Victor Young's handwritten version of Stella By Starlight! (and analysis)

[@JayVermaMusic]

most overpowered first YT video ever

[@huberjonathan]

@@JayVermaMusic legend! Appreciate you brother!

[@bobblues1158]

80 year old nerd here! I am a tenor sax player and my favorite key for this is D major. And my ear has just gravitated towards the original chords.

[@raneyjr]

One of my father, Jimmy Raney's favorites.. He would often talk about the Milland movie where it served as the centerpiece. Great that you have the score. Thats wonderful

[@2c26]

Your father is one of my heroes ❤

[@raneyjr]

@2c26 mine too,😂

[@AndreasLinks]

Thank you so much! Great piece of history you got there.

[@petermatthews9327]

Jonathan, as a bassist this is one of the relatively few tunes that l like to play as an arco feature. Your interpretation of your grunkels manuscript (I am a great uncle myself, ja ja) reminded me of features in Scriabins earlier and later compositions. He was big on Lydian dominant and fr+6. Basically if he needed a dominant he inserted one, either flattening 7 of a major 7 #11 to make a lydian dominant, and use it to modulate to the sub b5 dominant, pure bebop. Or convert a major 6 10 chord to a dominant by Fr+ augmenting the 6 to b7. But of course major add 6 is an inversion of its relative minor 7, so then things get really intriguing on the harmonic analysis. Also, IV to iv, like country music l -IV -iv - l, or using the iv as a ii of a V of a new I, or stopping short by using back door dominant to return to the old l. I hear all this in your playing of your grunkels marvelous tune.

[@JulianaChahayed]

new hubie lore just dropped

[@daveshep]

I definitely remember hearing your great-uncle Sergio on Ed Sullivan! This is mega-cool! Thanks! And I’m glad you’re safe out there.

[@huberjonathan]

awesome!!! and thank you :)

[@marcelloestemiele]

The yt algorithm brought me here with tears of joy. Thank you for sharing, i can now play these beautiful chords for the rest of my life

[@TimLerchGuitar]

In the movie, the theme is played in a couple of different keys. Being a bit of a “ Stella scholar” I’m really looking forward to watching the rest of this video

[@burtcolk]

Very cool! This arrangement was apparently created for "Film Music Notes," Vol. 3 Issue 7, April 1944, which reproduces this page exactly. There's a scan in the Internet Archive if you want to see.

[@huberjonathan]

@@burtcolk oooo awesome!! Thanks

[@huberjonathan]

@@burtcolk I can’t seem to find it, could you possibly send a link?

[@burtcolk]

@@huberjonathan KZbin won't let me put a link in a comment, but if you go to the Internet Archive site and search for (in quotes) "film music notes 1944-04: Vol 3 Iss 7" you'll find it.

[@burtcolk]

@@huberjonathan Search for "film music notes 1944-04: Vol 3 Iss 7"

[@burtcolk]

@@huberjonathan "film music notes 1944-04: Vol 3 Iss 7"

[@davidbratland9754]

Need this version on Spotify! Gorgeous playing as well!

[@contrabone10]

Way to go! As a Berklee Harmony professor,I say you learned very well. Awesome analysis, keep up the Harmony love!

[@craighoyer6543]

David Mash in 1985 Berklee theory class emphasized m7b5 over half diminished (slant line through a zero, the null set in math). Where did half-diminished gain traction? I saw it in Bill Evans' handwriting. Locrian scale and variations, "inside" choices for m7b5, have few resemblances to the diminished scale or to diatonic choices for a diminished chord scale.

[@stuartweissman7306]

i love the fact that a young musician like you is still keeping the music and its history alive. funny, i have been playing jazz for 50+ years and as i get older (and now try to sing) i find myself leaning towards the original chords on standards for the old school charm they possess. this is such a great post...ty. when did you go to Berklee? Did you ever encounter Nicholas Mycio or Declan Miers? If you play guitar as beautifully as you play piano I will be very upset...

[@huberjonathan]

So glad you enjoyed! and I was at berklee 2018-2020, and I know both of them! I do not play guitar as well as piano haha so don't worry!

[@MusicArrangementsByNedKantar]

Outstanding analysis and beautiful backstory!

