Almost without exception Carousel opened to rave reviews. Nevertheless, most critics could not resist the temptation to compare the new work to Oklahoma!, then beginning its third year on Broadway. Although an anonymous reviewer in the New York World-Telegram found “the distinct flavor of ‘Oklahoma!’” in “A Real Nice Clambake,” persistent rumors that the latter song once belonged to the former and titled “A Real Nice Hayride,” are unsubstantiated.5 Ward Morehouse’s review in the New York Sun is representative in its conclusion that the laudatory Carousel could not quite match the earlier masterpiece: “‘Carousel,’ a touching and affecting musical play, is something rare in the theater. It’s a hit, and of that there can be no doubt. If it is not the musical piece to challenge ‘Oklahoma’ for all-time honors it is certainly one that deserves its place in the 44th Street block. The team of Rodgers and Hammerstein will go on forever.”6
A handful of reviewers regarded the new musical more favorably than its predecessor. According to John Chapman, “‘Carousel’ is one of the finest musical plays I have seen and I shall remember it always. It has everything the professional theatre can give it—and something besides: heart, integrity, an inner glow.”7 Although reviewers then and now found the second-act ballet too long, Robert Garland wrote that “when somebody writes a better musical play than ‘Carousel,’ written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein will have to write it.”8
By the time it returned to New York in 1954 the climate of critical opinion had shifted further, and Brooks Atkinson could now write that Carousel “is the most glorious of the Rodgers and Hammerstein works.” Atkinson continued: “Three of the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows have had longer runs than ‘Carousel.’ It is the stepchild among ‘Oklahoma!’ ‘South Pacific,’ and ‘The King and I.’ But when the highest judge of all hands down the ultimate verdict, it is this column’s opinion that ‘Carousel’ will turn out to be the finest of their creations. If it were not so enjoyable, it would probably turn out to be opera.”9
Carousel would also remain the pride and joy of its creators. For Rodgers, especially, the second musical with Hammerstein stood as his personal favorite among all his forty musicals. Without any false sense of modesty he conveyed his reasons: “Oscar never wrote more meaningful or more moving lyrics, and to me, my score is more satisfying than any I’ve ever written. But it’s not just the songs; it’s the whole play. Beautifully written, tender without being mawkish, it affects me deeply every time I see it performed.”10
The above critical reception and the judgment of its authors partially explains why Carousel and not Oklahoma! was selected for examination in the present survey. But given the importance attributed to Oklahoma! as the “Eroica” Symphony of the American musical, the question “Why not Oklahoma!?” nevertheless lingers and needs to be addressed. The simple answer is that Oklahoma!’s incalculable historical importance as the musical that changed all musicals is equaled and arguably surpassed dramatically and musically by Carousel. Not content to merely duplicate their earlier success, Rodgers and Hammerstein in their second musical attempted to convey a still richer dramatic situation with characters who were perhaps more complexly realized, through music, than the inhabitants of the Oklahoma Territory.
Further, the artistic ambitions in Carousel are matched by a deeper relationship between music and drama. The integrated songs in Oklahoma! grow naturally from the action and reflect each character’s idiosyncratic nature. But, like Show Boat and Porgy and Bess before it and West Side Story after, the music of Carousel develops action and explores nuances of characterization that frequently transcend what the characters themselves understand.11 The analysis that follows will suggest how Rodgers and Hammerstein’s imitation may have surpassed (artistically if not in popularity) not only its model but many other musicals that have had their two or more hours’ traffic on the Broadway stage.
