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    A Note From Irving Berlin, the ‘Nation’s Songwriter’

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    The lyricist and composer wrote thousands of compositions — and one stern letter to The New York Times.Few songwriters and composers were as prolific as Irving Berlin, whose vast musical catalog includes well-known songs such as “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Cheek to Cheek” and “Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better).” By some accounts, he wrote well over 1,200 songs during his career, including the scores for 18 films and 19 Broadway shows.His 1942 song “White Christmas,” most famously performed by Bing Crosby, remains a holiday classic, and his patriotic hit “God Bless America,” released in 1938, is considered an unofficial national anthem.Berlin’s legacy survives not only in tunes, but in organizations he created that influenced the musical world. In 1914, he helped found the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, or ASCAP, a music licensing agency that today, per its website, secures the royalties and legal rights for over one million songwriters, composers and music publishers. In 1919, he broke away from Ted Snyder and Henry Waterson, with whom he had built the successful music publishing company Waterson, Berlin & Snyder Co., and established his own. He was also behind the Music Box Theater in Manhattan.In the Morgue, The New York Times’s physical clippings library, there’s a thick file on Berlin. One of the items inside is a letter, dated April 14, 1924, that Berlin sent to The Times. In the letter he made clear that he had no existing ties to Waterson, Berlin & Snyder Co., which had recently filed a lawsuit against ASCAP. The lawsuit, in part, “sought to compel the defendants to account for all of the licenses issued permitting the broadcasting of the songs and musical compositions belonging to the plaintiff,” as The Times had reported days earlier.Berlin explained that he had “severed” his connection to the firm years earlier. He implored The Times to make this distinction in forthcoming articles: “I would consider it a special favor if you make it perfectly clear that I, Irving Berlin, have no connection whatsoever with the firm of Waterson, Berlin & Snyder.” (The firm filed for bankruptcy in 1929.)Berlin lived to be 101; when he died in 1989, The Times called him the “nation’s songwriter” in his obituary. More

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      Stop Asking Celebrities to Sing Our National Anthem

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      The tradition of performing the anthem took off because people wanted to express their own love of country — not outsource it to guest stars.It was the first game of the 1918 World Series. The Chicago Cubs were playing the Boston Red Sox in Chicago. The country had entered World War I the previous year, so the baseball season leading up to this series had been cut short — men of draft age had been given a deadline to join the war effort.During the seventh-inning stretch, the military band in the stadium tried something new. The song they played was an old one, and it had been played at baseball games before — typically on special occasions, like opening day. But it had been recently rearranged by a team that included the renowned John Philip Sousa. When the band broke into this new version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” there was no script to follow; everything was improvised. Players took off their hats and faced the flag. Fred Thomas, an active-duty sailor who played for the Red Sox, struck a military salute. As for the audience: “First the song was taken up by a few,” The Times reported, “then others, and when the final notes came, a great volume of melody rolled across the field. It was at the very end that the onlookers exploded into thunderous applause and rent the air with a cheer that marked the highest point of the day’s enthusiasm.”The moment was powerful enough that the band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” again at the second game of the series, and again at the third. When play moved to Boston, the band there played it, too — now at the beginning of the game, and accompanied, in one case, by the presentation of wounded soldiers who had been given tickets. The song has been played at every World Series game since. In 1931, it became the nation’s official anthem. By World War II, the spread of electronic public-address systems meant it could be performed — and eventually sung — at every professional baseball game, not just those where someone hired a band.Today it is a fixture at most all American sporting events, professional and amateur alike. (In many countries, the national anthem is typically played only before international competitions.) Promising young vocalists sing it at local games. Celebrities vie to perform it at high-wattage events like the World Series and the Super Bowl. What was once a novel, improvised wartime gesture has become a ritual — something we expect as a matter of course.It is a tough gig, whatever the circumstances. The song’s melody is notoriously difficult to belt out. Amateur singers are cut plenty of slack — it’s the spirit that counts — but pop stars are held to a high standard. We ask them to apply their talents to stir us into special contact with our own love of country. But we ask them to do so as part of big-budget, for-profit spectacles, in a media culture that valorizes novelty over tradition.Anthem fails constitute a subgenre of their own.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ingrid Andress Says She’ll Enter Rehab After National Anthem Flub

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      Ingrid Andress, a country star, blamed drinking for her performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” during Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game festivities.The country music star Ingrid Andress became one of many high-profile singers who have had trouble pulling off “The Star-Spangled Banner” when she sang it during Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game festivities before a capacity crowd at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, on Monday night.On Tuesday, after video clips of her pitch-challenged version were shared widely on social media for all the wrong reasons, Ms. Andress offered an explanation for the flub on her Instagram account.“I was drunk last night,” she wrote. “I’m checking myself into a facility today to get the help I need. That was not me last night. I apologize to MLB, all the fans, and this country I love so much for that rendition. I’ll let y’all know how rehab is! I hear it’s super fun.”Ms. Andress, 32, broke through to a wide audience in 2020 thanks largely to the ballad “More Hearts Than Mine” from her first album, “Lady Like.” Her debut also earned her nominations in best new artist categories from the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Grammys Awards. In 2021, Ms. Andress had a second hit, “Wishful Drinking,” a duet with Sam Hunt.Ms. Andress’s version of the national anthem, which was performed before M.L.B.’s annual Home Run Derby, generated a lot of chatter online on Monday, with many people on social media posting clips of the Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm, who was seen smirking as he was apparently trying to suppress a laugh while standing at attention among his fellow ballplayers on the field.She began the song with no instrumental backing and took it at an especially slow tempo. By the time she hit the phrase “through the perilous fight,” she seemed to be having trouble staying on pitch. Even so, the audience broke out into applause when she concluded the phrase “our flag was still there.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Kaepernick & America’ Review: A Narrative

