- Date: 1981
- Composer: Andrew Lloyd Webber
- Period: Contemporary (1950- )
Review
"Memory," the one freestanding hit from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats, is sung late in the show by the scruffy Grizabella, a former glamour cat who has seen better days. Yet the lyrics can apply to anyone ruminating on lost youth and beauty. Sarah Brightman sang it in the original production, and Barbra Streisand made it an instant radio hit.The melody tends to hover yearningly around a very few notes, while the harmony drifts sadly and restlessly from major to minor and back again, in the first verse modulating from C major eventually to E minor and back, with the contrasting sections favoring E minor but leading back through the major.
The lyrics as we've come to know them, by Trevor Nunn at some remove from the T.S. Eliot original, are dark and urban:
Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan.
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again.
Every streetlamp seems to beat a fatalistic warning
Someone mutters, and a streetlamp gutters,
And soon it will be morning.
Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
And I mustn't give in.
When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin.
Burnt out ends of smokey days
The stale cold smell of morning
The streetlamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning...
Touch me!
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun...
If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day
Has begun.
Nunn's initial treatment for the English opening of Cats, though, remained closer to Eliot's pastoral original and includes a character reference that limits the song's usefulness outside the show; here's the first verse:
Daylight, see the dew on the sunflower
And a rose that is fading
Roses wither away
Like the sunflower I yearn to turn my face to the dawn
I am waiting for the day. ~ All Music Guide
Albums with Complete Performances of the Work
Albums with Excerpt Performances of the Work
| Title | Date |
| Classic Andrew Lloyd Webber | 2004 |