[@williamlenihan7536]

Your great uncle Sergio Franchi was great. He was on TV quite often.. I worked with him as a guitarist in the mid 1980’s. What a singer!

[@huberjonathan]

@@williamlenihan7536 wow!! Amazing thanks for the comment!

[@Poeme340]

Music nerd here-enjoying it!! Thx!!🙏

[@AdamLevyGuitar]

This fantastic! Thank you, Jonathan.

[@Doug-r7t]

Stella happens to be my favorite standard...Thanks Jonathan!

[@michaeldeloatch7461]

Wow -- that is a very moving story. Talk about a solid provenance on an artifact... Somehow I made it to my mid fifties without ever knowing this song, although I had seen the title here and there over the years. I am glad I know it now -- it is certainly gorgeous and so much more than a toss-away film ditty. Prayers for your friends whose lives are upturned by recent events.

[@michaeldeloatch7461]

I wonder if Lucy or Desi Arnaz Jr. have a hand written score of Sweet Sue because Mr. Young felt Lucy was the only one who ever did that one justice?

[@dinjescreativeartsprogram1134]

Wonderful video! Thanks for posting. I am sure many of us always wanted to see the original writting of this wonderful tune besides the soundtrack recording. In my opinion, it is always played in jams and gigs with the Real Book changes that do not make justice to the beauty of the song as V. Young wrote. I am sure that many of my friends will love this. Also Barry Harris would have loved to have you show this in his workshops. I am glad to know you live in Pasadena. I am in Los Angeles, I would love to meet you one day and play. Best wishes

[@petegtr1971]

Thanks for the nice video and thanks for sharing this gem! Having transcribed some of the original soundtrack version, this is super interesting for me. Looking forward to your upcoming videos!

[@incenseandpeppermints4625]

What a valuable piece of music history, thanks to Eva's generosity!

[@timcummiskey1178]

Great job. Thank you for your generosity.

[@pieterfannes8600]

amazing piece of history, you're right to cherish it

[@selfwitness]

I saw your uncle on TV, live! Great video! Perfect analysis. Much success to you!

[@nomannic1]

This is like finding a rare 80s anime cell! Your harmony and feel on the keys remind me of Bill Evans, wonderdul playing!

[@GustavoAlbuquerque1]

You deserve the best mate... cheers

[@quayscenes]

Wonderful story! Reading through the transcription will be my afternoon fun!

[@thormusique]

Wow, I'm gobsmacked! How utterly beautiful. Thanks so much for sharing all this. I'm a musician as well, and Stella has always been one of my all-time favourite tunes. My family have always been classic-film buffs and even as a very little child, I distinctly remember watching The Uninvited with my family. Although I found the movie itself really kind of frightening, somehow the music managed to completely overshadow that fear and managed to become the predominant memory of that experience. Not long after, I'd heard Stan Getz's version, and those two versions juxtaposed became a mindblowing eureka event for me. Thanks again very much; this was truly brilliant.

[@MrFabienLloyd]

I remember Sergio Franchi as a kid. Great Singer! And Victor Young is the most underrated of the Hollywood golden age composers. The score of the Uninvited is very fresh in it's use of piano.

[@smoothplatex7117]

This video is a great gift to anyone who loves and has played Stella. Fantastic story and analysis Thank you !

[@acevaptsarov8410]

Dude, this is such an incredible video and story... thank you! ps. Love that Kermit the Frog was just sitting in for this one, chilling and learning the cool story and voicings 😂

[@MrRicksStudio]

This is a STORY, a major find! And thanks so much for sharing it! The whole time I was listening, I was thinking “he should edit and engrave it and put it on SMP to sell, I’d buy it” and near the end you said you had made it available! Again, thank you! UPDATE: Wanted to check my collection, before I said this, but I have a copy of his debut LP for RCA Victor “Italy’s Brilliant New Tenor Sergio Franchi - Romantic Italian Songs” (1962)

[@jimthompson606]

I remember as a child growing up seeing Sergio on TV. My family enjoyed his beautiful singing. I love this original version by Victor Young . The part that sounds uniquely lovely and different from other versions seems to occur at ;6:37 - 6:39.

[@AdamLevyGuitar]

IMHO: B7 (measures 17-18) seems to have b13, not #5. Because the colorful note here is G (not Fx) and because we also have the natural 5 (F#) as part of this melodic phrase.

