The Sound Of Music

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My cover of the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, The Sound of Music, the title song from the musical of the same name. I'm singing to a karaoke orchestral version of the song, based on Julie Andrews' version in the 1965 movie, The Sound of Music.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

The hills are alive
with the sound of music.
With songs they have sung
for a thousand years.
The hills fill my heart
with the sound of music.
My heart wants to sing
every song it hears.

My heart wants to beat like
the wings of the birds that rise
from the lake to the trees.
My heart wants to sigh like
a chime that flies
from a church on a breeze.
To laugh like a brook
when it trips and falls
over stones on its way
To sing through the night
like a robin still feeling the day.

I go to the hills
when my heart is lonely.
I know I will hear
what I've heard before.
My heart will be blessed
with the sound of music.
And I'll sing once more.

ABOUT THE SONG

While there are many familiar Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals one could draw from (South Pacific, Oklahoma, The King and I, Carousel, State Fair, etc.), I chose The Sound of Music because it was their final musical, and in many ways was the culmination of their work. It is so familiar to us all that we seldom reflect upon the quality of the music. So let me take a moment to do just that.

Many of the songs are deceptively simple — like Do-Re-Mi, an ear worm that will never leave you once you hear it. So many of the songs directly and unabashedly touch the heart. And none more so than the title song.

Since I was a kid, I have loved the (simple but unforgettable) orchestral arrangement accompanying that title song (I'm referring to the movie version of the song, not the original Broadway musical arrangement sung by Mary Martin, which was simpler and quieter): the incredible orchestral swell accompanying those opening words, "The hills are alive with the sound of music"; the falling flute lines conjuring the brook as it "trips and falls"; the gorgeous bass plucks accompanying "I go to the hills when my heart is lonely"; the closing four notes on the flute that bring the song full circle as they repeat the opening notes of the song; and the karaoke version adds the soft zings and shimmery sounds of the wind chimes, giving the arrangement a magical quality. In a sense, this song has all the qualities of opera, but is far more accessible to most people.

It would be audacious to give nearly any other song the grand, sweeping title, "the sound of music". But this song actually lives up to that title — in its beauty, its simplicity, its accessibility, and its ability to move the heart (obviously the intention of the songwriters, as the lyrics mention "my heart" six times!). And all in just two minutes!

And so, just as it was the perfect opening to the musical, The Sound Of Music is also the perfect opening to my collection of beautiful songs which, in some sense, I have chosen as my personal representatives of "the sound of music".

LYRICS

On larks praying. . . While most people simply enjoy this song, some music critics have ripped it for the way it anthropomorphizes nature: hills that sing, brooks that laugh, etc. I'm fine with those! But, as a songwriter myself, the one line (and anthropomorphization) I had to think twice about (before committing to sing it) is the line more lampooned by the music critics than any other: "To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray". And perhaps there is no more renowned critic of that line than Stephen Sondheim (whose own mentor was Oscar Hammerstein) who had this to say: "How can you tell a lark that is just learning to pray from one who's actually praying? Wait a minute — a lark praying? What are we talking about?"

Frankly, I believe most non-humans are contemplatives that do a lot more "praying" (or perhaps more accurately, "meditating") than most of us human beings. But I wouldn't associate "singing through the night" with such contemplation. Birds sing at night for other reasons. Apart from birds who are inherently nocturnal, the daylight birds that sing into the night do so based on the cycles of day and night, light and dark. Light triggers their singing, and many will keep singing late into the night so long as there is even the dimmest amount of light still present. Then of course the reverse happens in the early morning hours — song begins again in the dim light of pre-dawn.

So a Sondheimian approach to the lyric (which requires lyrics to be grounded in reality, rather than be poetic flights of fancy) might prefer a line like the one I have chosen to sing: "To sing through the night like a robin still feeling the day." "Still feeling the day" meaning there is still a glimmer of light, enough to trigger bird song. The "night/day" word contrast is nice from a poetic standpoint. And it turns out that larks are not one of those birds that sing at night; but robins are notorious for "singing through the night", hence "robin" instead of "lark".