The “Bench Scene”
In several respects Julie Jordan, who moves us by her ability to see the good qualities in her abusive husband, Billy Bigelow, and by her uncompromising loyalty to his memory, bears a stronger kinship to Hammerstein’s Show Boat heroine Magnolia Ravenal than to Oklahoma!’s Laurey. Even the message of its central song, “What’s the Use of Wondrin,’” like that of Carousel as a whole, echoes Hammerstein’s theme in Show Boat as embodied in the song “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”: once fate brings two lovers together “all the rest is talk.” Julie shares with Magnolia rather than her Oklahoma cousin a common destiny—to love a man who will eventually generate much unhappiness. Like Magnolia, Julie will also meet the man she will love early in her show.12
Also like Magnolia and Ravenal, Julie and Billy—as well as Laurey and Curley in the analogous “People Will Say We’re in Love”—describe a hypothetical rather than an acknowledged love, at least at the outset of their duets. The romantic leads in Show Boat, however, declare their love in the waltz “You Are Love” at the emotional climax of act I and offer additional explanations for their feelings early in act II when they sing “Why Do I Love You?” (at least before Hal Prince gave this song to Parthy in the 1994 Broadway revival). In contrast, Julie and Billy, more tragically, are unable to express their love directly, not only in their first duet, “If I Loved You,” but at any point in the drama, at least while Billy is alive.
In an extremely poignant moment that immediately follows Billy’s suicide in act II, scene 2, Julie finally manages to share her feelings with her deceased husband: “One thing I never told you—skeered you’d laugh at me. I’ll tell you now—(Even now she has to make an effort to overcome her shyness in saying it) I love you. I love you. (In a whisper) I love—you. (Smiles) I was always ashamed to say it out loud. But now I said it. Didn’t I?”13
Outside Julie’s cottage three scenes later, Billy, whose presence is felt rather than seen or heard, finally sings his love in the following reprise (release and final A section) of “If I Loved You.” According to Rodgers, this inspired new idea was, after the removal of Mr. and Mrs. God, the only other major change made during the tryouts. “Longing to tell you, / But afraid and shy, / I let my golden chances pass me by. / Now I’ve lost you; / Soon I will go in the mist of day, / And you never will know / How I loved you. / How I loved you.”14
Just as Kern conveys Magnolia’s penetration into Ravenal’s being by merging her music with his, Rodgers finds subtle musical ways to let audiences know that Julie’s love for Billy is similarly more than hypothetical. During the opening exchange between Carrie and Julie, for example, Julie’s friend makes it clear that she knows why Julie is behaving so “queerly.” First, Carrie describes Julie’s recent habit of rising early and sitting silently by the window. Julie lamely denies this circumstantial evidence of love sickness (“I like to watch the river meet the sea”), but Carrie’s next and more telling observation of Julie’s behavior on the job, the “Mill Theme” (Example 9.1) is incontrovertible: “When we work in the mill, weavin’ at the loom, / Y’ gaze absent-minded at the roof, / And half the time yer shuttle gets twisted in the threads / Till y’can’t tell the warp from the woof!”15
Although Julie denies even this evidence with a “‘Tain’t so!,” her strangeness, even more than Frankie’s in On Your Toes, cannot be attributed to tonsillitis or to the combination of pickles and pie à la mode: it’s got to be love. The sensitive Carrie, now that Julie has a “feller,” can inform Julie of her own romantic good fortune in being courted by the young entrepreneur Enoch Snow. This time Julie does not attempt to deny Carrie’s presumption. When Julie explains to Billy minutes later how she would behave, hypothetically, “if she loved him,” Rodgers and Hammerstein have her describe, again to the “Mill Theme,” the behavior that Carrie has in fact already observed. Julie’s denial of love may satisfy Billy, but it fails to convince either Carrie or a knowing audience who has more than sufficient textual and musical evidence to catch Julie in her self-deception.
