How Do You Keep the Music Playing
In previous posts, I introduced you to Michael Feinstein. I wrote: "With his ernest voice and his considerable talent, Feinstein dedicated his career to finding lost songs; he sings them, and by doing so, he brings them forward to a new generation: he gives them new life." My plan is to help Feinstein bring his songs forward by bringing them to you.
Today, I listened to the song "How Do You Keep the Music Playing," with music by the French composer Michael Legrand and lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman. It was the theme song for the 1982 movie Best Friends, starring Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn. Michael Legrand, born in 1932, has composed over 200 film and television scores, and he has won three Oscars and five Grammys. Alan and Marilyn Bergman, the lyricists (born in 1925 and 1929), have been married since 1958, and they have worked their lives together writing songs and winning numerous awards and academic degrees.
The opening words of this song make it particularly appropriate for this blog:
How do you keep the music playing?
How do you make it last?
How do you keep the song from fading too fast?
Here is a link to Michael Feinstein singing "How Do You Keep the Music Playing," from his 2000 album Romance on Film, Romance on Broadway. Marian McPartland (1918 - 2013), the great jazz pianist, accompanies Feinstein on the piano:
Micheal Feinstein sings "How Do You Keep the Music Playing"
I created "All the Feet of the Hours," the image above, in 2006. It is based on Mandelbrot fractals. The title is from "Hymn to Proserpine (After the Proclamation in Rome of the Christian Faith)," by the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837 - 1909):
All the feet of the hours that sound as a single lyre,
Dropped and deep in the flowers, with strings that flicker like fire.
More than these wilt thou give, things fairer than all these things?
Nay, for a little we live, and life hath mutable wings.
A little while and we die; shall life not thrive as it may?
For no man under the sky lives twice, outliving his day.
And grief is a grievous thing, and a man hath enough of his tears.
