Horn 1: eb1 - ab2
Horn 2: g - g2
Horn 3: g - f2
Horn 4: Bb - ab1
Creator's Comments
Performance Notes
I Could Have Danced All Night, from the 1956 hit musical My Fair Lady, with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Federick Loewe, is sung by Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl who is taught manners by professor Henry Higgins. Her lessons are a result of the professor’s showing off his language skills and a subsequent bet with one of his peers. As is usual with stories of the kind, the ending is happy, and so is this song.
As already mentioned, it is sung by Eliza, happy and excited about a little dance with professor Higgins. And happy and dancing it is, this arrangement. Marked “happily”, it opens with an introduction in horns two to four, followed by the tune (refrain) in the first horn, hand-stopped accompaniment in horns 2 and 3, and the bass groove in horn 4. The recitative is omitted, and that works really well in this case (everybody loves the catchy tune).
The key chosen is E flat major (in horn pitch), which means a bag full of pedal B’s in horn 4 (in fact that is the lowest note required), and nothing too high in the first part (high A flat). The distribution of parts is melody in horn 1, accompaniment in 2 and 3, and bass line in horn 4, followed by melody in horn 4, counter-melody in horn 2, accompaniment in horns 1 and 3. The piece ends as it started, with a recapitulation (partly) of the refrain. The only real difficulty of the piece lies in figuring out the hand-stopping (as there are three flats in the key).
Other than that, this piece will want you make to dance, happily, and that is really all one can ask from music of this kind. A winner, just like the musical itself.
Credits
Provision of review score: John Lynsdale-Nock (Corniworld)