Example 9.1. The “Mill T
heme”
The spark that will eventually set fire to Julie and Billy has already been lit in the pantomimed prelude to act I.16 During this prelude we see that Billy “takes his mind off his work” when he watches Julie and that she gains his attention in part by being the only person who does not “sway unconsciously with the rhythm of his words.” The description of the prelude’s action points out (parenthetically) that “Billy’s attitude to Julie throughout this scene is one of only casual and laconic interest.” Although he makes a point of finding the last place on the carousel for Julie, he then “dismisses her from his mind.” When he later waves “patronizingly,” the omniscient description notes that “it means nothing to him,” but that “it means so much to her that she nearly falls!”17
“If I Loved You,” the climactic moment in the following Bench Scene (act I, scene 1), reinforces these discrepancies in emotional intensity and awareness between the principals. Julie sings as a young woman already in love; Billy, although he admits to having noticed Julie at the carousel “three times before today” (she has actually been there far more often) sings, if not about a hypothetical love, about a love that he does not yet comprehend. Thus Billy can truthfully assert that if he loved Julie he would be “scrawny and pale,” and “lovesick like any other guy.” So far none of these symptoms has appeared. In fact, Billy does not realize until act II, scene 5, what Mrs. Mullin, the jealous, older, and less desirable carousel proprietress, has understood only too well as early as the prelude. Already in the pantomimed introduction Mrs. Mullin has demonstrated that, like Julie, she is enamored of Billy. Also in the prelude Mrs. Mullin has observed his unique attraction to Julie. We learn later that Mrs. Mullin correctly perceived that this peculiar young woman posed a serious threat both to her business—the other young women would patronize the carousel less ardently if Billy were romantically attached—and to any more personal relationship she might enjoy with her favorite barker.
Carousel, prelude to act I. Jan Clayton and John Raitt on the carousel (1945). Museum of the City of New York. Theater Collection.
Although Rodgers and Hammerstein have the two love-struck mill workers, Carrie and Julie, sing the same tune, “You’re a Queer One, Julie Jordan,” Rodgers musically differentiates the sharp character distinctions drawn by Hammerstein. He does this by contrasting Carrie’s even eighth-note rhythms (“You are quieter and deeper than a well”) with Julie’s dotted eighths and sixteenths (“There nothin’ that I keer t’choose t’ tell”) (Example 9.2a); revealingly, Billy will whistle Julie’s dotted rhythms rather than Carrie’s even ones (Example 9.2b). A clue to Rodgers’s intention might be found in his autobiography, Musical Stages, where he discusses how “It Might as Well Be Spring,” from the Rodgers and Hammerstein film musical State Fair (Example 9.2c), serves as “a good example of the way a tune can amplify the meaning of its lyric.”18 Rodgers continues: “The first lines are: ‘I’m as restless as a willow in a wind storm, / I’m as jumpy as a puppet on a string.’ Taking its cue directly from these words, the music itself is appropriately restless and jumpy.”19
Example 9.2. “Jumpy” rhythms in Carousel and State Fair
(a) Julie and Carrie Sequence (Carousel)
(b) Scene Billy and Julie (Carousel)
(c) “It Might As Well Be Spring” (State Fair)
(d) Julie and Carrie Sequence (Carousel)
Clearly, Julie’s dotted rhythms when she sings “There’s nothin’ that I keer t’ choose t’ tell,” almost identical in pitch to Carrie’s “You are quieter and deeper than a well,” successfully contrasts Julie’s restlessness with Carrie’s stability. When Julie tells Carrie that she likes “to watch the river meet the sea” (Example 9.2d), Rodgers presents a dotted melodic line filled with wide leaps that are unmistakably “jumpy as a puppet on a string.” Once Rodgers has established Julie’s sharp rhythmic profile in her opening exchange with Carrie, he shows Julie’s influence over her friend when Carrie adopts dotted rhythms to conclude their sung exchange (“And as silent as an old Sahaira Spink!”). More significantly, Julie’s dotted rhythms return when Billy reprises “You’re a queer one” after Carrie’s “Mister Snow” and Julie repeats her dotted jumpy melodic line to the words “I reckon that I keer t’ choose t’ stay.”
In the closing moments of the first act, Billy’s imaginary daughter, appropriately enough, will share Julie’s restlessness and her dotted rhythms. By the time Billy sings the “My little girl” portion of his “Soliloquy,” dotted rhythms have acquired a strong association with Julie, and by extension her as-yet-unborn daughter, Louise. Thus when Billy imagines his daughter as “half again as bright” and a girl who “gets hungry every night,” Rodgers has the future father sing Julie’s dotted rhythms. True to her character, in the second act Julie’s “What’s the Use of Wondrin’” also makes persistent use of dotted rhythms. On this occasion, however, Rodgers captures Julie’s newly acquired inner peace when he replaces with more sedate scales the jumpy melodic leaps that characterized her conversations with Carrie and Billy in act I, scene 1.
