A Question of Standards
"My Funny Valentine" and Musical Intertextuality
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v1i1.83Keywords:
Intertextuality, Musical TheatreAbstract
Umberto Eco’s understanding of postmodernism as the “ironic rethinking” of the past is one that insists – by definition – on a contextualist reading of cultural texts. In this sense, then, an understanding of the dialogical mutuality of texts and contexts – “postmodern” or otherwise – is inherent in Eco’s formulation, suggesting that any analysis of intertextuality must engage with issues not only of textuality but also of social and cultural history. In this paper, drawing on Eco’s insightful model, I propose an expanded understanding of musical intertextuality that moves beyond issues of appropriation and quotation, to examine not only the interrelationship of cultural texts but also the interaction of those texts with their socio-historical contexts: aspects of intertextuality which textually biased approaches inevitably fail to address. My analysis focuses on recordings of the popular standard “My Funny Valentine” by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Miles Davis, addressing a range of both textual and contextual issues, and tracing the song back to its Broadway origins in Babes in Arms, the 1937 stage musical by the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. The analytical method is one that allows a broadly eclectic theoretical approach to the complexities of contemporary music and its canons, denying narrow interpretations of musical meaning and cultural value, and offering instead a suggestively intertextual reading of musical forms and practices. I argue that intertextuality needs to be understood as a fundamentally historical phenomenon, in which questions of meaning and value remain constantly in flux – revisited, reinterpreted, and reassessed as an understanding of the complex interrelationship of texts and contexts is broadened and deepened.
References
Baxandall, Michael. 1988. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bordman, Gerald. 1978. American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Born, Georgina. 1995. Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh, eds. 2000. Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Breon, Robin. 1995. “Show Boat: The Revival, the Racism.” The Drama Review 39/2: 86–105.
Brofsky, Howard. 1983. “Miles Davis and ‘My Funny Valentine’: The Evolution of a Song.” In Bill Kirchner, ed. (1997) A Miles Davis Reader, 140–63. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Brown, Lee B. 1999. “Postmodernist Jazz Theory: Afrocentrism, Old and New.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57/2: 235–46.
Burkholder, J. Peter. 1995. All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Carr, Ian. 1982. Miles Davis: A Critical Biography. London: Quartet Books.
Chapin, Theodore S. 1990. “Babes in Arms: … Conceal Thy Good Intent?” Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms (CD booklet notes), 13–18. New World Records NW3862.
—1999. “Babes in Arms, Circa 1999.” Babes in Arms (1999 New York Cast Recording) (CD booklet notes). DRG Records 94769.
Crawford, Richard. 1979. “Gershwin’s Reputation: A Note on Porgy and Bess.” The Musical Quarterly 65/2: 257–64.
Davis, Miles, and Quincy Troupe. 1990. Miles: The Autobiography. New York: Touchstone.
Deffaa, Chip. 1992. The Complete Concert 1964: My Funny Valentine + Four & More (CD booklet notes), 4–7. Columbia 65358.
Drury, Stephen. 1994. “A View From the Piano Bench, or, Playing John Zorn’s Carny for Fun and Pro?t.” Perspectives of New Music 32/1: 194–201.
Duberman, Martin Bauml. 1988. Paul Robeson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Dupuis, Robert. 1993. Bunny Berigan: Elusive Legend of Jazz. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
Eagleton, Terry. 1985. “Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism.” New Left Review 152: 60–73.
Eco, Umberto. 1985a. “Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable.” In Umberto Eco, Re?ections on The Name of the Rose, 65–72. London: Secker & Warburg.
—1985b. “Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics.” Daedalus 114/4: 161–84.
Feld, Steven. 1994. “Communication, Music, and Speech About Music.” In Charles Keil and Steven Feld, Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 77–95. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Friedwald, Will. 1995. Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer’s Art. New York: Scribner’s.
Frith, Simon. 1996. “The Sociological Response.” In Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, 21–46. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Giddens, Gary. 1985. Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation in the ‘80s. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hart, Dorothy, and Robert Kimball, eds. 1995. The Complete Lyrics of Lorenz Hart, expanded ed. New York: Da Capo.
Hartley, John. 1987. “Invisible Fictions: Television Audiences, Paedocracy, Pleasure.” Textual Practice 1/2: 121–38.
Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hill, Constance Valis. 2000. Brotherhood in Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horn, David. 1994. “From Cat?sh Row to Granby Street: Contesting Meaning in Porgy and Bess.” Popular Music 13/2: 165–74.
—1996. “Who Loves You Porgy?: The Debates Surrounding Gershwin’s Musical.” In Robert Lawson Peebles, ed. Approaches to the American Musical, 109–26. Exeter, Devon: University of Exeter Press.
Hutcheon, Linda. 1994. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London: Routledge.
Hyland, William G. 1995. The Song Is Ended: Songwriters and American Music, 1900–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jameson, Fredric. 1983. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” In Hal Foster, ed., The Anti Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, 111–25. Seattle, WA: Bay Press.
—1991. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kramer, Lawrence. 1992. “The Musicology of the Future.” repercussions 1/1: 5–18.
—1993. “Music Criticism and the Postmodernist Turn: In Contrary Motion with Gary Tomlinson.” Current Musicology 53: 25–35.
—1995. Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Krasker, Tommy. 1990. “Babes in Arms: History and Synopsis.” Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms (CD booklet notes), 9–13. New World Records NW3862.
Kreuger, Miles. 1977. Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—1988. “Some Words About ‘Show Boat.’ ” Show Boat (CD booklet notes), 13–24. EMI Records 7491082.
Lochhead, Judy, and Joseph Auner, eds. 2002. Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought. London: Routledge.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
McClary, Susan. 1993. “Reshaping a Discipline: Musicology and Feminism in the 1990s.” Feminist Studies 19/2: 399–423.
Mordden, Ethan. 1999. Beautiful Mornin’: The Broadway Musical in the 1940s. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Most, Andrea. 2004a. Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
—2004b. “Babes in Arms: The Politics of Theatricality during the Great Depression.” In Most 2004a: 66–100.
—2004c. “‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’: The Politics of Race in South Paci?c.” In Most 2004a: 153–82. Nolan, Frederick. 1994. Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paynter, John, ed. 1992. Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought. 2 vols. London: Routledge.
Petkov, Steven. 1995. “Ol’ Blue Eyes and the Golden Age of the American Song: The Capitol Years.” In Steven Petkov and Leonard Mustazza, eds., The Frank Sinatra Reader, 74–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rodgers, Richard. 1975. Musical Stages: An Autobiography. New York: Random House.
Shepherd, John, and Peter Wicke. 1997. Music and Cultural Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Shusterman, Richard. 1992. “The Fine Art of Rap.” In Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, 201–35. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stanbridge, Alan. 1998. “Railing At Canons: Feminism, Musicology, and Interdisciplinarity.” In Stefan Fragner, Jan Hemming, Beate Kutschke, eds., Gender Studies & Musik: Geschlechterrollen und ihre Bedeutung für die Musikwissenschaft, 204–21. Regensburg: ConBrio.
—2003. “Postmodernism.” In John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver and Peter Wicke, eds., The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Vol. 1: Media, Industry and Society, 106–11. London: Continuum.
—2004. “Of Sunshine and Happy Endings: Jazz, Parody, and the Limits of Interpretation.” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 1/1 (2004): 1–14. http: // www.criticalimprov.com/ojs/index.php.
Starr, Lawrence. 1984. “Towards a Reevaluation of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.” American Music 2/2: 25–37.
Szwed, John. 2002. So What: The Life of Miles Davis. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Tator, Carol, Francis Henry, and Winston Mattis. 1998. “Show Boat.” In Carol Tator, Francis Henry, and Winston Mattis, Challenging Racism in the Arts: Case Studies of Controversy and Con?ict, 159–213. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Tick, Judith. 1993. “Charles Ives and Gender Ideology.” In Ruth A. Solie, ed., Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, 83–106. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Tomlinson, Gary. 1984. “The Web of Culture: A Context for Musicology.” 19th-Century Music 7/3: 350–62.
—1992. “Cultural Dialogics and Jazz: A White Historian Signi?es.” In Katherine Bergeron and V. Philip Bohlman, eds., Disciplining Music: Musicology and Its Canons, 64–94. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
—1993a. “Musical Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies: A Response to Lawrence Kramer.” Current Musicology 53: 18–24.
—1993b. “Gary Tomlinson Responds.” Current Musicology 53: 36–40.
