structure halfway through and keeps the expectation alive that
the real number is still in the offing. The bench scene is one
of the longest in the history of the musical if both the
Carrie–Julie and the Billy–Julie episodes are counted, but it is
sustained by a musical confidence that keeps Carrie singing
eight-measure segments of songs that do not quite take shape,
all of them in G major, until she finally comes across with the
real song. Here we are still on “His name is Mister Snow,”
which sounds as if it mightbe the real song as it follows its first
eight measure segment with a second eight on “An almost per-
fect beau.” The promise of an AABA structure is continued
with a B segment of eight measures on “The fust time he
kissed me.” By now the lyric is turning into a parody of the
love song, for the almost-perfect beau smells of fish. And Car-
rie can’t return to A at the right point anyway, for she has to
recount Mr. Snow’s marriage proposal verbatim in a new B
segment—twonew B segments, in fact, one running twelve
measures to give the proposal verbatim and one running eight
measures to record her own reaction. This is characterization
through music, exactly what integration should amount to, and
it is coming about because Carrie can’t control the B section to
a standard pop tune structure. On she goes, B segment added
to B segment, twenty-eight measures where there are sup-
posed to be eight. Indeed, she never does get back to A. Here
is the ending of the extended B section, one of Hammerstein’s
inspired moments:
Next moment we were promised!
And now my mind’s in a maze,
Fer all it ken do is look forward to
That wonderful day of days.The amazing thing is that this is the lead-in to another song.
Carrie’s “days” rhymes with “maze” as the end of a verse, but it
belongs syntactically to “When I marry Mr. Snow,” which is
the beginning of the next song, the real song, the one we have
been waiting for her to sing. The forty-some measures about
“His name is Mr. Snow” have been the verse to a chorus that
this loquacious Carrie has been leading up to, Carrie and the