Sonic Storytelling: Reharmonization & Improvisation in Jazz by Yasser Mattar

Author:Yasser Mattar [Mattar, Yasser]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2020-09-06T16:00:00+00:00

Fly Me to the Moon

The original harmony of Fly Me to the Moon by Bart Howard is as per below:

Score: Fly Me to the Moon (original)

What’s happening here?

This song is one of the most popular jazz standards ever. So popular it is that even renowned jazz masters like Jacob Koller still record and perform it. The song starts off on the VI chord on Bar 1 and pushes to the II in Bar 2 and to the V in Bar 3. These three are secondary dominants of each other and the resultant pushes sound very resolved. This resolves to the I chord in Bar 4. Halfway through Bar 4, a C7 is played pivoting off Cmaj7 to modulate to Fmaj7 in Bar 5. The Fmaj7 is just a deceptive modulation though because the next chord in Bar 6 is a Bmin7b5. This shows that the Fmaj7 is not Ionian, but rather, Lydian, and it serves as a subdominant to the VII (a member of the dominant family) in the C major scale. This Bmin7b5 pushes to E7 as its dominant in Bar 7 which pushes again to Amin7 which in turn pushes to Dmaj7 in Bar 8. Lest we get fooled again and think that the song has modulated yet again to D major, the parallel minor is activated in Bar 9. The harmony then moves chromatically upwards to D# in Bar 10 and E in Bar 11 which resolves to A7 in Bar 12. The A7 sets up the tone for the final resolution. It pushes to its IV, the Dmin7 which coincidentally is the II of the C major scale. And as always, in jazz, we know what’s going to happen when we see a II. It will be always followed by a V and then a I in the final bar of the song.

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