It's a shame that Mr Brown did not choose to say much of anything about the utterly huge amounts of money R & H were pulling in, its sources and amounts. It's a major omission. Let's not pretend it isn't about money.
But it isn't ALL about money. R&H could have coasted by writing the same kind of musicals as their peers. Instead, they ventured into new territory — and sometimes lost money for doing it.
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Their music enriched and inspired the lives of millions of Americans, often across generations! That is priceless.
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The revolution occurred years earlier with Showboat. Kern and Hammerstein.
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Rodgers and Hammerstein had separate but productive careers in the 1920s: Rodgers working with Larry Hart on songs like Manhattan", and "Make-Believe"; and Hammerstein working with Jerome Kern on the first great American musical drama, "Showboat", which starred the great Negro baritone and actor, Paul Robeson, in its London production of 1932. Hammerstein remained a champion of the rights of minorities, as evidenced by his striking line in "South Pacific: "You've gotta be taught to hate." After the Holocaust, the lynchings, and Trump, it's truth has never been more compelling. And I doubt that he was a tightwad, in that he generously nurtured the talent of Stephen Sondheim.
With the exceptions of "My Fair Lady", "West-Side Story", and "The Sound of Music", the great American musical and the great American songbook came to an end in the late 1950s. It was succeeded by Rock and Roll and Hip Hop. Both of these musical developments came from peoples rising from poverty: American Jews and American Blacks
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Correction: The lyrics and music of "Make-Believe" were by Hammerstein and Kern for "Show-Boat", along with other classics, including "Can't Help Lovin that Man of Mine" and of course,l "Old Man River."
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To Keep Things Straight: SHOW BOAT is two words, not one; Rodgers wrote "Make Believe" with Hammerstein, not with Hart; Paul Robeson was a bass, not a baritone; and while Robeson might have had some kind of special billing in the London SHOW BOAT, the role of "Joe" is very much a supporting role in the show, the starring ones being Magnolia, Ravenal, Captain Andy and Julie. When they filmed it in 1936, Kern and Hammerstein had to add an additional song, "I Still Suits Me", into the score so that Robeson would have something to do in it other than to just sing "Ol' Man River".
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People who promote Broadway standards. They can point to plenty of music from the late '60s on, such as "Memory" from Cats, "No One's Gonna Harm You" from Sweeney Todd, or "All That Jazz" from Chicago.
I just want to add that the reference that Purdum makes about Oklahoma! and the Pulitzer is not complete. The rules then said since it was based on a play which was eligible in its day, Oklahoma! was ineligible. The Committee then awarded no Pulitzer for Drama that year and gave a certificate to Oklahoma! Not a condolence prize, but the best they could do.
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On those Australian mornings when the ocean glitters like a field of diamonds and that pure blue sky embraces you in sunlit warmth, when God's in his heaven and all's right with the world, nothing captures it better than "Oh, what a beautiful morning'." It's the anthem for all such days. For me, "Oklahoma!" expresses the same love of homeland as Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." I may be an unsophisticated old curmudgeon, but those songs touch my heartstrings.
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I suspect that (almost) anything that was seen/heard as revolutionary at one time can come to be seen/heard as hackneyed as it settles into the collective conscience. Taken as wholes, and in context, the classic Rogers & Hammerstein will, IMHO, stand the proverbial test of time.
See also Elvis...
8
I always laugh when I'm visiting my mom, 93, in Florida and I hear on her oldies-for-old-folks' station caramelized versions of disco songs that were considered filth in their day.
3
Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals were rich, fun, subversive (in the best sense), and full of songs we will be singing for generations to come. Only a handful of Stephen Sondheim's musicals can make that claim.
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That's always been my problem with Sondheim Almost every Rodgers show, whether with Hart or Hammerstein, had at least one hit song, sometimes four or five in one show, that became standards and stayed in the public mind for decades, whereas outside Sondheim's greatest followers, most people have a hard time coming up with two standards composed by him (I'm talking here about his music, not his lyrics for other composers' shows), and the one usually pointed out is "Send in the Clowns".
