The Musical as Drama

“Take Back Your Mink” and “A Bushel and a Peck” belong to a milieu different from that of “Follow the Fold,” but the night- club ...

an anthem in four-part harmony about “The Oldest Estab- lished Permanent Floating Crap Game in New York,” the num- ber comes fro ...

women not by means of dialogue in a book scene but by means of shared music in the numbers they perform. This sharing of musical ...

Antipholus, who has come to town unbeknownst to anyone. She thinks it is her husband. Romance is going haywire. This splendid va ...

let, “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.” There is a further diegetic problem that has to be solved before this number can be com- plete ...

musical theatre. Everything clicks into focus, the lyric is sud- denly clear, the precision moves of the line are perfect. This ...

six, seven, eight” turning into “one, two, three, four” over a sustaining and open harmonic structure without the pauses by whic ...

with other Weill/Gershwin songs is better than most plots in the legitimate theatre, which have no Weill/Gershwin songs at all.^ ...

Figure Gertrude Lawrence in the Wedding Dream from the original production of Lady in the Dark . Billy Rose Theatre Collection ...

parlance of modern theatre, there is no subtext that cannot be raided by an AABA tune in a musical, and the dream sequences of L ...

tune from beginning to end. We have heard it only in bits before. “Say, that was lovely,” says the high school boy. “I didn’t kn ...

knows “Move On” in Sunday in the Park with George, as well as the act 1 songs from which “Move On” is composed. An or- chestra k ...

nology, creating what I think is a confusion of systems of om- niscience. The question of narrative is also related to the musi- ...

Chapter Six THE ORCHESTRA A Cappella on a Beautiful Morning A Tthe beginning of Oklahoma!, when Curly comes on singing a cappell ...

with a seventh (it is one of the notable moments in popular music, and when you listen to it next time, see if you don’t find th ...

Wagner the orchestra rendered audible the innermost essence concealed behind the visible events on the stage and provided a “mus ...

atown fair, jugglers, a dancing bear, and especially a carousel, where the local girls flirt with the handsome barker. This is t ...

the right name for the achievement, if there were yet a book to be integrated with. I think it significant that a true moment of ...

“a wonderful guy.” “Uh-huh,” says Nellie, and makes a hasty exit. “Uh-huh” is not the full expression of her realization. The fu ...

of the word, a long-standing convention of which composers like Kern, Rodgers, and Sondheim are modern masters.^4 Underscoring c ...