Four Last Songs (1937-1958) - I

It took me half of a Sunday to do it, but after I had hatched the idea of a punning collection of last songs by various composers of popular music^*, I racked my brains (and the Internet) and came up with four decent last songs.

Actually, I managed to find eight, so that's two volumes of four last songs. Here's the first. I'm posting them in chronological order of composition.

The topic of late works^** made me think back to Sebastian Faulk's Enderby. The novel’s eponymous narrator, a man both repulsive and intriguing at the same time, reflects on the esteem associated with the phrase “late work”:

“Late work.” It’s just another way of saying feeble work. I hate it. Monet’s messy last waterlilies, for instance — though I suppose his eyesight was shot. ‘The Tempest’ only has about 12 good lines in it. Think about it. ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood.’ Hardly ‘Great Expectations,’ is it? Or Matisse’s paper cutouts, like something from the craft room at St. B’s. Donne’s sermons. Picasso’s ceramics. Give me strength.

It's worth pointing out that his sallies often go off-target. I found myself wondering if anyone could find Beethoven's last quartets as objectionable as Enderby does, and if this fact alone was designed to call into question his aesthetic sense.

I have no doubt that Enderby would pour scorn on this post. What are your thoughts on the last songs? Are you an Enderby yourself?

Our Love is Here to Stay (George Gershwin, 1937)	With a lyric that is up there with the best – a lyric that is, in fact, poetry – this is one of George Gershwin’s most sensual songs. Alec Wilder, slightly cooler in his praise than you’d expect, writes: The form is A-B-A-C, as is that of “Love Walked In”. There is much less use of the repeated note and, like the other song, no effort to be clever. Rather, there is restraint, a tight rein at all times, and a lovely, final cadence, enhanced mysteriously by a quarter rest preceding it.
Al Bowlly - When That Man is Dead and Gone (Irving Berlin, 1941)	This is not Berlin’s last song (that’s for my next instalment), but is rather the swansong of one of the most distinctive British singers of all time, Al Bowlly, killed by a parachute mine a fortnight after this song was recorded. It was said that his body strangely appeared untouched even though the massive explosion had blown Bowlly’s bedroom door off its hinges and it had fatally smashed against his head. (from Another Nickel in the Machine) Although at first blush a song so invidious it is almost unprecedented in the discographies of both Bowlly and Berlin, the record is actually quite playful, using the phrase ‘that man’ as a playful euphemism, standing in for the obvious: Hitler.
Nobody Else But Me (Jerome Kern, 1945)	Possibly one of the greatest last songs ever written, Kern wrote this for the second revival of Show Boat. Wilder found it “the perfect epitaph to his career”, and it’s certainly got a touch of that glitziness that Wilder prized so much in American composers. It’s one of the few songs where I think the composer has really enjoyed writing the verse.
Wouldn’t It Be Fun? (Cole Porter, 1958)	Sung by the Emperor of China in Porter’s TV musical Aladdin, it is manifestly not one of Porter’s greatest, abounding in neither the quintessential lyrical complexity nor melodic wit. It does, however, have a couple of nice lines: “Yesterday I had to endure a kite-flying match”. Although it’s not of the calibre of any of Porter’s earlier works, it is one of the less enervating songs of Aladdin. In fact, I should point out that it is rather amazing that Porter had continued to write such great music at all after suffering through 20 years of often sleepless agony with his crushed leg.

^* The exception here is Bowlly, who is represented here as a performer.

^** I suppose that, although these are all last songs, not all of the songs could be described as later works; some being the product of men in their forties.

The follow-up post, Four Last Songs 1959-1980, features songs written by Oscar Hammerstein, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin and Alec Wilder.