We usually wrap up our week with an up-tempo rock or dance tune, but this week we’ll continue to look back at the singular career of legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach, whose work has been a frequent feature on MotD. Bacharach’s work not only featured a broad harmonic vocabulary — including plenty of modulations. It generally stepped lightly through complex harmonic and meter transitions which only fully came to light after several listening sessions, rarely “telegraphing” themselves in advance. Bacharach generally avoided cliché half-step or whole-step key changes; rather, he favored transitions between closely-related keys, which don’t hit the listener like a brick upside the head, but a bit more like the sun gradually peeking through the clouds. He hid all the seams and made the final result sound effortless.
Bacharach studied composition with composer Darius Milhaud, one of the members of the informal but influential guild of progressive French composers, “Les Six.” Key changes and meter changes were not special effects for Bacharach, but rather organic tools for expression. Composer/pianist Ethan Iverson reports that Milhaud “told Bacharach that he shouldn’t worry about dodecaphony and keep composing those nice melodies.”
Iverson continues: “In his 60s songs, Bacharach undoes conventional pop from deep underneath the surface. ‘Hooks’ are almost always a bit asymmetrical, but Burt’s are truly lopsided. In the background of his radio-friendly hits, there is an echo of bebop logic, an echo of Schoenbergian logic.” Lyricist Hal David, Iverson suggests, “searched a surreal and overcast meadow for unexpected rhyme and reason.” Iverson continues by saying that jazz musician Dave Frishberg, when learning to write memorable themes, studied “the ‘4 Bs’: The Beach Boys, the Beatles, Brazilian, and Bacharach. (‘Brazilian’ means Jobim, Gilberto, Mendes, etc.)”
“The Look of Love,” originally released by Dusty Springfield in 1967, was covered by jazz vocalist/pianist Diana Krall for a 2012 performance at the White House as part of the In Performance at the White House | Burt Bacharach + Hal David: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song PBS broadcast in May 2012. While Bacharach was present for the performance, Krall’s emotional mention of David hints at the ill health of the lyricist, who lived only a few more months. Krall’s version of the #22 US pop hit, which features plenty of “Burt-isms” in her piano work, is in Bb major overall, but shifts to Bb minor from 3:59 – 4:10. The modulation is situated in the heart of an outro that seems lit only by hushed twilight (3:59 onward), during which Krall communes with her bassist as the two negotiate the subtle ritardando that brings the tune in for a landing. The final Bb major tonic chord rings out at 4:10, complicated by the quintessentially Bachrachian #11 tension Krall repeats several times.
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