On Mar 30, 2006, at 11:44 AM, Andrew Stiller wrote:
On Mar 29, 2006, at 3:45 PM, Christopher Smith wrote:
Irving Berlin's arrangements are pretty good because he had hired an arranger to help him compose his songs.
According to the admittedly flawed recent biography As Thousands Cheer, by Laurence Bergreen, Berlin hired not an arranger but an amanuensis to write down what Berlin was playing at the piano.
>From almost every other account of Berlin's piano playing I have heard, Berlin had a notoriously poor harmonic sense, restricting most of his harmonies to primary triads in flat keys. He would often have the assistant (for lack of a better word) try out different things until he heard something he liked, then say, "That's it! That's what I composed!"
Having worked this way with composers before, I can relate. Sometimes there actually ARE more sophisticated harmonies implied in the melody, but the composer is unable to realise them properly. Who is the composer really, in that case? I have stopped doing this kind of work now.
Christopher
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