Walser, Robert. 1995. “‘Out of Notes’: Signi?cation, Interpretation, and the Problem of Miles Davis.” In Krin Gabbard, ed., Jazz Among the Discourses, 165–88. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Welding, Pete. 1987. Songs For Young Lovers & Swing Easy: Frank Sinatra (CD booklet notes), 2– 4. Capitol 48470.
Williams, Raymond. 1961. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus.
Wright, Gordon. 1937. “Discussions: White Swing.” Metronome 53/5 (May 1937): 29.
Bordman, Gerald. 1978. American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Born, Georgina. 1995. Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Born, Georgina, and David Hesmondhalgh, eds. 2000. Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Breon, Robin. 1995. “Show Boat: The Revival, the Racism.” The Drama Review 39/2: 86–105.
Brofsky, Howard. 1983. “Miles Davis and ‘My Funny Valentine’: The Evolution of a Song.” In Bill Kirchner, ed. (1997) A Miles Davis Reader, 140–63. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Brown, Lee B. 1999. “Postmodernist Jazz Theory: Afrocentrism, Old and New.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 57/2: 235–46.
Burkholder, J. Peter. 1995. All Made of Tunes: Charles Ives and the Uses of Musical Borrowing. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Carr, Ian. 1982. Miles Davis: A Critical Biography. London: Quartet Books.
Chapin, Theodore S. 1990. “Babes in Arms: … Conceal Thy Good Intent?” Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms (CD booklet notes), 13–18. New World Records NW3862.
—1999. “Babes in Arms, Circa 1999.” Babes in Arms (1999 New York Cast Recording) (CD booklet notes). DRG Records 94769.
Crawford, Richard. 1979. “Gershwin’s Reputation: A Note on Porgy and Bess.” The Musical Quarterly 65/2: 257–64.
Davis, Miles, and Quincy Troupe. 1990. Miles: The Autobiography. New York: Touchstone.
Deffaa, Chip. 1992. The Complete Concert 1964: My Funny Valentine + Four & More (CD booklet notes), 4–7. Columbia 65358.
Drury, Stephen. 1994. “A View From the Piano Bench, or, Playing John Zorn’s Carny for Fun and Pro?t.” Perspectives of New Music 32/1: 194–201.
Duberman, Martin Bauml. 1988. Paul Robeson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Dupuis, Robert. 1993. Bunny Berigan: Elusive Legend of Jazz. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
Eagleton, Terry. 1985. “Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism.” New Left Review 152: 60–73.
Eco, Umberto. 1985a. “Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable.” In Umberto Eco, Re?ections on The Name of the Rose, 65–72. London: Secker & Warburg.
—1985b. “Innovation and Repetition: Between Modern and Post-Modern Aesthetics.” Daedalus 114/4: 161–84.
Feld, Steven. 1994. “Communication, Music, and Speech About Music.” In Charles Keil and Steven Feld, Music Grooves: Essays and Dialogues, 77–95. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Friedwald, Will. 1995. Sinatra! The Song Is You: A Singer’s Art. New York: Scribner’s.
Frith, Simon. 1996. “The Sociological Response.” In Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, 21–46. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Giddens, Gary. 1985. Rhythm-a-ning: Jazz Tradition and Innovation in the ‘80s. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hart, Dorothy, and Robert Kimball, eds. 1995. The Complete Lyrics of Lorenz Hart, expanded ed. New York: Da Capo.
Hartley, John. 1987. “Invisible Fictions: Television Audiences, Paedocracy, Pleasure.” Textual Practice 1/2: 121–38.
Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hill, Constance Valis. 2000. Brotherhood in Rhythm: The Jazz Tap Dancing of the Nicholas Brothers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horn, David. 1994. “From Cat?sh Row to Granby Street: Contesting Meaning in Porgy and Bess.” Popular Music 13/2: 165–74.
—1996. “Who Loves You Porgy?: The Debates Surrounding Gershwin’s Musical.” In Robert Lawson Peebles, ed. Approaches to the American Musical, 109–26. Exeter, Devon: University of Exeter Press.
Hutcheon, Linda. 1994. Irony’s Edge: The Theory and Politics of Irony. London: Routledge.
Hyland, William G. 1995. The Song Is Ended: Songwriters and American Music, 1900–1950. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jameson, Fredric. 1983. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” In Hal Foster, ed., The Anti Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, 111–25. Seattle, WA: Bay Press.
—1991. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Kramer, Lawrence. 1992. “The Musicology of the Future.” repercussions 1/1: 5–18.
