"Over the Rainbow" Composer Harold Arlen Gets His First Comprehensive Book

Harold Arlen and His Songs, by Walter Frisch, the H. Harold Gumm/Harry and Albert Von Tilzer Professor of Music, is the first comprehensive book about the music of one of the great song composers of the 20th century. Arlen wrote many standards of the American Songbook—including "Get Happy," "Over the Rainbow," "Stormy Weather," "Come Rain or Come Shine," and "The Man That Got Away"—which today rank among the best known and loved. Frisch places these and other songs in the context of a long career that took Arlen from Buffalo, New York, to Harlem's Cotton Club, Broadway stages, and Hollywood film studios. Even with their complex melodies, harmonies, and formal structures, Arlen's tunes remain accessible and memorable. As Frisch shows, he blended influences from his father's Jewish cantorial tradition, his experience as a jazz arranger and performer, and peers like George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, and Irving Berlin. Arlen always emphasized the collaborative nature of songwriting, and he worked with the top lyricists of his day, including Ted Koehler, Yip Harburg, Johnny Mercer, and Ira Gershwin.

Harold Arlen and His Songs is structured around these and Arlen's other partnerships, analyzing individual songs as well as the shows or films in which they appear. The book also treats Arlen's performances of his own music as a vocalist and pianist, through numerous recordings and appearances on radio and television. A final chapter explores the interpretations of his songs by great singers, including many who worked with him, among them, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Frisch discusses the book with Columbia News, along with which musical classics he’s yet to see or hear, what else he’s working on now, and his ideal guest list for a musical dinner party.

How did this book come about?

Even as a teenager, I loved to play on the piano the works of the American Songbook—by Gershwin, Berlin, Rodgers, Kern, and Porter. (I was out of step with my contemporaries and their involvement with rock music.) Within the last 15 years or so, I developed an especially deep admiration and passion for the music of Harold Arlen, whose songs (like "Over the Rainbow" and "Stormy Weather") are much better known than his name. I wrote a short book, which came out in 2017, just about "Over the Rainbow," as a kind of down payment on a larger study of Arlen’s songs.

My new book, Harold Arlen and His Songs, surveys his entire career, focusing on the special interaction of music and lyrics in some of his greatest songs, as well as on Arlen’s own activities as a performer of his music. He worked with some of the top lyricists of the 20th century, including Yip Harburg, Johnny Mercer, and Ira Gershwin. I was fortunate to have access to many primary sources, some made recently available at the Library of Congress and other institutions, and in private collections.

What is it about Arlen that makes him one of the 20^th-century's best American song composers?

Stephen Sondheim, a great admirer of Arlen, put it well: “Arlen kills me,” he said. “He’s as inventive a composer as there ever was.” Sondheim pointed especially to Arlen’s “seduction and warmth.” Arlen's songs display a unique, compelling balance of sophistication and expressiveness. More than his contemporaries, Arlen expanded the standard formal structures and harmonic and melodic vocabularies of Tin Pan Alley song. Compositions like "The Man That Got Away" or "Blues in the Night" take us on emotional journeys matched by few other songwriters. My book contains technical analysis that may be heavy-going for some non-musicians. But Arlen’s songs, which are true compositions, deserve this kind of detailed study, and I hope readers will follow me most of the way.

Describe your ideal reading experience.

I love to get deeply immersed in a book, whether it’s non-fiction or fiction. A good work of non-fiction makes me want to know more about a subject. A good work of fiction takes me into the inner worlds of the characters.

Are there are any classics of music that you have yet to hear or see?

Teaching Music Humanities and Music History for many years at Columbia; attending concerts and operas in New York and elsewhere; listening to recordings for much of my life—all these activities have helped me become familiar with many of the classics of Western art music.

But there are still important works I have never experienced live, like operas by Rossini (Guillaume Tell) and Schoenberg (Die glückliche Hand), and ballets by Stravinsky (Apollo). Bach wrote over 200 cantatas, Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, and Schubert wrote more than 600 lieder. I know a fair number of these works, but there is always so much more to discover among the classics!

What books might people be surprised to find on your shelves?

Perhaps the Earthsea trilogy of Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, or, most recently, The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman, a wonderful revisiting of the Arthurian legends. I love reading great works of fantasy like these.

What are you teaching in the fall semester?

I will be on leave in the fall semester doing research for a new book.

Other than promoting your new book, what else are you working on now?

A book about the classic 1964 French film musical, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Even after 60 years, this movie, directed and written by Jacques Demy, with a magnificent score by Michel Legrand, remains original and compelling. It was the first film musical (and still one of the few) to be sung entirely from beginning to end, with no spoken dialogue. Demy and Legrand sought to avoid the stop-and-sing structure of traditional musicals, and also to create something different from opera. Umbrellas presents a unique fusion of words, music, image, and drama.

Which three musicians or composers, dead or alive, would you invite to a dinner party, and why?

Perhaps Frédéric Chopin, Johnny Mercer, and Nadia Boulanger. Chopin because he was one of the most original composers in musical history—basically reinventing the piano repertory for the 19th century (and beyond). And because he had some very interesting perspectives on music, as revealed in remarks taken down by some of his piano pupils, and in his conversations with Eugène Delacroix, as noted in the painter's diary.

Johnny Mercer because, among the figures of the American Songbook, he was perhaps the most versatile—a brilliant lyricist, a talented composer, and a very fine singer. He also was something of an entrepreneur, creating Capitol Records in the 1940s, without which we would not have recordings of some of America’s top songs and singers.  

Nadia Boulanger was a legendary pedagogue in France from about the 1920s through the 1960s. She didn’t teach composition as such, but musicianship and analysis. Among her famous pupils were composers as diverse as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and Philip Glass—as well as Legrand. Boulanger knew, and welcomed to her at-home salons, every major musical figure in Paris, including Stravinsky, Ravel, and even the aged Saint-Saëns.

Walter Frisch will be discussing Harold Arlen and His Songs in a panel discussion at the Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities on September 24.