3
Ironically Sondheim lived next door to Hammerstein and was good friends with his son. His parents going through a very nasty divorce forced the young Sondheim to visit the Hammerstein house often. Hammerstein became a mentor but when Sondheim tried to write as Oscar did Oscar told him to write as himself. Hence we have the bitter, biting, witty lyrics of Sondheim musicals very few of whom I enjoy as much as R and H and R and Hart
1
I am a fan of the Liverpool FC. Jürgen Klopp, the coach, narrates a video ad on the teams website what differentiates Liverpool FC from the other EPL teams. At one point he says, "Other teams have songs. We have an anthem." That anthem is from "Carousel". It is "You Will Never Walk Alone". At the beginning and end of a home game at Anfield, the whole stadium Liverpool fans sing. It is moving. I do not see a Stephen Sondheim song becoming a public anthem, unless it is a WH press conference, "Send In The Clowns", as the WH Press Staff enters.
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As a small girl, seeing Oklahoma when it first opened on Broadway was truly something wonderful. I can still remember the awe as Curly opened the show with Oh, What A Beautiful Morning, then as the musical developed from one wonderful song to the next. And the choreography! Gathering our coats while the brassy orchestra played after the final curtain, going out to the lobby still hearing the dim music inside, then going home with the melodies and lyrics swirling around in my little head. What a thrill! I remember how we would beg for the record the next day, then listening and reliving the magic - until Rogers and Hammerstein brought us another and another. It's a wonderful memory.
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The music of Richard Rodgers is emotionally moving and stunningly beautiful. Likewise, Hammerstein's lyrics. Most musicals today contain one, maybe two, songs that are remembered after the final curtain falls. A Rodgers and Hammerstein musical has many such songs. Listening to them makes one want to sway, to dance, to shed tears, and/or simply smile.
13
Couldn't agree more. My grandmother and mother were great fans of the Broadway Musicals. I have over 200 original Broadway cast LPs. Unfortunately, I was never musically gifted but I can sing literally the whole scores of each. The latest ones are lucky if they have one song that anyone remembers. Partly because playing Broadway songs on the radio, cable, TV is no longer fashionable and partly because the songs are just not that good.
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Purdum's recent essay in the Times suggesting that "Oklahoma" was the "Hamilton" of its day had me sobbing at the breakfast table. I had put "Oklahoma" into the dustbin, written it off as a relic. Purdum brought it back to this moment in ways surprising, insightful, moving and glorious. Cannot wait to read the book.Thank you.
8
Something wonderful occurred in the Musical Theater, AKA Broadway, in the 1950s, that will probably never happen again. But all this wonderful music will live within me and my generation a lifetime and beyond.
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Purdum makes the case so well for Hammerstein the playwright. I have long felt that Hammerstein belonged on the list of the great American playwrights. And, of all of them, his work has the greatest range. He is perfection in knowing when to sing and when to speak. His Twin Soliloquies is the Platonic ideal of what a playwright must do. Two people, who belong together, can only think of why the other would not want them. How do you dramatize that. Hammerstein makes it look simple. Each soliloquy contains no rhymes. But they rhyme with each other. Even if people don't realize it as they sit in the theatre, they fell the connection.
The Sound of Music has often been cited for diminishing their brand. Both music and lyrics are first rate. The book was the only one Hammerstein did not write or co-write. It is the book which is old-fashioned and trite. it is a series of problems created then solved, the next problem next solution. Very much a pre Hammerstein book.
Carefully Taught is extraordinary not just it what it says, but in how it is said. A lesser dramatist would basically say, we interrupt this play for a sermon. Carefully Taught is not a sermon, it is the sudden realization by a young man of the trap of bigotry. He is enraged and trapped. Wow. If there is one person who deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature and didn't get it, it is Hammerstein.
