West of the Sun

Lyricist. Dorothy K. Thomas

Publisher. G. Schirmer, Inc.

Date. 1947

Key/Range. D Major (c#' -- f")

COMMENTARY

Published, remarkably, twenty years after his previous effort, “West of the Sun” is Tours’ swan song. The lyric by Dorothy K. Thomas is a dreamscape where lovers return to a tropical paradise where they previously vacationed. The intoxication of romance, of travel, and of the Polynesian islands are intertwined in this lyric, which retains its original appeal due to the fact that Thomas’ atmospheric language carefully avoids any reference to the colonialist views that prevailed in the twentieth century among Westerners toward the cultures of the South Pacific. Tours’ music, too, is vaguely evocative of the tropics without being derivative of Polynesian music. In fact, he cleverly employs the habañera rhythm to conjure the swaying of the palm trees and a sophisticated harmonic palette to evoke the color and perfume of the landscape. Revealing himself to be still in full possession of his mastery, Tours used the exact same harmonic device—stating the theme in the tonic minor only to be followed two measures later by an abrupt shift to the parallel major—in this song as he did at the beginning of “In Flanders’ Fields,” illustrating two landscapes that are diametrically opposed in every way with a similar harmonic idea (notably, both songs are also in D Minor). One of Tours’ favorite strategies to convey the instability of human emotions, he was successfully able to paint both lyrics with the same brush while depicting, on the one hand, the intoxicating madness of the battlefield during war and, on the other hand, the intoxicating passion of two people being in love in a strange and beautiful land. Formally, this is Tours’ most ambitious song, with its seventeen-measure verse and a forty-four-measure chorus. Both sections are binary forms that quickly shift after the return of the beginning material into new ideas that bring a sense of development, climax, and closure. Though presented in 4/4 (common time), the dance rhythm of the bass, the phrasing of the melody with its heavy emphasis on beats one and three, and, above all, the quarter-note triplet figures that are so abundant in the chorus suggest that this song is actually in 2/2 (cut time). The interaction of the triplets, which subdivide the half-note beats in three parts, with the habañera bass figure, which subdivide them in two (or four) parts, contribute to a sense of dreamy intoxication in the music. Though the accompaniment is scored in a pianistic manner, its instrumental lines suggest that the song was designed to be orchestrated and that he may have composed it for a film or in hopes of having it recorded by James Melton or Mario Lanza.