Music 101 in the Wee Small Hours

Thank you, Maclin Horton and Tertium Quid, for your excellent suggestions for approaching Music Appreciation (Music 101). I decided to lay aside our textbook yesterday and try to get my students to discuss what music is and what it does. I had brought in some of my own CDs to play for them: an Alan Lomax recording from 1952 of an improvised flamenco song, performed by two impoverished olive workers in Andalusia in a late-night tavern session, the only accompaniment their hands slapping the table in a complex polyrythm (Lomax notes that no one in the town could afford to purchase a guitar); a stirring Yiddish ballad from the turn of the twentieth century by the sweatshop worker/poet Morris Rosenfeld, called “The Exiles’ March”; and the song “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning,” from the legendary album of the same name by Frank Sinatra. What I was trying to suggest to my class was the notion that music’s job, in essence, is to convey to the listener emotional meaning whose impact is immediate, and that yet almost all music does so by using forms and formulas -- that music is art and not life, and that its imitation of life is based on certain formal structures. Even the passionate fandango improvised in the tavern in southern Spain used certain standard folk poetic verse forms and flamenco singing devices. I was gratified that my students really liked the Spanish number, and that the Yiddish song, which would seem to have a narrow appeal, touched them deeply, especially the black students who make up the majority of the class, some of whom compared it to African-American slave songs. I was disappointed, however, that the great, great Sinatra song seemed at first to offer them no way into its special world. To me the song is perfection itself. The slickness of the production and the lushness of the Nelson Riddle orchestra notwithstanding, the economy of the tune, the tragic irony of the lyrics (with their terse and brilliant use of the second person), and the subtlety of Sinatra’s singing make this number far more heartbreaking – in other words, far more effective – than it would seem to be.

In the wee small hours of the morning,
While the whole wide world is fast asleep,
You lie awake and think about the girl
And never ever think of counting sheep.

When your lonely heart has learned its lesson --
You’d be hers if only she would call --
In the wee small hours of the morning,
That’s the time you miss her most of all.

I suppose that the Sinatra/Riddle aesthetic is far removed from what we listen to today, and young people only encounter it when it’s offered with postmodern self-consciousness, so it's not suprising that the class didn't immediately grasp the art of “In the Wee Small Hours.” But I played it a second time, asking my students to listen actively and try to determine what Sinatra did that made the song work. Finally one young man offered this analysis: Sinatra, he ventured, started each phrase with a crescendo, and ended each phrase with a descrescendo, which suggested initial hope emptying out into resignation. I was impressed and delighted. Those of you who know the song, isn’t that exactly what he does? Those of you who don’t know it, you're missing one of the great works of art of the twentieth century. find it on iTunes – you’ll love it.