—1993. “Music Criticism and the Postmodernist Turn: In Contrary Motion with Gary Tomlinson.” Current Musicology 53: 25–35.
—1995. Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Krasker, Tommy. 1990. “Babes in Arms: History and Synopsis.” Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms (CD booklet notes), 9–13. New World Records NW3862.
Kreuger, Miles. 1977. Show Boat: The Story of a Classic American Musical. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
—1988. “Some Words About ‘Show Boat.’ ” Show Boat (CD booklet notes), 13–24. EMI Records 7491082.
Lochhead, Judy, and Joseph Auner, eds. 2002. Postmodern Music/Postmodern Thought. London: Routledge.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
McClary, Susan. 1993. “Reshaping a Discipline: Musicology and Feminism in the 1990s.” Feminist Studies 19/2: 399–423.
Mordden, Ethan. 1999. Beautiful Mornin’: The Broadway Musical in the 1940s. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Most, Andrea. 2004a. Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
—2004b. “Babes in Arms: The Politics of Theatricality during the Great Depression.” In Most 2004a: 66–100.
—2004c. “‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’: The Politics of Race in South Paci?c.” In Most 2004a: 153–82. Nolan, Frederick. 1994. Lorenz Hart: A Poet on Broadway. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paynter, John, ed. 1992. Companion to Contemporary Musical Thought. 2 vols. London: Routledge.
Petkov, Steven. 1995. “Ol’ Blue Eyes and the Golden Age of the American Song: The Capitol Years.” In Steven Petkov and Leonard Mustazza, eds., The Frank Sinatra Reader, 74–84. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rodgers, Richard. 1975. Musical Stages: An Autobiography. New York: Random House.
Shepherd, John, and Peter Wicke. 1997. Music and Cultural Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Shusterman, Richard. 1992. “The Fine Art of Rap.” In Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art, 201–35. Oxford: Blackwell.
Stanbridge, Alan. 1998. “Railing At Canons: Feminism, Musicology, and Interdisciplinarity.” In Stefan Fragner, Jan Hemming, Beate Kutschke, eds., Gender Studies & Musik: Geschlechterrollen und ihre Bedeutung für die Musikwissenschaft, 204–21. Regensburg: ConBrio.
—2003. “Postmodernism.” In John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver and Peter Wicke, eds., The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Vol. 1: Media, Industry and Society, 106–11. London: Continuum.
—2004. “Of Sunshine and Happy Endings: Jazz, Parody, and the Limits of Interpretation.” Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 1/1 (2004): 1–14. http: // www.criticalimprov.com/ojs/index.php.
Starr, Lawrence. 1984. “Towards a Reevaluation of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.” American Music 2/2: 25–37.
Szwed, John. 2002. So What: The Life of Miles Davis. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Tator, Carol, Francis Henry, and Winston Mattis. 1998. “Show Boat.” In Carol Tator, Francis Henry, and Winston Mattis, Challenging Racism in the Arts: Case Studies of Controversy and Con?ict, 159–213. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Tick, Judith. 1993. “Charles Ives and Gender Ideology.” In Ruth A. Solie, ed., Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship, 83–106. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Tomlinson, Gary. 1984. “The Web of Culture: A Context for Musicology.” 19th-Century Music 7/3: 350–62.
—1992. “Cultural Dialogics and Jazz: A White Historian Signi?es.” In Katherine Bergeron and V. Philip Bohlman, eds., Disciplining Music: Musicology and Its Canons, 64–94. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
—1993a. “Musical Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies: A Response to Lawrence Kramer.” Current Musicology 53: 18–24.
—1993b. “Gary Tomlinson Responds.” Current Musicology 53: 36–40.
Walser, Robert. 1995. “‘Out of Notes’: Signi?cation, Interpretation, and the Problem of Miles Davis.” In Krin Gabbard, ed., Jazz Among the Discourses, 165–88. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Welding, Pete. 1987. Songs For Young Lovers & Swing Easy: Frank Sinatra (CD booklet notes), 2– 4. Capitol 48470.
Williams, Raymond. 1961. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus.
Wright, Gordon. 1937. “Discussions: White Swing.” Metronome 53/5 (May 1937): 29.
Published
2004-02-04
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Stanbridge, A. (2004). A Question of Standards: "My Funny Valentine" and Musical Intertextuality. Popular Music History, 1(1), 83-108. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v1i1.83
