Donald Swann - A Word on My Ear
Lyrics by  Michael Flanders
Solo - Rebecca Evans (soprano)
Piano - Craig Rutemberg
Live recording - Walter Reade Theater - Lincoln Center - New York - USA - January 25, 1999
Lyrics:
(Intro)
A prisoner to rapture by arduous duty pressed
A slave to the longing which lingers in my breast
Farewell, my friends, adieu
I cannot stay with you
Farewell, farewell, farewell

(Verse 1)
Before I deliver my seventh encore
There's something I'd like to make clear
They say I've brought pleasure to millions or more
They say that my singing half won the last war
When I sang to the troops in the rear
I'm a dame with a name
At the peak of my fame
I'm known as the Empress of Song
The critics bravo
And the critics should know
But I cannot help feeling they're wrong
I'm lauded, applauded, recorded, but list!
I've a musical flaw that they seem to have missed
That they seem to have missed
That they seem to have missed

(Chorus 1)
I'm tone deaf
Music means nothing to me
It's only the way
My accompanists play
That makes it appear I'm in key
Stone tone deaf
Can't tell a key from a clef
I stand by the pianist watching his face
For he's told me to start when he comes to the place
Where he'll give me a whacking great (*discordant crash in the piano*) in the bass
Because I'm tone deaf

(Chorus 2)
I'm tone deaf
Never could understand pitch
Some people I know
Will sing sol-fa-ti-do
And claim they can tell which is which
Stone tone deaf
Can't tell a B from an F
Colin Davis once said, "Now I don't want to carp
But if that's a B natural played on the harp
Then you're either B-flat, dear, or bloody B-sharp!"
But then I'm tone deaf

(Verse 2)
My technique is perfect (aah!) and likewise my larynx
Paolozzi once sculpted a bust of my pharynx
While lovers of music all praise with conviction
My phrasing, my timbre, my perfection of diction
Made trilling made Klemperer swoon (aah!)
But I just can't remember the tune

(Chorus 3)
I'm tone deaf
But in most modern works for the voice
The note that I hit
Doesn't matter a bit
So it's purely a personal choice
Stone tone deaf
Musically D-E-A-F
Perhaps Covent Garden can do without me
But while I live on an Equity fee
I'll always get work from the dear BBC
Because I'm tone deaf
Yes I'm tone deaf

Flanders And Swann - A Word On My Ear - Live - Evans - New York - 1999

Jorge Coli