You And The Night And The Music

You And The Night And The Music is a composition by Arthur Schwartz with lyrics by Howard Dietz, written in 1934 for their Broadway musical Revenge with Music. The show, based on the Spanish folk tale El Sombrero de Tres Picos by Pedro Antonio de Alarcon, opened on November 28, 1934 and ran for over 150 performances, with the song first performed on stage by Georges Metaxa and Libby Holman. The tune is a sensuous, brooding piece characterized by its rich minor-key coloring and dramatic melodic arc, with Howard Dietz's lyrics evoking intense, fleeting desire through vivid imagery like "fill me with flaming desire." The minor tonality and atmospheric quality set it apart from many of Schwartz's other songs and give performers wide interpretive freedom. Libby Holman charted with the tune in 1935, and it gained new life through jazz interpretations in the 1950s, including a notable West Coast cool arrangement featuring solos by Bob Cooper and Art Pepper with Shelly Manne's ensemble in 1953, and a starkly brooding trumpet-bass duet by Chet Baker with Paul Chambers. The tune has become an enduring entry in the Great American Songbook and a widely performed jazz standard, valued for its harmonic simplicity in the bridge, which invites melodic exploration. The Chad LB Quartet's 2021 Standards Night session includes solos by Chad Lefkowitz-Brown on tenor saxophone, Steven Feifke on piano, and Dan Chmielinski on bass.