A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

"A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" is a British ballad written in 1939 by composer Manning Sherwin and lyricist Eric Maschwitz, and it became one of the most recorded songs to come out of wartime London. The A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square chords and the backing track here can be taken at any tempo and moved to any key.

Who wrote "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square"

The music is by Manning Sherwin, an American songwriter working in Britain, and the words are by Eric Maschwitz, an English lyricist and broadcaster. The song has lyrics and is usually treated as a vocal number, though instrumentalists play it often as a ballad. It was written in 1939 and introduced by Judy Campbell in the London revue New Faces in 1940, the same year it was published and first recorded by several British and American dance bands.

Recordings that made it a standard

• Glenn Miller and His Orchestra, single, 1940: one of the early American dance-band versions, which carried the song across the Atlantic within months of its London debut.

• Frank Sinatra, Point of No Return, 1962: a slow, string-heavy reading arranged by Axel Stordahl, with Sinatra treating it as a reflective piece rather than a dance tune.

• The Manhattan Transfer, Mecca for Moderns, 1981: a close-harmony vocal quartet arrangement that put the song's inner voice-leading in the foreground.

• Rod Stewart, Fly Me to the Moon… The Great American Songbook Volume V, 2010: a pop-singer's approach that brought the tune to a later audience.