60. Joseph P. Swain, The Broadway Musical, 205.
61. Ibid., 245.
62. Jon Alan Conrad, “West Side Story,” The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1992), vol. 4, 1146.
63. Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 37. For a more extended comparison between the viewpoints of Swain and Banfield see my Review Essay, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 20–27.
64. Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 37.
65. In chapter 2 the notion of a “river family” of motives in Show Boat was considered; a network of motives related to the principal characters of Porgy and Bess was explored in chapter 4.
66. The deceptive chord is usually the submediant or vi chord (e.g., an A minor triad in the key of C). An earlier example of a deceptive cadence to the vi chord occurs in Show Boat’s “Where’s the Mate for Me?,” the first chord on the word “fancy” (see Example 2.5b).
67. See also the discussion of Blitzstein’s meaningfully dramatic treatment of Beethoven’s Egmont Overture in The Cradle Will Rock (chapter 6, pp. 125–28).
68. In the orchestral manuscript that followed shortly, Tony and Maria also sing the four preceding measures reserved for the orchestra in the vocal manuscript and the final version.
69. Bernstein also displaces the second note of “Somewhere” in measures 3, 11, and 27 by raising it an octave.
70. See measures 11, 13, 14–15, 27, 29, 31–32. When they reach the “open air” (m. 6) with “time to spare” (m. 14), the vocal part melodically outlines an E major triad (E-G-B), although Bernstein contradicts this latter tonic resolution with opposing harmony. The harmony that supports “time to spare” once again suggests C minor (C-E-G). Bernstein further dilutes the impact of his first major triads associated with his second motive by immediately following each of its statements with a minor triad in the vocal line.
71. Shakespeare, much like a Greek tragedian, wanted his audiences to know in advance the fate of his “star-crossed lovers.” In the event that they were unfamiliar with this popular and often-told tale, he provided a précis of the plot in the Prologue to act I told by a Chorus. The Chorus can be a chorus of one, for example, John Gielgud in two filmed versions (Verona 1954 and BBC 1978).
72. The scene that contains “Tonight” is designated the Balcony Scene in the published vocal score (New York: G. Schirmer and Chappell, 1957 and 1959).
73. In his introductory survey of music, Joseph Kerman concludes his discussion of West Side Story by pointing out that “Bernstein’s fugue recalls the famous ‘Great Fugue’ by Ludwig van Beethoven” [the original final movement of the B Major String Quartet, op. 130]. Joseph Kerman, Listen, 2d brief ed. (New York: Worth, 1992), 393. According to Banfield, “the ‘Cool’ twelve-note fugue seems as indebted to Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge as does ‘Somewhere’s melodic contour to his ‘Emperor’ Concerto and its sparse counterpoint to his late quartet.” Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 37.
74. In particular, the abrupt and explosive sforzando accent on the concluding third note of the first motive (a) and the strong accents on the first note of the third motive (c1 and c3) within a jazzy context depict a convincing premonition of the inevitable outcome facing the Jets and Sharks as well as Tony and Maria.
The remaining appearances of the first or “There’s a place” motive from “Somewhere” (a) maintains its primary association with the principal lovers. For example, the orchestral introduction to “One Hand, One Heart”—which also incorporates additional melodic liberties in its statement of the “place for us” motive (b)—again prepares the future fate of Tony and Maria and in the process links a song to West Side Story that had been withdrawn from Candide the previous year. The upwardly striving “There’s a place” motive acts as a musical symbol for a better place in another life for Tony and Maria. In a dramatically effective reprise, at the end of the “Nightmare,” the elided first and second “Somewhere” motives (“There’s a place” and “place for us”) return to the orchestra and Bernstein uses the second motive to support Tony’s singing of “half-way there” and “take you there.”
