Breakfast at Tiffany's - Henry Mancini

[Keith88]

Thank you, Spencer, for starting this thread.

In 1967, Johnny Mathis released an album entitled "Johnny Mathis Sings." On this album was a vocal version of the instrumental title track to the 1961 film "Breakfast At Tiffany's" renamed "Lovers In New York," and it was from this vocal version that I first became aware of this lovely song. For me, growing up in the 1950s and only vaguely aware of jazz, the music of Henry Mancini was the hippest and most exciting music that I was exposed to, particularly the background music and themes to the television series "Peter Gunn" and "Mister Lucky." I found this song to be particularly attractive, and the use of flat nines in the melody of the bridge was especially strange and beautiful to my unsophisticated ears. The Mathis vocal version, as well as the original instrumental version can both be found on Youtube.

The song, with lyrics by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, is of real musical interest. Although the tune has a standard AABA form, the sections have unusual lengths: the first two A sections are ten measures each, the B section is a full sixteen measures, and the final A section is twelve measures. As I mentioned above, the melody in the bridge twice emphasizes the flat nine of a dominant chord. The harmony wanders down the cycle-of-fifths in all the sections, especially the bridge. Finally, the tune starts in one key and ends in another; this is one of two Mancini tunes that does this, the other being the theme from "Mister Lucky." This is an uncommon device; the only other tunes that I know that also do this are "I'll Remember Her" and "Why Did I Choose You."

I've done my own chord charts to "Lovers In New York" and they are presented below. There are some mistakes in Spencer's chart above, and I've changed the formatting to have each section start at the beginning of a line. The first chart pretty much matches the lead sheet to the song in "The Movie Fake Book" published by Hal Leonard. The second chart (k ver) has some more sophisticated harmony. No doubt some of you will want to tinker with these.

I play this tune using the Ballad Swing style at 100 bpm.

Lovers In New York - Mancini-Livingston-Evans

Lovers In New York (k ver) - Mancini-Livingston-Evans