The Musical as Drama

the popular song formats and arranged into a kind of avenue
that leads to song or that connects one song to another. The
avenues are made of song elements, eight-, twelve-, or sixteen-
measure segments that may have been heard earlier (although
new material can be introduced in the segments too). That the
segments lead to a destination makes them seem progressive;
that the destination is a song makes their outcome into lyrical
suspensions of progress. They are something like the verse in
the verse-chorus combination, only less structured and capable
of greater length. Their effect is to sustain the lead-in to for-
mal song, making song into the issue of the drama and render-
ing the book mute for perhaps five minutes at a time.
As song emerges from these lyrical introductions, one gains
the impression that the action could be conducted entirely in
music. Yet no one supposes that the musical is striving to be-
come an opera in these long stretches. The segments of the
lyrical introductions are cut from the pop song lengths and re-
main tied to the strophic arrangement of the numbers that
they do not quite attain. We have usually heard these segments
before, and even when we haven’t heard them before, we know
the kind of structure they belong to. This cannot happen in
the dialogue of the book. These are formal repetitions of mu-
sic and lyric, and yet one gains the impression that a lot is hap-
pening. Billy is finding Julie a deeper person than he is used to
in a woman. But he does not say this—he is singing her melody.
Their characters are not the same as they were in the book
scenes. They have resources we wouldn’t have expected in a cir-
cus barker and a mill-girl. Julie is discovering expressive power
in her music, and Billy is responding to this. They are drawing
closer, and the woman is declaring herself the stronger of the
pair (as happens in the Gaylord-Magnolia scene in Show Boat,
too). One could say that characterization and plot are being
advanced by the song, as integration theory would have it, but
that is not exact enough. The song ischaracterization and plot.
The achievement of the song is what Carouselhas become for
the length of this extended number. It is a formal achievement
for the woman and the man, who seem to be learning about
themselves and one another while what they are really doing is

138 CHAPTER SIX