75. Like the “There’s a place” motive, the third “Somewhere” motive (Example 13.4c) appears ubiquitously in the “Cool” fugue. It is most conspicuous, however, in earlier portions of the Dream Sequence where an ascending half step—again as in Maria’s name—appears in the orchestral underpinning of Under Dialogue (13) and Ballet Sequence (13a). The third “Somewhere” motive will again figure prominently in the “Finale” (17) directly after Tony’s death as an inner melodic strand throughout the procession and in the three final statements that parallel the finale of the Dream Ballet as the last notes we hear. It also appears conspicuously but with less apparent dramatic justification throughout much of “America” (7).
76. Larry Stempel notes that the music of “I Have a Love” is a transformed version of Anita’s music in the preceding “A Boy Like That,” for example, on the words, “A boy who kills cannot love, / A boy who kills has no heart.” Stempel, “Broadway’s Mozartean Moment,” 50.
77. Among West Side Story chroniclers, only Banfield notes a possible Wagnerian reference when he writes that “one even senses a hint of Tristan in Tony’s supplication for ‘endless night.’” Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 34. Peyser, in noting the influence of Wagner in Bernstein’s final opera, A Quiet Place (1983), concludes that Wagner was “an influence that had been nowhere apparent in Bernstein up to the late 1970s.” Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, 457.
78. Gottlieb, “The Music of Leonard Bernstein,” 26–32; Gradenwitz, Leonard Bernstein, 185–202; Stempel, “Broadway’s Mozartean Moment,” 39–56; and Swain, The Broadway Musical, 205–46. Gottlieb, a composer who acted as Bernstein’s musical assistant and general factotum at the New York Philharmonic from 1958–1966, wrote articulate jacket notes for Bernstein’s recordings and served as an editor of the composer’s writings, including the Omnibus television lectures of the 1950s. Gradenwitz, a German musicologist who remained a personal friend of the composer, also wrote notes for Bernstein recordings. For studies that appeared since the first edition of Enchanted Evenings see Gottlieb, Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish on Bernstein’s use of the Shofar call (179–80) and Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Formation of National Identity for the plausible observation that the Maria or love transformation of the hate motive may be derived from the opening of the love theme from Tchaikovsky’s Overture to Romeo and Juliet (212).
79. In the underrated Wonderful Town (1953), perfect fifths also figure prominently in abbreviated thematic reminiscences that contribute to an “organic” musical unity, although these musical connections do not reinforce dramatic nuances as they will in West Side Story. Several melodies that emphasize perfect fifths reappear in other songs as well: the main tune of “A Little Bit in Love” serves as an introduction to “It’s Love” and the main tune of “It’s Love” forms the introduction to “A Quiet Girl.” A second type of connection is thematic reminiscence, as, for example, when the first measure of “Pass That Football”—most of the tune is musically and dramatically identical to “What a Waste”—returns in the first two measures of “A Quiet Girl.” A third unifying element derives from the reuse of the dotted boogie-woogie accompaniments originally associated with the sisters Ruth and Eileen in “Ohio,” Ruth in “One Hundred Easy Ways,” and Eileen in “A Little Bit in Love,” and distorted in Wreck’s “Pass That Football,” Ruth’s “Swing!,” and the sisters’ “Wrong Note Rag.”
80. The instrumental “Paris Waltz Scene” and its rhythmic transformation in the finale “Make Our Garden Grow” of Candide bears a strong resolution to the first “Somewhere” motive. In both, the upward leap of a minor seventh is followed by descending half step (minor second). In the Candide finale, as in “Somewhere,” Bernstein starts in E major and modulates to C (although Candide parts company with “Somewhere” with its intervening modulation to A major and in it
s avoidance of a return to E). The overlapping compositional histories of Candide and West Side Story produced additional musical affinities that go beyond the exchanges among their songs discussed earlier in this chapter.
81. Gottlieb, “The Music of Leonard Bernstein,” 26.
82. Bernstein’s manuscript for the Prologue opens with the “hate” motive (A-D-G), bracketed and labeled “optional curtain music.” The Broadway cast album retains this introduction, and in the film version, the “hate” motive is used effectively at the outset and at other strategic moments as the Jet’s warning whistle. The “hate” motive also appears unaltered in the “Cool” fugue where it joins the first and third “Somewhere” motives.
