Irving Berlin - White Christmas - James Allen Gähres, cond., Ulm Philharmonic
Ulm Philharmonic Choir of Theater Ulm Nikolaus Meer, bass James Allen Gähres, conductor Irving Berlin (1888–1989) 'White Christmas' Live recorded during open public concert. Ulm, Germany Cover: Headshot/portrait of Irving Berlin, c.1925. Photos: – Mingo Creek County Park, Finleyville, Pennsylvania (PA), United States. – Josiah Hess Covered Bridge, Orangeville, PA – Blue Knob State Park, Bedford County, PA – A male Northern Cardinal, Wildwood Park, Harrisburg, PA – Frozen Susquehanna River and Veterans Memorial Bridge (Columbia–Wrightsville Bridge), Columbia, PA – Mingo Creek County Park, Finleyville, PA Leroy Anderson - Sleigh Ride (trad.) - James Allen Gähres, cond., Ulm Philharmonic: • Leroy Anderson - Sleigh Ride (trad.) - Jam... Original lyrics by Irving Berlin: The sun is shining, the grass is green, The orange and palm trees sway. There's never been such a day in Beverly Hills, L.A. But it's December the twenty-fourth, And I am longing to be up North I'm dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Where the tree-tops glisten and children listen To hear sleigh bells in the snow I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write "May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white" I'm dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write "May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white" May your days be merry and bright And may all your Christmases be white. As Irving Berlin recalled in the Los Angeles Examiner (December 14, 1954): "I wrote 'White Christmas' for a revue I intended producing, changed my mind and put it away until it was used in a Bing Crosby picture. At the time I had no idea 'White Christmas' would be a perennial hit or that Paramount would add to its popularity with a movie of the same name. When the song first became popular, I attributed it to the War and the fact that Christmas means peace. I felt that since people were singing it I ought to write another verse. But I couldn’t do it. New words would not come." "Much as I’d like to take a bow and say I anticipated its future success, I must admit I didn’t," Berlin told the Jamaica (Long Island) Press (September 24, 1954). "Maybe because it was so easy, comparatively, to write I didn’t realize its potential. I wrote it in two rather brief sessions and that’s fast for a song. Some take a lot more work." According to Erskine Johnson (Los Angeles Mirror, December 21, 1954), the melody was written in August 1938, then left on the shelf for four years (actually two years) until Berlin was signed by Paramount to write Holiday Inn. Berlin told Johnson: "I took it off the shelf and polished the lyrics a little, and went to Bing’s dressing room at Paramount to get his okay on all the songs for the picture. I was nervous as a rabbit smelling stew. I sang several melodies and Bing nodded quiet approval. But when I did 'White Christmas' he came to life and said 'Irving, you won’t have to worry about that one.' " "We didn’t even think 'White Christmas' was the big song of the picture," Berlin told Earl Wilson (December 12, 1953). "We started exploiting 'Be Careful It’s My Heart,' which was the Valentine song. But the public liked 'White Christmas' and it became a runaway. You see, a war song doesn’t have to be about wars. This is really a peace song." But for all their swagger and humor, Berlin’s songs betray a not-so-secret undertow of sadness, a pervasive tropism toward melancholy. While swimming confidently toward their goal, his songs frequently pass through invisible seams of sadness on the way. Think of how wistful even 'White Christmas' is. Underneath the last, sustained word of the climactic lyric "May your days be merry and bright," Berlin gives us an F major chord that turns suddenly, piercingly minor. The brightness is literally diminished, as the dream of the past is diminished by time. Berlin came by this sentiment honestly. His father, a cantor in whose temple he first heard the way music can recapitulate loss in the flick of a note, died when he was 13. His first wife died of typhoid fever contracted on their Cuban honeymoon. Irving Berlin Jr., his son by his second wife, died on Christmas Eve at three weeks. These losses do not explain the drive that led an immigrant from abject poverty at 5 to wealth and celebrity at 19 and has sustained him at the heart of American culture ever since. Nor do they explain how he, nearly alone among his generation of composers, became the kind of businessman who had the clout and savvy to defend his property, keeping an iron grip on his copyrights and licenses as his own publisher. With a life that spanned more than 100 years, and a catalog that boasted over 1,000 songs, seventeen complete scores for Broadway musicals and revues, and contributed material to six more Irving Berlin epitomized Jerome Kern's famous maxim that "Irving Berlin has no place in American music – he is American music."
