Stephen Foster Blended Vernacular American Spirit and the European Art Tradition in His
POP VIEW
Pop VIEW; IRVING BERLIN'S AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
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May ten, 1987
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IN A Alphabetic character TO ALEXANDER Woollcott half a century ago, Jerome Kern offered what may be the last word on the significance of Irving Berlin, who turns 99 tomorrow. ''Irving Berlin has no identify in American music,'' wrote Kern. ''He is American music.'' And today that cess all the same rings truthful, in spite of the fact Mr. Berlin has remained professionally silent for 25 years.
That quarter-century has seen profound changes in the manner popular songs are created. Designed for records, modern pop music is now more of an aural than a written tradition. And American pop, instead of refining its ain identity, is reaching out to Latin America, Africa and Republic of india for refreshment.
At the aforementioned time, Irving Berlin'due south songs sound as fresh today every bit when they were written. The latest reminder of the continuing vitality of Mr. Berlin'due south work is a new album, ''Recollect,'' by the superb young singer-pianist Michael Feinstein. ''Remember'' collects nineteen Berlin songs that go as far back as ''Alexander's Ragtime Band,'' the epochal hit that established his songwriting career in 1911 at the age of 23. Besides such Berlin standards as ''How Deep Is the Ocean'' (1932), ''Always'' (1925) and ''Puttin' on the Ritz'' (1930), it includes such relatively unknown gems as ''What Take chances Have I With Love?'' from the 1940 show ''Louisiana Purchase'' and ''Better Luck Adjacent Time'' from the 1948 movie ''Easter Parade.'' The record is a delicious tribute from a singer whose heartfelt simplicity of delivery matches the spirit of the songs.
The quality that Jerome Kern recognized every bit the essence of Irving Berlin is a faith in the American vernacular so profound that today the composer'due south all-time-known songs seem indivisible from the country's history and cocky-image. Where the songs of Kern, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers and Cole Porter brought together Afro-American, Latin American and rural strains of pop with the elegance of European operetta, Irving Berlin'south music did not strive to be lofty in that fashion. The best of information technology is a simple, exquisitely crafted street song whose diction feels so natural that ane scarcely notices the craft. Scanning Berlin lyrics, one rarely lingers over ironic turns of phrase, elaborately clever rhymes or double entendres. And his greatest melodies have a like directness. For all of their innovation, they seem to flow straight out of the rhythms and inflections of everyday speech.
In dissimilarity to many of his fellow pre-rock craftsmen, Mr. Berlin lacked a musical signature every bit distinctive as Porter's recurrent beguine rhythms, Harold Arlen's torchy blues melodies, and Gershwin'south jazz harmonies. His ear captivated many different voices from America's melting pot and blended them into songs that are as stylistically diverse as ''Alexander'due south Ragtime Band,'' ''There'south No Business concern Like Bear witness Concern,'' ''White Christmas'' and ''Permit'south Face the Music and Dance.'' These individual masterpieces are each so different from the others that one would non readily estimate that they all came from the aforementioned paw. If they share a single quality, it is a boulder adherence to a populist songwriting vocabulary that is steady in tone and purged of ornament.
Today'southward songwriters whose work embodies the American feel have followed Mr. Berlin's lead in using that populist colloquial. Bruce Springsteen combines an elemental rock-and-roll vocabulary with a powerful social realism. Stevie Wonder's cardinal pop-soul plea for peace and racial justice helped to make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a national holiday. And Paul Simon'due south visionary fusions of American folk-rock with diverse international styles portray American popular as ane vital element in an emerging world music culture.
In today's music industry parlance, ''Alexander's Ragtime Band'' would exist regarded as the prototypical ''crossover'' hit in its blending of the season of blackness ragtime into a Can Pan Alley format.
''The song revived the past then defunct art of ragtime,'' the music historian Edward Jablonski remarks in his notes for Mr. Feinstein'due south anthology. ''Just Berlin volition caution you, 'It is not a rag, information technology is a song virtually ragtime.' '' To imagine just how radically jazzy and urbanized ''Alexander's Ragtime Band'' seemed in its time, one need simply dissimilarity the song, with its exuberant syncopation and intense physicality, with the ii most popular songs of the day, the sentimental singalong ''Let Me Call You Sweetheart'' and the bucolic barbershop tune ''Downwards by the Old Mill Stream.'' In fact, the impact of ''Alexander'due south Ragtime Ring'' was roughly equivalent to that of ''Rock Around the Clock'' 44 years later.
''There's No Business organization Like Testify Business organisation,'' from the 1946 show ''Annie Become Your Gun,'' may be the ultimate uptempo bear witness tune. Its tough wisecracking lyrics are as tersely all-knowing as its melody, which is nailed downwards in brassy syncopated lines that take been copied -but never equaled in sheer melodic memorability - by hundreds of theater composers ever since.
Discussing ''White Christmas,'' in his book ''American Popular Song,'' Alec Wilder points out, ''So many of Berlin'south songs have been played and so often that it is like shooting fish in a barrel to forget, bemused as one always is by all things familiar, the truly daring succession of notes in the chromatic phrase of the main strain of ''White Christmas.'' Lyrically, the vocal too evokes a primal nostalgia - a pure artless longing for roots, habitation and babyhood - that goes way across the greeting imagery.
''Permit's Face the Music and Dance,'' written for the 1936 Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers flick ''Follow the Fleet,'' is almost Cole Porter-like with its flowing, silky melody, which begins in a minor key and modulates dramatically into a major key so relapses. Rarely have Mr. Berlin'southward melodies and lyrics contained such ominous undercurrents. Indeed, the vocal seems to anticipate the coming world war with a mixture of anxiety, confidence and exhilaration.
Another of Mr. Berlin'south gifts has been his ability to custom design songs for specific performers. ''In that location's No Business organization Like Show Business'' volition forever remain Ethel Merman's trademark. ''Allow'south Face up the Music and Trip the light fantastic'' and ''Cheek to Cheek'' (the longest-running No. i hit of the 1930'due south) defined the musical personality of Fred Astaire, as their melodic lines followed the graceful, sweeping lines of his body in movement.
The ultimate song to express Mr. Berlin's deep American roots, ''God Bless America,'' was first performed on Armistice 24-hour interval in 1938 by Kate Smith on a radio broadcast, and it quickly went on to become an unofficial national anthem. This stirring pop march, composed at the end of the Low, enshrines a strain of official patriotism intertwined with a religious religion that runs deep in the American psyche. Patriotic razzle-dazzle, sophisticated melancholy and humble sentiment: Berlin songs bridge the emotional terrain of America with a thoroughness that others may take equaled but none accept surpassed.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/10/arts/pop-view-irving-berlin-s-american-landscape.html