LAST NIGHT WHEN WE WERE YOUNG- AN ARLEN CONCERT SONG WITHOUT ARTIFICE

last Night When We Were Yong- -An Arlen Concert Song Without Artifice. There is a long held belief that there are popular songs aimed at the mass audience and there are concert  songs   presented on a concert stage and with some of the usual formality reserved for opera arias or Shubert lieder. There is  an implicit assumption that somehow these songs are more " serious" and worthy of a higher aesthetic evaluation than songs sung in a dimly lit nightclub or jazz joint. Nothing could be farther from the truth. All The Things You Are by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein Jr. is every bit as serious and complex as a Puccini aria and reflects musical skills normally associated with classical compositions.
In 1932. Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y.Harburg wrote Last Night When Were Young  for Lawrence Tibbett, an opera singer. The song was cut from Tibbett's 1935 film" Metropolitan" but was performed as instrumental music along with the film credits.
Alec Wilder, Author of " American Popular Song   The Great Innovators" has described it as  " A most remarkable and beautiful song, It is one which goes far beyond the boundaries of popular song." For Wilder, " It is a concert song ( and all that entails) without a trace of trying to be.. It hasn't any artiness about it or pretense."   The point I am trying to make is that some so-called popular songs can achieve  concert song intensity and  artistry without the sanctified formalism that often places a distinct barrier between the "artiste" as performer and the audience expected to listen most attentively.

When you listen to Sinatra singing " Last Night When We Were Young"  he is every bit as serious as any opera or concert singer because the music and the lyrics demand that degree of artistry. The way he stretches out the word s " Ages Ago   , is an example of how an accomplished a singer of popular songs can introduce new notes or phrasing that adds to the written notes in a way no opera or concert singer would dare to do. Just as there are innovators who created the Great American songbook, there are innovative performers who burnish songs with their unique interpretive artistry. Sinatra,Ella Fitzgerald, Dawn Upshaw, Audra McDonald , Tony Bennett, Barbara Cook & Mel Torme are just some of these uniquely  gifted performers of the classic American popular songbook.


LINK . http://youtu.be/6rUMiCmYWao