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      A documentary examines race in football via Colin Kaepernick’s career.In the past, when people talked about football heroes, both collegiate and professional, they meant white men. When the game became more integrated, after World War II, a racist myth among some fans held that Black players were good for muscle, while strategic thinking was the domain of white quarterbacks and coaches.The rise of the Black quarterback has proved, among other things, revelatory. In the documentary “Kaepernick & America,” the directors Ross Hockrow and Tommy Walker spend a good amount of time showing how excited football fans were when Colin Kaepernick, the biracial quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, was winning games and acting cheerful.Of course, even then there were the irascible white sports commentators like Colin Cowherd, who suggested that Kaepernick’s voluminous tattoos were a little too “street,” and that his post-touchdown bicep kiss was a sign that he wasn’t a “grown-up.” One wonders whether Cowherd ever objected to the white N.F.L. player Mark Gastineau’s sack dances.The movie really turns over a rock once Kaepernick chooses the gesture of taking a knee during the national anthem at games, as a protest against racial injustice and police brutality. The worms revealed include David Portnoy, the founder of the media company Barstool Sports, calling Kaepernick “an ISIS guy” and the entirely, even blindingly white cheerleader for the extreme right, Tomi Lahren, screeching to Kaepernick, “Aren’t you half white?” Even the clips from mainstream sources reveal a media high on its own supply of frenzied delusional nationalism. Eventually Kaepernick’s conscience gets him blackballed, and he remains without a team today.The verbal analysis here isn’t always profound — one interviewee trots out the banal phrase “the conversation we should be having” — but the narrative as presented in archival footage (Kaepernick did not sit for an interview for this film) is exemplary. The sports journalist Steve Wyche sums things bluntly: “We haven’t made much progress in this country.”Kaepernick & AmericaNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. More

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      Review: ‘The Ordering of Moses’ Shines at Riverside Church

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      The Harlem Chamber Players presented R. Nathaniel Dett’s 1937 oratorio in honor of the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance, for the Juneteenth weekend.The Harlem Chamber Players offered a rare, heartfelt performance of R. Nathaniel Dett’s 1937 oratorio “The Ordering of Moses” at Riverside Church on Friday, as part of a centennial celebration of the Harlem Renaissance that had been delayed by the pandemic.Timed to coincide with the Juneteenth weekend, the event felt like a broad community gathering, as though a sampling of city dwellers stepped off a subway train and headed to the same place. New Yorkers across ages and races, including a crying baby or two, filled the pews. Some dressed in natty suits, others in picnic shorts. The only thing stuffy about the evening was the weather outside.With the concert running behind schedule, Terrance McKnight, a host for WQXR and artistic adviser for the ensemble, was on hand to M.C. Noting that the performance was being recorded for his radio station, he encouraged the audience to make some noise: “What’s a Juneteenth celebration in New York City sound like?” The reply: jubilant shouts and applause.That energy continued into a stirring rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” arranged for chorus and soprano soloist (a hard-to-hear Janinah Burnett) by the evening’s conductor, Damien Sneed. Known as the Black National Anthem, it brought the congregation to its feet. Sneed’s harmonization gave it a discordant underbelly reflective of struggle — a reminder that it has been only two years since protests for George Floyd swept the globe, and one year since Juneteenth, an annual observation of Emancipation dating to 1866, was consecrated as a federal holiday.Damien Sneed, conducting the pieces on Friday.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThe evening’s centerpiece, “The Ordering of Moses,” tells the story of Exodus: Moses, inspired by God’s call, overcomes his hesitation and leads the Israelites out of Egypt with his sister Miriam.Dett ingeniously wove spirituals into the typical oratorio structure of soloists and chorus expounding a biblical story with orchestra. In a letter around the time of the premiere, he wrote of the synergy between folk lyrics and scripture, calling it “striking” and “natural.”The score elides musical styles, as well. The emotional restraint of the soloists’ parts suits the solemn subject, and when their voices intermingle, the lines move perhaps too neatly. But the orchestration admits richer, Romantic influences, and a call-and-response with the chorus gives the music the sway of a spiritual.Central to the structure is one spiritual in particular, “Go Down, Moses,” and Dett’s bracing fugue on its melody honors its august history. Harriet Tubman sang its promise of deliverance from oppression on the Underground Railroad, and Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson popularized it across a segregated country.At Riverside Church, the bass section of the Chorale Le Chateau strongly anchored the fugue, and the altos lent it clarity. The tenors and sopranos shied away from the swiftly moving harmonies, reflecting a general timidity among all the choristers when they didn’t have a clear melody to sing.The tenor Chauncey Parker (Moses) let his voice ring and popped out triumphant high notes. The soprano Brandie Sutton (Miriam) phrased her music with confident individuality, echoing the style of the evening’s dedicatee, the legendary Jessye Norman. The baritone Kenneth Overton (the Word and the Voice of God) sang authoritatively, and the mezzo-soprano Krysty Swann (the Voice of Israel) offered glimmers of radiance in the taxing contralto writing.The Harlem School of the arts alumni, teen and junior ensembles, in “The Ordering of Moses.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesIn her opening remarks, Liz Player, the Harlem Chamber Players’ executive and artistic director, noted that “The Ordering of Moses” was the ensemble’s largest-ever undertaking. It showed sometimes in the careful tempos and less-than-sure-footed ensemble.But moments shone. As the story opens up, moving from Moses’ self-doubt to an affirmation of his purpose, so does the music: A lonely cello (touchingly played by Wayne Smith) begins the piece, and an orchestra in full cry ends it, with Parker and Sutton declaiming their lines on high as the chorus cushioned them with long, held notes. The effect was resplendent.Juneteenth, asserted McKnight, is “a celebration of liberty for all Americans,” and in those final moments, as the music bathed the diverse assemblage in its glow, it seemed he was right. More