Rodgers also gives dramatic meaning to another distinctive rhythm in Carousel: the triplet. The main association between triplets and the principal lovers occurs when each attempts to answer what would happen if they loved the other in the song “If I loved you.” The “hidden” triplets in their response to this subjunctive (Example 9.3a) reinforce the unreality and hesitation that matches the lines “Time and again I would try to say” and “words wouldn’t come in an easy way.” Not only do these words appear on the weak beats (second and fourth) of their measures–in marked contrast to the triplets in “Many a New Day” from Oklahoma! (Example 3.1b)—they are invariably tied to the stronger beats (first and third).
Of course, the imagined musical responses of Julie and Billy nevertheless reveal the truth that Julie is hiding from Billy and Billy from himself: the two misfits in fact are already in love. Although their desire for verbal communication is great (“Time and again I would try to say all I’d want you to know” or “Longing to tell you, but afraid and shy”), the pair must rely on music to express their deepest feelings. Words do not “come in an easy way.” Most poignantly, as if to reflect the painful truth of the few words they do sing, within a few months Billy indeed will be leaving Julie “in the mist of day.”
Just as Billy adopts Julie’s dotted rhythms in his “Soliloquy,” he will adopt in this central (and earliest-composed song) the triplets that he shared with Julie in “If I Loved You.” In contrast to the hesitant tied triplets of his duet with Julie, however, Billy in his private “Soliloquy” sings “Many a New Day”-type triplets that stand alone when he envisions having a daughter (compare Example 9.3b with Example 3.1b).20 After Billy’s death, triplets also provide a brief but distinctive contrast in the release of Julie’s “What’s the Use of Wondrin’” to the ubiquitous dotted rhythms of the main melody.
Example 9.3. Triplets in “If I Loved You” and “Soliloquy”
(a) “If I Loved You”
(b) “Soliloquy”
It makes musical sense, of course, for Rodgers to fill his prelude with waltzes to accompany the swirling of the carousel. But marches and polkas would be equally suitable. Rodgers knew, however, that waltzes, although capable of expressing a variety of meanings and emotions, had been associated with love ever since Viennese imports had dominated Broadway in the decade before World War I.21 The most familiar waltz musical then and now was and is Lehár’s The Merry Widow, the work that launched an operetta invasion on Broadway in 1907. But waltzes had also figured prominently in 1920s operetta. Several of these featured lyrics by Hammerstein himself, including “You Are Love” in Show Boat. Later, in The King and I’s “Hello, Young Lovers” and South Pacific’s “A Wonderful Guy” Rodgers gives Anna Leonowens and Nellie Forbush waltzes when they sing of love, and Nellie’s temporarily rejected suitor Emile De Becque sings a waltz lamenting a lost love in “This Nearly Was Mine.”
In Carousel wa
ltzes are associated either with the carousel itself, as in the procession of the several sharply defined waltzes that make up the pantomimed prelude, or in the chorus of community solidarity that characterizes the main tune of “A Real Nice Clambake.” Rodgers and Hammerstein therefore match the absence of directly expressed love between Billy and Julie by not allowing them to sing a waltz. Only when Billy sings his successions of triplets in his “Soliloquy” does Rodgers suggest a waltz (Example 9.4a), a suggestion that is reinforced with a melodic fragment identical to the melody of the final carousel waltz (Example 9.4b). Characteristically, Billy must keep his waltzes, as well as his expression of love, to himself.
Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Integrated Musical
As early as the 1920s, Rodgers strove to create musicals in which songs were thoroughly integrated into a dramatic whole. In his finest efforts with Hart, including On Your Toes and Pal Joey, and in his first collaboration with Hammerstein, Oklahoma!, Rodgers often succeeded in making the songs flow naturally from the dialogue and express character. But it was not until Carousel that Rodgers created a thoroughly unified musical score which also achieved a truly convincing coordination (i.e., integration) between music and dramatic action. Earlier, in On Your Toes, Pal Joey, and Oklahoma! Rodgers used the technique of thematic transformation for dramatic purposes, but the resulting musical unity did not always reinforce a drama generated by musical forces.
Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Page 27