of the word, a long-standing convention of which composers
like Kern, Rodgers, and Sondheim are modern masters.^4
Underscoring can set dramatic exchanges in motion. One of
the finest early examples occurs in the first meeting between
Magnolia Hawkes and Gaylord Ravenal in Show Boat. Gaylord’s
lovely piece of self-pity, “Where’s the Mate for Me,” has been
carried by underscoring through to his rendition of “Make Be-
lieve,” where he is flirting with the good-looking girl he has just
met. So far she has sung nothing and is musically known as a
child who was heard fumbling with her piano practicing off-
stage (the ditty that was supposed to become “It’s Getting Hot-
ter in the North” by the end of the show—see chapter 5). After
Gaylord’s “Make Believe,” the dramatic question is how the girl
will respond, and Kern’s solution is to sustain musical time with
an exchange of song segments between the would-be lovers.
The orchestra never stops. It keeps the musical mode intact as
the segments of song are exchanged. “Your pardon I pray,”
Gaylord sings, apologizing for the bold flirtation of “Make Be-
lieve.” His apology runs eight bars and is answered by Magno-
lia’s initial flight of song, one of the great musical entrances for
an ingénue, for if she has seemed immature through her off-
stage piano exercise before, her burst of song reveals a mature
soprano voice that can obviously keep pace with anything this
handsome singer of the “Make Believe” solo has to offer. The
orchestra’s string section gives her an increase of volume, and
she answers Gaylord a fifth above his last note: “We only pre-
tend, you do not offend, in playing a lover’s part.” Her eight
bars match his, and she completes the rhyme.
This is musical interaction. It has the length of popular song
elements, eight measures answered by eight, but it does not
132 CHAPTER SIX
(^4) Melodrama goes back to operatic experiments in the later eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, when spoken or declaimed dialogue was inter-
spersed with orchestral accompaniment. The Victorian melodrama uses points
of musical emphasis as the “melo-” part of what is otherwise “drama,” or spo-
ken dialogue. Sprechstimmein Schoenberg and Berg and background music in
films are two modern versions of “melodramatic” technique. Musical comedy
had bits of underscoring from an early date. Kern made a specialty of the tech-
nique and brought it to a high point in Sweet Adeline(1929).