[@muhrvis]

Thanks Jonathan. What a sweet video and labor of love. How lucky for everyone that you're the custodian of this manuscript! ❤

[@DominicAshworth-j3t]

Lovely stuff thanks

[@cgwilliamsjazzpiano3000]

What a treasure! Thanks for sharing the clean sheet for free, sounds great in D!

[@reinh]

Incredible stuff. A thing to maybe note is that Victor Young was not a "jazz" composer and this was not a "jazz" tune: it became one later, when it was played by jazz musicians. Victor studied under Statkowski at the Warsaw Imperial Conservatory and was a concert violinist with the Warsaw Philharmonic. He was steeped in the Western classical music tradition from an early age. As such, analyzing the F7(#11) as a French augmented sixth is completely reasonable, as that's the musical language he was familiar with. Many of the (esp. minor) 2-5s we associate with the tune were added later by jazz musicians to make the song better fit the jazz idiom and to offer a more familiar context for improvisation. (Not correcting you, just some additional context for your viewers.)

[@strings41]

Thanks. This is the kind of video that makes KZbin worthwhile! I have come to think of Victor Young as one of the top American composers. I would like to see the same type of the thing for Victor Young's "My Foolish Heart" for which there are several different chord progressions out there. Good luck in your future.

[@cleekersneaker]

Just beautiful. I've been wondering what I would grab in a fire and this video clarifies a few things.

[@DavidJRobinson]

Victor Young was a violinist so D, a sharp key, strings friendly key. Eb might have been used for the univited theme though. a favorite scoroer of mine. very romantic in style. thx for doing this Jonathan

[@gordonkennygordon]

Hello! Thanks so much for this, what a treasure this is! This one page from Victor Young, along with your analysis, is a master class in arranging and composition. Peace and safety to you and yours! Kenny

[@the_nomi]

tysm for sharing this with us & for your beautiful rendition! aaa

[@huberjonathan]

my pleasure! thanks for watching Nomi!

[@outinacornfield]

Long live the random kid on the Internet! Great work!

[@hugo54758]

Thank you so much for this! As an unconditional fan of Young's dramatically luscious changes, this makes me happy

[@KristopherCraig]

What a brilliant analysis! I will definitely be thinking of Stella in a totally different way now. My most favourite version is George Benson‘s off of the album Tenderly.

[@petegreenwood2793]

What a wonderful story, thanks so very much for sharing!

[@connorlarkinbass]

Very cool artifact you have there, and such a great story attached to it! Thanks for sharing!

[@andresfelipesuccar5179]

Amazing! God bless

[@matthewgoldberg1461]

Very good, but he did not also compose My Romance. That was Richard Rodgers

[@huberjonathan]

oh dang my mistake. For some reason I saw it in a list of Victor Young compositions. That's what I get for trusting the internet. Thank you!

[@jaforsatan]

It’s in D in the movie.

[@joelwenhardt7702]

This is priceless! Thank you for sharing. Victor Young’s violin playing is fantastic as well…an American treasure

[@justinwaves]

This is some top tier premium content. Much appreciated. Going to learn this now 🎹🌊✨

[@MilošMamula-i7x]

Wow!!!

[@MichaelRushMusic]

Great stuff and cool story! Thanks!

[@francoomarlopezlopez]

just discovered this channel your goat levels are off the charts 📈📈📈📈

[@huberjonathan]

hahaha thanks man!

[@francoomarlopezlopez]

@huberjonathan ACTUALLY I LIED OOPS i had seen your video on the harmonization of o come all ye faithful (which as my friend Leon Waves pointed out, is WRONG because it should be a #iv° NOT #ivm7-5) small world!

[@huberjonathan]

@@francoomarlopezlopez hahaha i still prefer the -7b5, so its right to me 😉

[@francoomarlopezlopez]

@huberjonathan my berklee goat washed 😔 /j

[@stevekeller4814]

DUDE - I love this, how lucky you are to have this piece of history. And thank you for the well-done video. One minor critique - your video is backwards, like looking in a mirror. Not all of it, the part where you play and show the score is fine. But that’s just a minor problem, this fabulous.