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      Ukraine’s National Anthem Reverberates Around the World

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      Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the soaring melody of Ukraine’s national anthem has been heard worldwide, from antiwar protests in Moscow to the stages of major concert halls, from N.B.A. basketball arenas to TikTok posts.Known by its opening line, “Ukraine’s glory has not perished,” the anthem is being heard daily in Ukraine too, played by military bands in the middle of bomb-damaged cities, sung tearfully by women sweeping up debris in their homes and, on Saturday, in a vital open-air performance by an opera company in the port city of Odessa, despite fears of an imminent Russian bombing campaign.L’opéra d’Odessa vient de donner un concert hors les murs. FrissonsL’hymne ukrainien : pic.twitter.com/KcEYkTUpWW— Pierre Alonso (@pierre_alonso) March 12, 2022
      And on Monday night, the anthem shook the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, whose white travertine exterior was draped in an enormous Ukrainian flag and bathed in blue and yellow lights for its “Concert for Ukraine.”Alyona Alyona, one of Ukraine’s biggest rappers, said in a Skype interview from her home in Baryshivka, a town east of Kyiv, that she was hearing the anthem about “20 times a day” on Ukrainian TV, where it was being used to rally the country. She had contributed to a compilation of the country’s music stars singing it, she added. “This song has a very big meaning,” she said.Even in Russia, Ukraine’s anthem has been heard, with some antiwar protesters in Moscow having been filmed defiantly singing it while being arrested.Paul Kubicek, a political scientist at Oakland University who has written extensively about Ukraine, said the anthem was penned in the 1860s when much of what is today Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire. It was “a time of cultural awakening,” Kubicek said, with elites looking to “revive and celebrate a Ukrainian heritage that was at risk of being lost to a process of Russification.”Those elites included Pavlo Chubynsky, an ethnologist and poet, who in 1862 wrote the lyrics after being inspired by patriotic songs from Serbia and Poland. The following year, a composer and priest, Mykhailo Verbytsky, set Chubynsky’s words to music.Rory Finnin, a professor of Ukrainian studies at Cambridge University, said Chubynsky’s song was one of a host of texts that worried the Russian authorities around that time. In 1863, they began censoring almost all Ukrainian publications, Finnin said. Soon, Chubynsky was expelled from the country “for disturbing the minds” of the public, Finnin added.The Russian Empire’s efforts to quash Ukrainian identity didn’t meet with much success. After World War I, Chubynsky’s song was briefly made Ukraine’s anthem (in 1918, The New York Times published its lyrics) until the country was absorbed into the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities later gave Ukraine a new anthem, claiming the country had “found happiness in the Soviet Union.”It was only after the Soviet Union collapsed that Chubynsky and Verbytsky’s work returned as the national anthem., and it has been a vital part of Ukrainian life ever since. In 2013 and 2014, it was sung hourly in Kyiv’s Maidan Square at protests against President Viktor F. Yanukovych’s push to make the country closer to Russia. Finnin said he was present at some of those protests and the anthem “was almost used for counting time.”Now, the anthem’s being used to inspire once more, both within the country and abroad. Below are some of the more notable international performances from the past two weeks:Emanuel Ax, Leonidas Kavakos and Yo-Yo MaTo open a recent performance at the Kennedy Center in Washington, the Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos said he wanted to play Ukraine’s anthem as a sign of “respect and solidarity” with the country. What starts as a gentle, almost brittle, rendition, soon brings out the melody’s power.How the Ukraine War Is Affecting the Cultural WorldCard 1 of 7Olga Smirnova. More