The Art of Song

Mark Steyn, one of the Designated Hitters here at the Park, knocked another homerun this morning with his Song of the Week. I'll let you read it at your leisure, but I loved what he wrote about the "art of song":

Sooner or later someone staples words to just about every popular jazz instrumental. But, from Duke Ellington's "Take The A Train" to Bill Evans' "Waltz For Debby", they somehow never quite convince you they're anything other than instrumental pieces to which a lyric has been appended. They fail the test of that marvelous Encyclopedia Britannica definition that Ira Gershwin liked to quote:

SONG is the joint art of words and music, two arts under emotional pressure coalescing into a third.

With lyricized instrumentals, they rarely "coalesce" in the way that, say, "Ol' Man River" or "Over The Rainbow" do. It's like putting words to Beethoven's Fifth: You can do it but the lyric winds up riding the tune like a jockey, rather than achieving, as the Britannica puts it, the status of a third, joint art.