[@aravindvinayakan]

Jimminy Crickets, what an incredible story! Glad you're safe and sound and I look forward to watching your next video :)

[@huberjonathan]

thanks so much! glad you enjoyed it!

[@vincentregolo1686]

My small analysis of this "F7#11" chord. It is indeed a french augmented sixt, that goes not to a A/E chord, but over one single E7 chord. The A major triad on top of this is actually the appogiatura of a E7 chord (in classical music we call this a 6/4, you can hear this a lot in mozart music for instance). So the next chord you see in this bar, the D dminished, is actually just the E7 chord resolved, with the bass "missing" (actually not, it's here from the beginning of the bar). Hoping that make sense.

[@jaurisova6]

This is 100% right, and indeed this is a very “normal” (classical) way for an augmented sixth to resolve. What the analysis of 6+ chords as “just tritone subs of V/V” misses is that 6+ chords often resolve directly to I64.

[@vincentregolo1686]

@@jaurisova6 Exactly. When we analyse this kind of music, we're too tempted to use only jazz theory concepts, while sometimes older principles are more efficient explaining some harmony..

[@huberjonathan]

@@vincentregolo1686 I like this! Thanks for the comment :)

[@reinh]

@@vincentregolo1686 And indeed this tune was written by a classically trained composer.

[@AdamLevyGuitar]

@@jaurisova6 Very interesting!

[@kevindoriannorris3946]

Very nice! Thanks!

[@caseydahl1952]

Wonderful video! I found a copy of the original sheet music, and transcribed the movie score - but I had no idea there was an original manuscript! Some notes comparing them: - There is a verse on the sheet music - though I wonder sometimes if the composer actually had anything to do with these, or if someone along the way just added them to fill space, or for some other purpose. interesting that Young did not include this verse in his manuscript. - Sheet music is in G - note values are doubled in the sheet music - m. 12 (with double values) is different, instead of F7#11 it's Bm7b5/F - a few minor things, like bar 5 being a sus4 to a 3b9, bar 7 being in root position instead of 2nd inversion, 2nd half of bar 10 stays on Bm instead of tonicizing. Otherwise, pretty comparable! Thanks again for sharing!

[@brentyoendo1573]

Thas a wild background!! Also, glad your house be okay! Scary business being rushed into that reality.. not knowing if you're saying goodbye to the place and things that so many memories are attached to.

[@MariusDuboule]

Sometimes in old orchestrations you find chunks of this really cool bass line starting bar 9 (in Bb) Bb/F D/F# | Gm Abo7 | Dm/A | G7/B (!) F/C | Bbo7 | Am7(b5) | D7

[@huberjonathan]

oooo love that, and the G7 is very much related to the Db7#11 (French thing)

[@lnkd70]

Treasure! 😍

[@craighoyer6543]

I played some shows on keys and piano with Steve Allen, a well- known jazz pianist who learned "I Can't Get Started With You" as a current pop song of his youth . I played the "settled revolutions in Spain" parts without those fancy chromatic ii-V embellishments and stayed diatonic. Those chromatic ii-V chords make it a bit harder to sing the original melody. As one can imagine, his audiences had very long teeth.

[@AndrewJanusson]

Wtf that’s so dope. Thanks for sharing.

[@adamschrubbemusic]

So sick dude!

[@shaanchhadva]

u are the coolest hubie

[@KBMars]

Thank you so much

[@777leviandades]

❤🎉😂Such a lovely post , thanks for that lucky boy

[@michaelfuller34]

Smart lady to see the music in your soul❤

[@huberjonathan]

❤🥹

[@joonia5492]

Awesome

[@aagevaksdal]

Very nice vid!

[@rosiefay7283]

7:14 I see the f# and f as just an appoggiatura resolving chromatically, rather than as yet more harmony.

