[Dixielandjazz] White Christmas

[Fred Hoeptner]

>Rob Kapilow, playing as he is interviewed, notes how "White Christmas"
eschews the
usual "bridge": the countervailing melody normally following a song's first
16 measures.
Berlin's opening bars "take you up the scale of yearning in their chords,"
and repeating
them immediately heightens the impact. "Hear the minor chords for 'listen'
and 'glisten'?"
asks Mr. Kapilow, known for his "What Makes It Great?" lecture series. "It's
>heartbreaking."

Despite not being directly related to jazz, the analysis of the popularity
of White Christmas interested me greatly as I have often tried to similarly
analyze (to myself) tunes in the standard Dixieland repertoire. However, I
must disagree with Mr. Kapilow in his statement about minor chords. "Listen"
is indeed minor, but not "glisten," which is merely the seventh of the
tonic, which I assume here to be C. To me the "heartbreaking" feature
relative to "glisten" is the sequence of chords leading into it: "tree" = C,
"tops" = E minor or C maj 7th, "glisten" = C7.

- Fred