements as the descending-fifth harmonic sequence. These ideas are developed through the juxtaposition of techniques from Western concert music and popular/jazz arranging. The work seeks to uncover the similarities of the two musical worlds. Structurally, <italic>Crooning</italic> works as a set of free variations in which basic melodic and harmonic materials generated by three five-note cells and the cycle of fifths harmonic sequence are transformed and developed. Dramatically, <italic>Crooning</italic> works backwards: melodic information first appears at its most abstract and is heard in its most songlike state at the end of the work. Form and affect are governed by a suspiciously autobiographical plot involving a dissonant and quirky character's transformation into a hopeless romantic. This one-movement, nine-minute work for small orchestra is scored for woodwinds in pairs, horns in pairs, and strings. <italic>Crooning</italic> was commissioned and premiered by the Albany Symphony Orchestra, with conductor David Alan Miller.