Program Notes for "The Irving Berlin Songbook"
Friday, March 2, 2012 at 8:54AM Program note for "The Irving Berlin Songbook"
Written by Tamara Norden Brognano, Outreach Coordinator for Four Seasons Theatre
The film historian Gerald Mast wrote “Where else but in America could a Russian Jew write the most successful popular songs for the two holiest Christian holidays [‘White Christmas’ and ‘Easter Parade’]?” Where, indeed? The story of Irving Berlin is the dream of every 19th-century immigrant writ large – to become an American, raise a family, have a successful career, and forge a legacy worthy of the history books.
Born in Russia in 1888 and immigrated to America in 1893, Berlin learned how to play to the crowd as a busker singing for coins in the taprooms of the Bowery; he learned how to charm an audience with a sentimental ballad as a singing waiter; and he learned the craft of songwriting while churning out sheet music in Tin Pan Alley. All that he learned in those early days, along with an astounding work ethic, helped him build one of the longest, and most successful, songwriting careers of any American composer.
Berlin was a self-taught pianist, and he depended on a transposing piano—an instrument familiar to the tunesmiths and song-pluggers of Tin Pan Alley. Berlin wrote all of his songs in the key of F sharp, but by shifting a lever below the keyboard, he could transpose the song into any key. He never learned to read or write music, but employed a series of transcribers who would listen to him play a song and then notate it for him. A young George Gershwin once interviewed for a job as a transcriber and arranger for Berlin’s music publishing house. Berlin gave him an audition, but dismissed him with “You’ve got more talent than an arranger needs.”
The movie musical Alexander’s Ragtime Band was a retrospective about American music with elements of Berlin biography in it, featuring more than 20 Berlin songs. It says a lot that a retrospective covering 30 years of American music could rely on songs from just one composer—a composer who, only midway through his career, had already spanned so many musical styles. And that film came out in 1938—Berlin would continue to write new songs for another 25 years.
At the 100th birthday celebration for Berlin held at Carnegie Hall in 1988, Walter Cronkite stated that “Irving Berlin helped write the story of this country by capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape our lives. Since 1906, Irving Berlin has written over 1,500 songs, and it is there we find our history, our holidays, our homes and our hearts.” We’ve chosen just a few of those 1,500 songs, and we hope you’ll enjoy hearing them as much as we enjoy singing them.