[@GianlucaSibaldi]

Great video man, thank you so much!… Perhaps the semitone higher version we hear in that movie is a consequence of the way movies were translated to video in the television era. I think that the movie clip you are showing in your video has not been digitized directly from the film to a video file with a film scanner. It’s more likely that it was transferred from film to a video tape sometime in the past century and then more recently the video tape was digitized into a file. And perhaps the transfer from film to video was done in Europe or in a country where television was 25 frames per second. In short: movies from that era were all shot in 24 fps, and to make the transfer process to 25 fps video tape easier and cleaner, the movies were simply played to the taping machine (telecine) at 25 fps, that is one fps faster. The relevant “acceleration” wasn’t noticeable in the picture but actually the soundtrack was played a semitone up. And no one cared about that.🤦🏻‍♂️ I realized about this “feature” when in the 90’s I started to write music for films. When the movie was played in tv channels or in DVD I could hear that my music was nearly a semitone higher. So I started investigating… Another weird side effect is that telecined movies have a shorter duration than the original, generally some minutes less. Luckily in the last 15 years or so everything got digital and the correct fps transcoding is done the right way without speed and pitch shifting.

[@ricksmithguitar]

Great and very personal Vid!

[@CampoMC101]

Great vid! Barry Harris is smiling down from heaven

[@georgetrajanoski8504]

This is rad

[@DavidJRobinson]

you play it beautifully as well. j.

[@JonFrumTheFirst]

The 'correct' chords - in jazz world - are often not the composer's original version. Few song writers had control over what got printed in the sheet music - that was someone at the publisher. So the version used in a Broadway musical might be correct, but that music wasn't published for public consumption. I believe I read that Cole Porter had control, but few others. Gershwin recorded piano versions of his songs, and I think there are transcriptions available online.

[@mbmillermo]

Your first long-form video is setting too high of a standard! That was great. I once saw part of that movie, probably on KZbin. The song comes up in the film because a pianist/composer character in the film wrote it and then played it for his girlfriend (Stella, I'm sure!). The lyrics were written by Ned Washington who also wrote the lyrics for "On Green Dolphin Street" which also was a movie theme song (for the film "Green Dolphin Street") at around the same time.

[@indigosnow_]

That's so rad!

[@haley8550]

this is so cool

[@bluntonaut]

11:46 gorgeous solo piano playing. Where can I find this recording?

[@huberjonathan]

thanks this is only on my soundcloud at the moment. I should upload it soon to spotify soundcloud.com/jonathan-huber-122607316/ive-neverbeen-in-love-before?si=03210c0781e245e3801835eec50f723a&

[@bluntonaut]

@huberjonathan such a nice arrangement and the felt piano vst fits so well

[@huberjonathan]

@@bluntonaut thank you! glad you enjoy it!

[@zoobobthealien24]

u absolute king ❤

[@patorsu]

2:55 Jake Sherman reference??

[@rigelloar7474]

Young's songs are incredibly great, and your video about "Stella" was very informative and enjoyable. Kudos and good luck to you . . .

[@MrHestichs]

The original jazz standards all sound HEAVILY inspired by Rachmaninov. Especially since around this time he was living in the US. This particular tune really give me 2nd piano concerto vibes.

[@zoltanns]

The My Romance isn't by Richard Rodgers?

[@huberjonathan]

@@zoltanns no it is Rodgers, google lied to me sadly! Sorry for misleading you

[@alexpavchinski]

Great find and analysis! Do you have this available in concert Bb?

[@1997pianoboy]

dang bro that's so cool!

[@huberjonathan]

thanks for watching dude!

[@peterstephenson9538]

What a truly cool fellow!! How about having a look at Jean Phillipe Rameau's piano music? It is hundreds of years old & some of it could have written tomorrow.

[@brucejeric6701]

How do I get copy of this original transcription??

[@huberjonathan]

@@brucejeric6701 it’s linked in the description!

[@kyleyu9935]

hi, would u care to upload a lead sheet version of this transcription with just the melody + chords? thank you!

[@vincescuderi]

Double-check "My Romance". The really famous one was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

[@vincescuderi]

BTW, Sergio Franchi was my mom's favorite singer!

[@vincescuderi]

BTW, BTW, SBS is one of my favorite songs to noodle with and explore possibilities.

[@huberjonathan]

yes you're right, I got mislead because he wrote a different song also called My Romance! my mistake!

[@shaanchhadva]

ava is so sweet :’)

[@huberjonathan]

she's the best!

[@onethousandtwonortheast8848]

My favorite song of all time. Charlie Parker did a hell of a version of this.

[@rileymerino6340]

Pretty good but used Misty as example for idim^7 instead of Hot in Here by Nelly

[@Creative_Dialogue]

Perhaps the transposition is frame rate, a common issue in film music