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I look forward to reading this book though to date, Rodgers distinctive music has not had the full treatment it deserves. As a composer, I, like so many others, could reassure you that it's a little cheap to take what little Rodgers appropriated from the musical past as "taking credit for others' work". (See: Bernstein, West Side Story "Somewhere", nee Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto.)
Rodgers had something that only gifted composers are born with - a distinctive voice and style. I could enumerate at length the passages in his music which may reach back to this passage or that from the Romantics to Stravinsky. But I could pick a harmonic scheme from Rodgers in one bar, his sound is so peculiar and charming. I've been enchanted with those piquant harmonies in "Something Wonderful" (the introduction) and "Bali Hai" (the beautiful leaps of a major 7th) since I was a boy. The Carousel Waltz alone places Rodgers in the pantheon of great American composer.
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Shakespeare "borrowed" too. Who cares?
8
Great response. I thought this OpEd short changed Rodgers' genius as a composer. It also skimps on his propensity for giving compositional credits to Bennett and others for their orchestrations and ancillary music. I believe it was Bernstein who credited Rodgers with writing some of the best waltzes ever composed!
2
when you read the book you will find he took credit for music written by contemporaries who worked for him, not just long dead composers.
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I’ve been obsessed with musical theatre since the mid-60s and have read widely and studied all the greats. I questioned if there was anything more to say about R&H. As the accomplished artist Mr. Brown notes so accurately and perceptively, Todd Purdham’s book gives you a sense of being there at the creation of these classics. He places you in the time and is able to build suspense about the journey when we all know the outcome. It’s a marvelous book and a spot on insightful review.
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It is neither "alarming" nor was it "stealing" if Rodgers took a 16th-century melody and made it his own.
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It's sampling.
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Subtext is key, when listening to R&H songs. Without it, "Whistle a Happy Tune" (for example) is treacle. When you realize Anna is actually terrified, despite her apparent expression of confidence, the genius of the song blooms.
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That's very often the case in Broadway musicals. Example abound, but Kander and Ebb are the masters or ironic placement.
2
I heard the music to this show many times, before I realized what it was about. Lt Cable fell in love with an island girl, but did not stay with her, because their prewar lives were too different. Nellie broke up with the older Emile, because he has been married, had kids, and those kids were half Polynesian. These altitudes seem perfectly normal in the prism of the 60s looking at the 40s. Like much great art, it is subversive.
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To Keep Things Straight: Yes, but SOUTH PACIFIC, book and musical, was written in the 1940s, so it is the prism of the 1940s looking perhaps at the pre-War 1930s, but probably still at its own time as well.
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The book on which it was (loosely) based, Micheners Tales of the South Pacific, takes as its central theme the interactions between how Americans interact with the multiracial local population.
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When music meant soaring Melody and Lyrics spoke to the uplifting of the human heart! Their musical creativity is something we will never see again! And haven't for the past thirty years or so! Additionally, as great as the music Rodgers wrote for Broadway musicals, his score for Victory at Sea, is equal, if at times even better, with the likes of Under The Southern Cross ( No Other Love Have I) and The Theme to The Fast Carriers!
21
You beat me to the mention of Rodgers' music for Victory at Sea, much of which was apparently actually written (with Rodgers contributing the basic themes) by Robert Russell Bennett. As Rodgers himself said of Bennett, “I give him [the credit] without undue modesty, for making my music sound better than it was."
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Thanks! However, it's my understanding that Rodgers wrote the music, while Robert Russell Bennett, brilliantly arranged it. That's why Rodgers gave him that well deserved nod.
3
Bennett arranged and orchestrated it, but Purdom rather accused Rodgers of stealing some music from a few centuries back. Be advised that when he wrote ME AND JULIET, he stole from himself, as the hit song from that so-so show, "No Other Love" was borrowed from the main melody used in the VICTORY AT SEA score.
2
I have always thought that "Carefully Taught" is one of the best songs ever written about prejudice. That it came from these 2 men is pretty astounding and speaks to their insight and anger about this.
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I don't even like "South Pacific," but that song is etched forever in my mind.
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