406 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
The changing status of jazz encouraged some musicians to focus their ener-
gies on the common ground held with the Western classical tradition. The clas-
sically trained composer Gunther Schuller, a French horn player long involved
with jazz, coined the term Third Stream for music that brought jazz techniques
into the classical sphere or vice versa, through improvisation or written com-
position. John Lewis and the Modern Jazz Quartet were already working that
territory, as was Charles Mingus. And Schuller himself explored Third Stream
possibilities in such works as Transformation (1957), for jazz ensemble, which mar-
ried the sounds of modern jazz with the atonal procedures of serialist music,
and Variants on a Theme of Thelonious Monk (1960), recorded w ith an ensemble that
included Ornette Coleman and Bill Evans, both of whom would be major fi gures
in later developments in jazz.BROADWAY MUSICALS IN THE POSTWAR YEARS
On October 7, 1956, the thirty-nine-year-old composer and conductor Leon-
ard Bernstein surveyed American musical theater in a national television
broadcast. “For the last fi fteen years,” he told viewers, “we have been enjoying
the greatest period our musical theater has ever known.” Bernstein supported
his statement with a list of classic Broadway shows: Pal Joey, Annie Get Your Gun,
Oklahoma!, South Pacifi c, Guys and Dolls, and Kiss Me, Kate. And he illustrated the
talent of these shows’ creators with examples from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s
South Pacifi c.
The shows Bernstein called “young classics” all belonged “to an art that arises
out of American roots.” As he saw it, the best recent shows were neither opera
nor light entertainment but a new form somewhere between the two. “We are in
a historical position now similar to that of the popular musical theater in Ger-
many just before Mozart came along,” he announced. American musical theater
needed only for its own Mozart to arrive, which might happen “any second.” Ber-
nstein might have had himself in mind: less than a year later, in September 1957,
West Side Story, with music by Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sond-
heim, opened in New York to the acclaim of critics and audiences.
The high value Bernstein’s broadcast placed on American musi-
cals seemed calculated to surprise 1956 viewers. Musicals before that
time were largely ignored by music critics, who saw the classical and
popular spheres as separated by a fi rm barrier. Broadway creators
submitted their work directly to the judgment of audiences, whose
verdict, registered at the box offi ce, was equally direct. Aesthetic deci-
sions were made to trigger positive public responses. If the audience
seemed pleased, the decision was right; if not, changes were made. A
tryout run preceded a show’s Broadway opening so that out-of-town
audience response could be used to identify problems, but the mak-
ers of musicals took the public pulse even earlier. Alan Jay Lerner, the
librettist and lyricist of My Fair Lady, wrote that when he and composer
Frederick (“Fritz”) Loewe fi nished a song, “we would dash around the
neighborhood, looking for ‘customers,’ as Fritz would say, meaning
neighbors for whom to play it. Naturally, our captive audience was
complimentary, but somehow we could always tell if the compliments
were because of the song or because of the friendship. Very often it
infl uenced us and made us more aware of a weakness.”K Composer and
conductor Leonard
Bernstein (1918–1990)
had a strong infl uence on
the public with television
appearances that took up
serious musical matters in
an engaging way.the Third Stream172028_16_386-411_r3_sd.indd 406 23/01/13 10:56 AM