Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber

by Block, Geoffrey

  The first of these was Cats in 1981, an unusual show that abandoned a traditional book and instead added a loose revue-like story line to T. S. Eliot’s poetic collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939). Unlike a traditional revue, Cats was told entirely through dance and song. The song “Memory,” Trevor Nunn’s reworking of another Eliot poem not part of Practical Cats called “Rhapsody on a Windy Night,” surpassed in popularity even the big song hits of Jesus Christ Superstar (“I Don’t Know How to Love Him”) and Evita (“Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina”). In his next show, Starlight Express (1984), with lyrics by Richard Stilgoe (who would contribute about 20 percent of the lyrics to Phantom), toy trains come to life, perform on roller skates, and sing a rock based score with a smattering of other popular vernacular styles (blues, spirituals, gospel, and country).

  One year after Starlight, Lloyd Webber produced yet another album that would eventually lead to a staged show, this time a hit single and promotional music video of the title song of The Phantom of the Opera performed by his new bride Sarah Brightman and lead rock singer Steve Harley. That same year, July 1985, a rough rock-oriented version of act I was performed at Lloyd Webber’s annual summer Sydmonton Festival, a performance that introduced his new and previously untested lyricist Charles Hart then only twenty-four. Not wanting to be influenced by a performance, however unpolished, Prince stayed away from Sydmonton but would soon join Lloyd Webber and Hart to shape the work into its present form.

  Popularity …

  It took some time for Sondheim to gain a wide following and critical respect as a composer-lyricist. I have duly noted allegations of coldness, a lack of melody, and, when discussing Sunday in the Park with George, even the absence of a second act. Despite enormous critical praise and scholarly attention, not one Sondheim show lasted as many as one thousand performances during its first Broadway run. Most lasted fewer, and some considerably fewer, than five hundred performances.

  By contrast, from the early 1970s to the present, Lloyd Webber has enjoyed record-breaking success on both sides of the Atlantic. The facts are indisputable. Via immense popular and commercial success (with a few exceptions in New York), the British composer of Jesus Christ Superstar (New York, 1971; London, 1972), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (London 1972; New York, 1981), Evita (London, 1978; New York, 1979), Cats (London, 1981; New York, 1982), Starlight Express (London, 1984; New York, 1987), The Phantom of the Opera (London, 1986; New York, 1988), Aspects of Love (London, 1989; New York, 1990), and Sunset Boulevard (London and Los Angeles, 1993; New York, 1994) has achieved unprecedented popular acclaim on Broadway and still greater popularity in London’s West End.2 With the two longest all-time Broadway runs (Phantom, Cats) and three of the top five West End runs (Phantom, Cats, Starlight), Lloyd Webber is simply the most popular Broadway composer of the post–Rodgers and Hammerstein era and probably of all time. Paul Prece and William Everett summarize the economic and geographic reach of the Phantom: “In January 2006, it was reported that Phantom alone had grossed more money than any other production on stage and screen (£1.7 billion/approximately $3.2 billion), surpassing huge money-making films such as Star Wars, E.T., and Titanic. The show has been seen by over eighty million people.”3

  One unmistakable sign of success and critical acclaim is the number of major awards a show and its creators earn in a given year and over time. Comparing the awards to Lloyd Webber and Sondheim, the two dominant Broadway composers of the past several decades, and to the number of Tonys awarded to each for Best Score, Sondheim owns a distinct advantage. Between 1971 and 1994 Sondheim received six awards for Best Score (Company, Follies, Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, and Passion). Lloyd Webber received three between 1980 and 1995 (Evita, Cats, and Sunset Boulevard).4 From this elite group all but Follies and Into the Woods also won the Tony Award for Best Show.

