The Irving Berlin Reader

Benjamin Sears (Professional Singer, Professional Singer)

$158.95

Hardback

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English

26 April 2012

Music; 20th century & contemporary classical music; Light orchestral & big band music; Musicals; Individual composers & musicians, bands & groups

Series: Readers on American Musicians

"Without any formal training in music composition, Irving Berlin took a knack for music and turned it into the most successful songwriting career in American history. Berlin was the first Tin Pan Alley songwriter to go uptown to Broadway with a complete musical score (Watch Your Step in 1914); he is the only songwriter to build a theater exclusively for his own work (The Music Box); and his name appears above the title of his Broadway shows and Hollywood films (Irving Berlin's Holiday Inn), still a rare honor for songwriters. Berlin is also notable due the length of his career in American Song; he sold his first song at the age of 18 and passed away at the age of 101 having outlived several of his own copyrights. Throughout his career, Berlin showed that a popular song need not be of a lesser quality than songs informed by the principles of ""classical"" music composition. Forty years after his last published song many of his songs remain popular and several have even entered folk song status, something no other 20th-century American songwriter can claim. As one of the most seminal figures of twentieth century, both in the world of music and in American culture more generally, and as one of the rare songwriters equally successful with popular songs, Broadway shows, and Hollywood scores, Irving Berlin is the subject of an enormous corpus of writing, scattered throughout countless publications and archives. A noted performer and interpreter of Berlin's works, Benjamin Sears has unprecedented familiarity with these sources and brings together in this Reader a broad range of the most insightful primary and secondary materials. Grouped together according to the chronology of Berlin's life and work, each section and article features a critical introduction to orient the reader and contextualize the materials within the framework of American musical history. Taken as a whole, the writings - many by Berlin himself -- provide a new perspective on Berlin that highlights his musical genius in the context of his artistic development."

Edited by: Benjamin Sears (Professional Singer Professional Singer)
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 245mm, Width: 164mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 434g
ISBN: 9780195383744
ISBN 10: 0195383745
Series: Readers on American Musicians
Publication Date: 26 April 2012
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for The Irving Berlin Reader

What a wonderful glance into the musical past! Benjamin Sears has assembled, organized and notated a fan's paradise of writing on and by Irving Berlin. And what a spectrum: from the master giving hints on how a song should be written, to a famous critic completely mis-judging Berlin's greatest theater score. This takes you back to another time and place, and brings Irving Berlin alive again. All in all, a great read. --Ted Chapin, President, Rodgers & Hammerstein The Irving Berlin Reader is an engrossing documentary biography that will delight both the casual music lover and the hardcore Berlinophile. Item after item brings up fascinating details about not only Berlin's life and work but also the workings of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood at the height of the studio system--and Berlin was at the forefront of each of those institutions when it reached its artistic peak. To understand Irving Berlin is to understand almost everything important about a wide swath of America's popular music history. --Larry Hamberlin, author, Tin Pan Opera: Operatic Novelty Songs in the Ragtime Era A valuable collection of commentary by and about a great American songwriter, compiled by a unique performer-scholar with a long and special affinity for his subject. --Jeffrey Magee, author of Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater