Re: Anniversary song

[sylvia schildt <creativa...>]

Shira Shazeer and Ken Richmond (Fish Street Klezmer Duo) also recorded it on
their recent CD " Songs of Love and Drinking."

They performed it to the audience's dancing delight at the past IAYC
Conference in Baltimore.

Sylvia Schildt
Baltimore, Maryland


on 3/5/04 2:25 PM, Bill Barabash at billb978 (at) hotmail(dot)com wrote:

> I've got a recording of the Feder Sisters singing the Anniversary Waltz with
> a completely different set of Yiddish lyrics for which they credit Max
> Kletter.
> 
> -- Bill B.
> 
> Robert A. Rothstein wrote:
> 
>> Lori M Simon wrote:
>> 
>>> I was under the impression that this song was originally written in
>>> Yiddish.  Am I mistaken?
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The original music was from an instrumental piece
>> called "Valurile Dunarii" ("Waves of the Danube") by the Romanian composer
>> Iosif
>> (or perhaps Ion) Ivanovici, first published in 1880 in Bucharest, and later
>> popular throughout Europe. According to James J. Fuld's _The Book of
>> World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk_, the English text of
>> "Anniversary Song" was written by Al Jolson and Saul Chaplin for "The
>> Jolson Story" in 1943, but Ron
>> Robboy's citation of 1946 (MENDELE 7.050) and attribution to Chaplin alone
>> may well be
>> more accurate.*
>> 
>> 
>> Sheet music of "Der khasene valts," published by Metro Music and Hensley
>> Music Co.
>> as "Der chasene waltz (The Wedding Waltz)" with a copyright date of 1963,
>> has
>> 
>> Yiddish lyrics by Chaim Tauber. (The original copyright was granted to the
>> arranger, Henry Lefkowitch, in 1947.)  Tauber's text (including an
>> additional verse that may or may not be his) is as follows:
>> 
>> Akh, yene nakht, yene gliklikhe nakht
>> hot freyd on a shir far undz beyde gebrakht.
>> Tsum ershtn mol ven ikh hob dikh gezen [gezeyn],
>> geshpilt hot dan di muzik azoy sheyn.
>> 
>> Tsvey yunge hertser mir zenen geven [geveyn],
>> libes gefiln umshuldik un reyn.
>> Gedrikt hob ikh dir azoy tsertlikh tsu mir,
>> zikh ayngelibt bald in dir.
>> 
>> Koym zikh dervart, fun der shul nor aroys,
>> gefayert a khasene, glik azoy groys.
>> Gedenkstu di nakht, s'hot geshpilt di muzik,
>> dem zelbn valts fun glik.
>> 
>> Kum, tants mit mir undzer valts fun amol,
>> Gehat nor mit dir hob ikh glik on a tsol.
>> Biz in mayn toyt blaybt mir liber fun alts
>> fun yener nakht undzer khasene valts.
>> 
>> Tsugegebener ferz:
>> 
>> Lebt nokh di nakht azoy frish vi amol,
>> freyd un layd durkhgemakht hobn mir on a tsol.
>> Khotsh zilber di hor un di fis oykh shoyn mid,
>> In harts klingt gor klor fun dem tants undzer lid.
>> 
>> 
>> Some variants can be found in vol. 3 and 7 of  MENDELE
>> <http://shakti.trincoll.edu/~mendele/arc.htm>.
>> 
>> Bob Rothstein
>> 
>> 
>> *"As [Saul] Chaplin tells it in his book [_The Golden Age of Movie Musicals
>> and Me_ (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994)], he
>> needed something -- and he needed it fast -- for 'background' music for a
>> scene depicting the wedding anniversary of Jolson's parents [for the film
>> _The Jolson Story_].  Because Ivanovici's music was long since in the
>> public domain (lapsed copyright, no licensing fees), it seemed ideal, and
>> he quickly dashed off some lyrics to it (in English, of course).  Though
>> Chaplin thought he was only doing background music (his own critique of the
>> metrics and phonetics of his throwaway lyric is priceless -- see pp. 108-11
>> of his book), Jolson's
>> recording of the song became a hit and was seemingly instantly absorbed
>> into quasi-folk repertory as The Anniversary Song."
>> 
> 
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