  Since Phantom was nominated the same year as Woods, it would have been necessary for the shows to share the award for both to win. In some sense they did share the award in that Phantom received the award for Best Musical, Director (Prince), the three major design awards (Maria Björnson for both scenic and costume design and Andrew Bridge for lighting), principal actor (Michael Crawford as the Phantom), and actress in a featured role (Judy Kaye as the Prima Donna Carlotta Guidicelli), while Into the Woods took home the awards for Book (James Lapine), Score (Sondheim), and principal actress (Joanna Gleason as the Baker’s Wife). Staging awards to Phantom, the writing awards to Into the Woods, and a split in acting awards (with the edge to Phantom).

  In the years since Into the Woods (November 5, 1987) and shortly thereafter Phantom (January 26, 1988) first arrived on Broadway, the former show, with a solid but unremarkable 765 performances, has already experienced a seven-month revival in 2002 (18 previews and 279 performances). Meanwhile, The Phantom of the Opera, like Carlotta in Follies, is still here. Four years after the Into the Woods revival closed, on January 9, 2006, Phantom surpassed another Lloyd Webber musical, Cats, as Broadway’s longest running show. At the time this is written Phantom has reached 8,771 performances, giving it the distinction of being the first to cross 8,000. Cats remains in second place at 7,485.

  Among currently running shows only the revival of Chicago (5,088) or The Lion King (4,720) are in any position to overtake these two Lloyd Webber megamusical megahits, and these still have long way to go.5 From the New York arrival of Jesus Christ Superstar in 1971 to the present, the sun has yet to set on the Lloyd Webber era either on Broadway or in the West End. As John Snelson writes, “in the West End, the opening of Jesus Christ Superstar in 1972 marked the start of a continuous presence of Lloyd Webber shows through to the time of writing [2004]; often during that span there have been four concurrent Lloyd Webber shows, and in both 1991 and 1997 six were playing simultaneously.”6

  … versus Critical Acclaim

  Before the first edition of Enchanted Evenings was published in 1997, the only serious Lloyd Webber biography to appear was Michael Walsh’s biographically thorough, generally sympathetic, non-technical Andrew Lloyd Webber: His Life and Works (1989, revised and enlarged 2nd ed., 1997).7 In The Broadway Musical (1990; revised and expanded 2nd ed., 2002), Joseph P. Swain devoted a highly critical chapter to Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita.8 Before the end of the 1990s serious Broadway scholarship was still the exception to the rule, but a number of books, dissertations, and journal articles on Sondheim had already appeared, including Stephen Banfield’s comprehensive analytical study Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals (1993). A journal devoted exclusively to Sondheim, The Sondheim Review, was launched in 1994. In recent years at least three full essay collections on Sondheim have appeared in addition to major scholarly and analytical attention to Sondheim in books, journals, courses and seminars, papers and even whole sessions of papers at musicological conferences, and substantial parts of more general books in the field. Readers have come to expect more than a “cursory mention” (see the quotation that opened this chapter) on Sondheim when they pick up a survey of the Broadway musical.

  On the other hand, in a situation similar to the relatively sparse attention given Puccini in comparison with Verdi and Wagner, serious study of Lloyd Webber, including recent scholarship, “is conspicuous by its absence” (also quoted from the opening of the chapter). The second edition of Steven Suskin’s Show Tunes (1991) included a section called “Notable Imported Shows.” About half of the shows listed were shows with music by Lloyd Webber. In the Preface to the third edition Suskin justifies the omission of this section and the expunging of Lloyd Webber that resulted: “All of the British imports since the Second Edition have failed; thus, I have seen fit to excise the import section and concentrate on matters of more interest.”9 As a consequence of this executive decision, the most popular Broadway composer of the last thirty years and probably in history is now banished from a major reference book that purports to cover “The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway’s Major Composers.” In his critical re
marks on Maury Yeston’s excellent version of Phantom, which was performed to some acclaim by Houston’s Theater of the Stars in 1991, Suskin compares the work favorably with its vastly better known predecessor: “Yeston’s score is actually far more tuneful than you-know-who’s.”10 Even the identity of “you know who” remains securely hidden, a phantom of the musical theater.

