Mancini-Mercer: "Moon River" (Breakfast at Tiffany's)

Over the course of his career, the Italian-American Henry Mancini earned 20 Grammys, 4 Academy Awards, and a Golden Globe. First trained as a flutist and then a pianist, Mancini studied briefly at the Juilliard School of Music before being drafted in World War II. Mancini is responsible for some of the most memorable tunes in film and television, including the title theme for Peter Gunn, The Pink Panther, Days of Wine and Roses, and Breakfast at Tiffany's (1).
Despite the seemingly perfect wedding of Mancini's music and Mercer's words in "Moon River," the tune came before the words. Mancini's wife Ginny recalled that "Henry and Johnny never sat down together. They discussed what it should be and what the lyric had to say, but once Henry had the melody nailed, he would just send it to Mercer" (2). This practice was by no means strange. Many of the most famous pairings of lyricists and composers worked this way, including the Gershwin brothers and Stephen Sondheim.
Originally, executives at Paramount thought that the Audrey Hepburn, as an untrained vocalist, would have to be dubbed over by a ghost singer. According to his wife, Mancini used Hepburn's singing of the song "How Long Has This Been Going On?" from Funny Face to gauge approximately how large her range was.
Purportedly the song was to be cut do to the film's runtime being too long. An intervention by Hepburn kept the song in the film, earning its writers an Academy Award (2). The song was eventually made famous by Andy Williams at the Academy Awards in 1962. Williams subsequently named his production company and theater in Branson, Missouri after the song, also using the song as the title tune for his TV show, The Andy Williams Show (3).
Musically, the song is structured in an ABAC form. Each section is approximately 8 bars long. While the C section initially appears to follow the contour of the earlier B (suggesting B'), the music instead travels up an F major arpeggio, reaching a high G briefly on "rainbow's." The two A sections use what appears to be an altered doo-wop progression (I-vi-IV-V), replacing the V with a I6 chord. The phrase ends on V/vi, prepping the music for the D minor chord at the start of the B section. With a circle-of-fifths progression and some secondary dominants, the B section is much more harmonically involved. The most interesting chord here is an unexpected Eb7. My best guess is that this chord is being borrowed from blues vocabulary as a IV7 of Bb. However, it could also be interpreted as an augmented sixth chord resolving into a D minor chord instead of the customary major. At the climax of the song in the C section on "Rainbow's end," there is an especially beautiful use of modal mixture with the minor IV chord, the bass being anticipated with a descending line beforehand.
Lyrically, Mercer uses an ABCB rhyme scheme in the first two verses and an ABCCCB in the last two verses. There's a beautiful use of internal rhyming throughout that elides the endings of the verses together, keeping the words flowing ("mile-style" and "maker-breaker"). Mercer wrote the song with nostalgic references to his childhood in Savannah, Georgia, including Back River (now, Moon River in Mercer's honor) which ran near home and picking huckleberries in the summer with a friend (3). The "moon" in the title of the song likely refers to a reflection on the surface of the water, setting the scene at night time. The words seem to equate the river with the passing of life, calling the waters a "dream maker" and a "heart breaker." The narrator even says, "Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way." The song perfectly complements the action of the film as it aptly describes Holly Golightly's wandering, nonchalant attitude towards life (her surname is literally Go-Lightly).
My arrangement copies the strumming pattern of the guitar in the film and is in the original key of F major. See my MuseScore for a copy of the lead-sheet.
References:
Audrey Hepburn. "How Long Has This Been Going On?" Funny Face, music by George and Ira Gershwin: • How Long Has This Been...
Andy Williams. "Moon River." Music by Henry Mancini and lyrics by Johnny Mercer. • Moon River - Andy Will...
Bibliography:
1.) "Biography." Henry Mancini.com, 2024. www.henrymancini.com/pages/biography
2.) O'Brien, Jane. "The History of Henry Mancini's Moon River." BBC, 2015 June 9. www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33058351
3.) Nolan, Kathleen. "The Meaning Behind Andy Williams’ “Moon River." American Songwriter, 2022. americansongwriter.com/the-meaning-behind-andy-williams-moon-river/
Photos:
Audrey Hepburn pictures from IMDB.
Henry Mancini photo from Grammy website.

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"Moon River" Lyrics by Johnny Mercer Moon river, wider than a mile, I'm crossing you in style someday. Oh, dream maker, you heartbreaker, Wherever you're going, I'm going your way. Two drifters off to see the world, There's such a lot of world to see. We're after the same rainbow's end, Waiting 'round the bend, My huckleberry friend, Moon river and me.