The Musical as Drama

centered approach because there is no way to think that Eliza
and Higgins are “like” him or are “learning” from him. But he
belongs to the musical universe of My Fair Ladyfrom his first
number to his last. How about Freddy Eynesford-Hill? His
“On the Street Where You Live” has a close approach to one
of the motifs we have been discussing for Eliza and Higgins:
three ascending tones, then a leap to a sixth rather than a fifth.
Freddy share the motifs of the other characters because he
inhabits the same musical universe as the others. Each well-
composed musical has a style of its own, a characteristic sound,
and there is a drive among the singing characters to join this
voice. So when Freddy sings outside the Wimpole Street house,
or when Alfred Doolittle and his cronies sing and dance their
way through “With a Little Bit of Luck” or “I’m Getting Mar-
ried in the Morning” in the Tottenham Court Road area, they
are performing their way into the voice of the musical too.
Love duets can now be seen as a special version of the voice
of the musical. When Sky Masterson and Miss Sarah Brown
sing the same melody in “I’ll Know,” or when Ado Annie and
Will Parker sing the same melody in “All er Nuthin’,” or when
Tony and Maria sing the same melody in “Tonight,” we can say
that lovers harmonize with each other, sometimes even before
they realize it themselves, but they are also voicing something
broader that runs through the universe of their musical. A well-
composed show has a style of its own, a voice for its own range
of character and incident, which works its way into the voices of
many characters (especially the lovers), works its way into the
orchestration, works its way into the ensembles, the dances.
Sometimes characters will sing the same melody at quite dif-
ferent points although there is no rationalized reason for one
to know the other’s tune. When Nathan Detroit finally de-
clares himself in song before Miss Adelaide, the melody of his
“Sue Me” briefly resembles Sky Masterson’s lovely “My Time
of Day,” which is much more harmonically and poetically com-
plex. The resemblance is in the melody of “When the smell
of the rain-washed pavement / Comes up clean and fresh and
cold,” compared to Nathan’s main theme, “Sue me, sue me,
shoot bullets through me.” Nathan does not literally lift Sky’s

CHARACTER AND VOICE OF THE MUSICAL 69