A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (song) - Composition

Composition

The song was written in the then small French fishing village of Le Lavandou—now a favourite resort for British holidaymakers and second-home owners—shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. According to Maschwitz, the title was "stolen" from a story by Michael Arlen. The song had its first performance in the summer of 1939 in a local bar, where the melody was played on piano by Manning Sherwin with the help of the resident saxophonist. Maschwitz sang the words while holding a glass of wine, but nobody seemed impressed. In the spring of 2002, an attempt was made to find the bar where this song, which would later become a standard, was first performed with the view to having a blue plaque set up. With the help of the local tourist office, elderly residents were questioned, but it proved impossible to establish the venue.

The first stanza (which is properly called a "verse," which is often spoken as an intro) and the additional lyrics (properly called the "chorus") were in the original song as written but are rarely sung in recordings (those of Bobby Darin, Mel Torme, Blossom Dearie, Twiggy, Vera Lynn and Rod Stewart being notable exceptions). Twiggy's version was featured in an episode ("Fran's Gotta Have It") of The Nanny.

It was published in 1940, early in World War II, when it was first performed in the London review New Faces by Judy Campbell (later the mother of Jane Birkin). In the same year it was also performed by both Ray Noble and then by Vera Lynn. The tune is a recurring theme in the Fritz Lang film Man Hunt (1941).