83. In the album jacket notes of the soundtrack, Hollis Alpert makes the following point: “With the intermissions between acts eliminated, one rising line of tension, from beginning to end, was required. The neatest solution, resulting in almost no change in the text, was the juxtaposition of musical numbers” (Columbia OS 2070). Thus, in dramatic contrast to most movie versions of hit Broadway shows, the makers of the West Side Story film made a valiant attempt to retain all of the music and to preserve the dramatic integrity, if not the ordering, of the Broadway original. Ironically, when West Side Story was first released, theaters, deprived of a B-movie second feature due to the length of the main event, thwarted the intentions of the film’s creators by inserting an intermission as a concession to the concessionaires. Following the numbers in the vocal score and the online website, the order in the film version is as follows: Nos. 1–5, 7–6, 14, 12, 9–11, 13, 8, and 15–17.
84. The final measures of Bernstein’s musical bears a striking—and identically pitched—resemblance to the apotheosis of the central character on the final notes of Stravinsky’s Petrushka (1911).
85. The CD reissued in 1992 restores the Broadway ending in the previously unreleased “Finale” (Sony SK 48211).
86. In the reissued CD, the previously released End Credits restored the three tritones that accompanied the film.
87. Swain, The Broadway Musical, 243. See also Stempel, “Broadway’s Mozartean Moment,” 54.
Chapter 14: Stage vs. Screen (2) After Oklahoma!
1. Among her many roles Moreno played the waitress in “It’s an Art” from the 1982 American Playhouse broadcast of Working in 1982 and dubbed the voice of Carmen Sandiego in the television series Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?
2. Gerald Mast, Can’t Help Singin,’ 217 and 216.
3. Thomas S. Hischak, Through the Screen Door, 153–54.
4. Bruce Babington and Peter William Evans, Blue Skies and Silver Linings, 187–204 (quotations on 197 and 204).
5. One interesting addition is when Billy’s responds to Mrs. Mullin’s accusation that his attentions to Julie have spoiled the good name of her carousel by accusing Mrs. Mullin herself of giving the enterprise a bad name the day she acquired it. For ’50s audiences who may not know what a chippie is, the word is replaced by its modern equivalent, slut.
6. See chapter 9 for a discussion of the Julie and Carrie Sequence and the Bench Scene.
7. Like many recordings of popular songs of the era, the “June” chorus is heard before its verse.
8. Mast, Can’t Help Singin,’ 217.
9. “Hugh Jackman Updates Carousel Remake,” November 13, 2006, www.firstshowing.net/2006/11/13/hugh-jackman-updates-carousel-remake/.
10. Porter himself did to Shakespeare what new lyric writers frequently did to Porter throughout the film when he changed Shakespeare’s “Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot / And place your hands below your husband’s foot” to “So wife, hold your temper and meekly put / Your hand ‘neath the sole of your husband’s foot” in Porter.
11. A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn, 470.
12. Ibid., 470.
13. Even before the age of twenty Simmons gained exposure in the role of Estella in Great Expectations (1946) and Ophelia in Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948). In the years before Guys and Dolls she had leading roles in Androcles and the Lion and The Robe in 1953 and played opposite Brando’s Napoleon in Desiree in 1954. After Guys and Dolls, her major film role was probably that of Sister Falconer in Elmer Gantry (1960).
14. Steve Sondheim, “‘Guys and Dolls,’” 524–25.
15. Ibid., 525.
16. In the years between the stage and film versions of My Fair Lady, Beaton had designed the costumes and sets for Lerner and Loewe’s Academy Award–winning film Gigi (1958).
17. Mast, Can’t Help Singin,’ 289.
18. Cast aside as the film Eliza, Andrews accepted the consolation prize role of Mary Poppins and earned eternal vindication when she took home the Best Actress Oscar and Hepburn was not even nominated. The next year Andrews starred in the popular and acclaimed film musical, The Sound of Music.
19. Lerner, On the Street Where I Live, 171.
20. Ibid.
21. “Keira Knightley is My Fair Lady,” June 6, 2008, www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=45737.