  Of the thirty-eight Broadway musicals explored in Raymond Knapp’s two-volume survey of the American musical and musical film, seven feature shows by Sondheim and only one considers a show by Lloyd Webber (Evita).11 Although Knapp notes that not everyone shares a negative view and offers dramatic reasons behind Lloyd Webber’s reuse of melodic material, the disparity in emphasis nonetheless speaks for itself and reveals a stronger interest in Sondheim. Of the thirty-four shows discussed in Scott Miller’s three volumes of essays, eight are devoted to works by Sondheim, only one by Lloyd Webber (the early Jesus Christ Superstar).12 Ethan Mordden, who devotes from four to fourteen pages each to nearly every Sondheim show in his seven-volume survey, dismisses Lloyd Webber through sharp criticism but mainly through neglect. In fact, among all of Lloyd Webber’s output, only Jesus Christ Superstar, according to Mordden, demonstrates meaningful dramatic correlation between theme and characters (and consequently merits two pages).

  Despite relative inattention in mainstream surveys, the past few years have witnessed serious studies on Lloyd Webber musicals that combine biographical, critical, and analytical commentary, especially John Snelson’s Andrew Lloyd Webber (2004) and Jessica Sternfeld’s The Megamusical (2006).13 Both Snelson and Sternfeld are sympathetic to their subject and offer spirited defenses of Lloyd Webber against his many critics. For the most part, however, authors who devote some attention to Lloyd Webber characteristically treat significant elements of his shows, if not the composer himself, with undisguised disdain. Some of these studies minimize—they can’t ignore—Lloyd Webber’s achievement and attribute the staggeringly popular success of his shows, and other overblown megamusicals, merely to stagecraft and media hype.14 Another commonly voiced criticism of Lloyd Webber shows, even in writings that are largely positive—for example, Stephen Citron’s double study of Lloyd Webber and Sondheim in 2001—are aimed at what is perceived as generic and otherwise sub-par lyrics, especially those written by lyricists who have come after Evita, when Rice and Lloyd Webber parted ways.15 On the whole, the overwhelming critical assessment of Lloyd Webber so far consists of high marks for stagecraft, spectacle, and popular success, and low marks for artistic craft, inspired originality, and general overall esteem.

  Borrowing and the Organically Overgrown Megamusical

  Two controversial issues have long haunted the musicals of Lloyd Webber: (1) his common practice of musical borrowing from other composers; and (2) allegations of excessive reuse of his own music within a musical. Neither issue is unique to Lloyd Webber. Virtually all composers, including Broadway composers, borrow from other musical sources. Composers in the classical tradition from Handel, Bach, and Mozart to Stravinsky and Ives have used previous music frequently and with great originality and craft for centuries, a force that prompted eighteenth-century theorist Johann Mattheson to pronounce that “borrowing is permissible, but one must return the object borrowed with interest.”16 The problem is that Lloyd Webber is often accused of borrowing without paying interest. Since the days of Sigmund Romberg it would be difficult to produce a Broadway composer who has so blatantly been accused of plagiarism, several steps beneath borrowing.17 Similarly, in regard to the second controversy, all composers surveyed in this volume reuse material and reprise songs in their musicals. Here too, the issue is that Lloyd Webber, perhaps more than any major Broadway figure, is accused of indiscriminate or dramatically meaningless reuse.

  Borrowing

  This volume has shown that the composers of our featured shows occasionally quote or allude to the music of other composers. The most interesting borrowings are those that are dramatically purposeful and meaningful—for example, the use of Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony as a source of the River Family in Show Boat, the use of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet and Wagner’s “Redemption through Love” leitmotiv in West Side Story, and the “Dies irae” in Sweeney Todd. It has also been observed that a number of borrowings are seemingly less than meaningful to the work at hand (e.g., the Puccini allusions in My Fair Lady or the undisguised resemblances between Bernstein’s “Maria” and Blitzstein’s Regina).

