Re: Cohan: not a Jew.

[TTova <TTova...>]

Yes, I am well aware of the Yiddish Chanukah tunes you mention and in fact 
know them only in Yiddish. 
The one I think musically quite beautiful is "oy ir kleyne Likhtelekh"  But I 
guess what I long for in a great Chanukah tune is one with the attention 
Irving Berlin, Sammy Cahn and Jules Stein gave to Christmas style holiday 
songs.
Like other "great tunes" of the "American songbook" I yearn for a Chanukah 
song with a great opening verse, An A section, a bridge..... Alas those 
wordsmiths never gave us that.
The tunes mentioned are all lovely but IMO more folk tunes then what I call 
"great tunes"

In a message dated 4/22/03 11:00:18 PM, l_cahan (at) staff(dot)chuh(dot)org 
writes:

<< There are really fabulous (IMO) chanukah songs, but they were written in 
Yiddish ("Oy, khanike, oy, knanike", "O, ir kleyne likhtelekh", "Borukh 
ate", etc.)!  Even our most beloved Chanukah song in English ("I have a 
little dreidel") was really written in Yiddish ("Ikh bin a kleyner dreydl").
Lorele

TTova (at) aol(dot)com wrote:

>I agree that many of the popular tunes were less then masterful and I am 
>reminded of how disappointed I am that he or other great American songbook 
>composers never turned their attention to writing a really fabulous Chanukah 
>tune for example.
>Never the less >>



Theresa Tova
check out my website
http://www.theresatova.com
<A HREF="http://theresatova.com/";>www.theresatova.com</A>

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