22. With the exception of the winning costume designer and the quartet of orchestrators, most of the hardworking craftspeople honored are unknown other than to insiders in the field. This footnote will honor their substantial contributions to this technically brilliant film: Art Direction (Victor A. Gangelin); Cinematography (Daniel L. Fapp); Costumes (Irene Sharaff); Film Editing (Thomas Stanford); Scoring (Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sid Ramin, and Irwin Kostal); and Sound Mixing (Gordon E. Sawyer and Fred Hynes).
23. See for example, Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 84–85.
24. Laurent, Original Story by, 347–48.
25. The AFI also placed West Side Story as No. 41 on its “Top 100 American Movies of the Last 100 Years,” compiled in 1998. The only musicals ahead of West Side Story on the list were The Wizard of Oz at No. 6 and Singin’ in the Rain at No. 10. The other seven film musicals on the AFI list, which include two animated features and a biopic, were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (49), The Sound of Music (55), Fantasia (58), An American in Paris (68), The Jazz Singer (90), My Fair Lady (91), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (100).
Chapter 15: Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park with George
1. After Merman’s departure, Gypsy received several acclaimed revivals and films that highlighted a staggering array of luminous stars, including Rosalind Russell (Warner Bros. Film, 1962), Angela Lansbury (West End and Broadway, 1973 and 1974), Tyne Daly (Broadway, 1989), Bette Midler (Television movie, 1993), Betty Buckley (Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., 1998), Bernadette Peters (Broadway, 2003), and Patti Lupone (Ravinia Festival, Chicago, 2006; Encores! City Center, N.Y., 2007; Broadway, 2008).
2. For an extended discussion of the difficult collaboration and a more positive appraisal of Waltz, see Geoffrey Block, Richard Rodgers, 213–25.
3. Thomas P. Adler, “The Musical Dramas of Stephen Sondheim,” 513–25; quotation on 523.
4. Eugene K. Bristow and J. Kevin Butler, “Company, About Face!,” 241–54; quotation on 253.
5. See Stephen Banfield, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals, 20–25, and Stephen Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 62–63.
6. Oscar Hammerstein II, “Notes on Lyrics,” 3–48.
7. Ibid., 4.
8. Ibid., 15.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., 19.
11. Ibid., 21.
12. Ibid., 22.
13. Ibid., 23.
14. Ibid., 34.
15. Although work on By George was begun in the spring of 1945, the show remained largely dormant until the following spring (around the time of Sondheim’s sixteenth birthday on March 22). It is possible that Hammerstein’s famous shredding of Sondheim’s work occurred later than usually reported. In any event, By George was first performed in May 1946.
16. Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 62.
17. Hammerstein, “Notes on Lyrics, 45–46; Sondheim, “Theater Lyrics,” 65–66. Hammerstein’s point is well taken, but if he had been a Civil War buff he might have known
that hot air balloons developed by France in the eighteenth century made it possible to use this technology for reconnaissance several decades before the French gave the United States its beloved statue.
18. From the third show, Mary Poppins, based on the stories by P. L. Travers, Sondheim discovered the difficulties of libretto writing (Hammerstein customarily wrote the librettos as well as the lyrics). In “Theater Lyrics” Sondheim recalls that he sent Hammerstein a script for the fourth, original musical that included a ninety-nine-page first act and that Hammerstein circled this impressive number and wrote “Wow” (“Theater Lyrics,” 63).
19. The title Phinney’s Rainbow incorporated allusions to Finian’s Rainbow, a popular musical of 1947 with lyrics by E. Y. Harburg and music by Burton Lane and to the president of Williams at the time, James Phinney Baxter.
20. Steven Suskin lists three stagings of Saturday Night: a reading by the Bridewell Theater Company in 1995; a small production, also in London, in 1997; and a production by the Pegasus Players in Chicago in 1999 with two new songs (Suskin, Show Tunes, 274–75). The show received its New York premiere on February 17, 2000. A cast recording was released that same year on Nonesuch 79609–2.
Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Page 81