  Writers such as Stephen Citron, John Snelson, Jessica Sternfeld, and Michael Walsh who have discussed the music of Lloyd Webber’s shows more often than not dismiss the borrowings as inconsequential. This chapter espouses the view that the sheer number of examples and their closeness to their borrowed sources suggest that students of musical theater should examine this phenomenon critically rather than ignore it. Lloyd Webber’s first major hit, Superstar’s “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” is the first of many examples that writers have noticed and commented on for its strong melodic and harmonic similarity to the second movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64. Before he goes on to show what Lloyd Webber added to Mendelssohn, Snelson writes that “from a musical standpoint, the resemblance between the pop melody and the concerto is so obvious and continues through such an extended passage (some seven bars) that any claim to coincidence is untenable.”18

  In his chapter-length study of “musical reminiscences” in Lloyd Webber, Snelson describes the even closer connection between “On This Night of a Thousand Stars,” sung by the nightclub singer Magaldi in Evita, and the popular Latin tune “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” by the composer who wrote under the nom de plume Louiguy, as “self-evident.”19 He concludes that since the borrowing “sticks so closely to those features which create the character of the Louiguy number, the whole piece can even be seen as a vocal extemporization around ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ in the manner of an interpretation-in-performance of the original.”20 In short, Lloyd Webber’s “Thousand Stars” has accomplished for the unknown Louigay what Romberg’s Blossom Time earlier did for Schubert.

  By way of comparison, Magnolia in Show Boat sings Charles K. Harris’s “After the Ball” to evoke fin-de-siècle popular music. The published score, however, credits Harris (and not Kern) as the composer. The composers of much of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and “On This Night of a Thousand Stars” receive no attribution. Before moving on to Phantom I would like to bring up another likely “musical reminiscence” that to my knowledge has gone unrecognized, at least in print. When I used to give an annual musical plagiarism lecture to non-music majors, I frequently asked students whether the melody and harmony of the opening of “I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You,” also from Evita, reminded them of any other popular song they happened to know. Invariably several students would immediately volunteer the Beatles’ “Yesterday.”

  The relationship between these songs is analogous, but not identical, to the bop practice of creating new tunes using harmonic progressions from older popular tunes (e.g., “Shaw Nuff” and “Cottontail,” among others, employ the harmony of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”). Among music historians, the term of choice to describe this practice is contrafacta (the plural of contrafactum), a fancy name used to describe either the appropriation of harmony from one song to another or the recycling of melodies with new texts. “I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You” borrows more than a little from both the melody and harmony of “Yesterday,” but unlike most contrafacta the borrowing does not continue throughout the entire song. The technique of contrafacta as more commonly practiced was widely used in the Renaissance and can be found later in multi-texted reharmonized chorale melodies in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and in popular songs recycled with texts, such as the conversions of “Anacreon in Heaven” into “The Star Spangled Banner” and “God Save the King” into “America.” The technique ensures unity and musical integration and provides opportunities to create new dramatic meanin
gs for previously heard musical themes.

  Several borrowing possibilities in Phantom have been proposed, some by more than one author. Both Mark Grant and Michael Walsh, for example, suggest that the distinctive, powerful, and meaningfully employed descending instrumental chromatic figure that introduces Phantom’s overture, title song, and seven additional Phantom appearances in the score is noticeably derived from Ralph Vaughan William’s Second (or “London”) Symphony, the first version of which appeared in the years before World War I (see Example 16.1).21

  No fewer than three borrowings have been offered for the opening phrase of “Music of the Night” alone: “Come to Me, Bend to Me” from Brigadoon, “School Days” from 1907 (“School days, school days / Dear old Golden Rule days”), and a phrase from “Recondite armonia” from Puccini’s Tosca.22 In each case only the first five notes, and in the first two examples the rhythms also, are the same. The “School Days” connection became a part of popular culture when the character played by Billy Crystal in the movie Forget Paris (1995) left a performance of Phantom with Debra Winger accusing “Music of the Night” of ripping off the old tune. To prove his claim, Crystal sang the opening phrase of the earlier melody.