Unit 7 -- The American Musical

Unit 7 -- The American Musical

(up to the 1950s)

 

 

The American Musical

 

Forms of theater with music exist all over the world. The American style of musical has been a particularly important form of popular entertainment since the beginning of the 20th century. Like jazz, it is recognized internationally as a distinctly American and influential art form. The American musical developed out of a variety of musical and theatrical forms that preceded it in the 19th century (and earlier), including opera, operetta, minstrelsy, melodrama, pantomime, and ballet.

 

 

A musical typically involves some combination of spoken dialogue, songs and dancing, although these may be combined in various ways, and all elements may not be present--there are musicals without dialogue in which everything is sung and musicals without dancing. The libretto or book of a musical is the script containing the spoken dialog; the person who writes the libretto is called a librettist. The lyrics are the words of the songs, written by a lyricist, and the score is the music by the composer. The choreographer designs the dances. Musicals also require producers, directors, set designers, costume designers, lighting designers, stage crews, and of course the performers, who must excel simultaineously at three demanding crafts--singing, dancing and acting. The jobs of the creative team on a musical may be completely separate or one person may do two or more jobs--for example, the composer may also be the lyricist, the lyricist may also be the librettest, and many choreographers have also served as the directors of musical productions.

 

Historically, the Broadway theater district of New York City has been the center of American theatrical culture, and many musicals have either originated on Broadway or made their way there. The Hollywood film musical has also been and important counterpart to the stage musical, and Broadway and Hollywood musicals have exerted a good deal of influence on each other.

 

By the early 20th century, Broadway musicals could be said to come in two main types--operettas that mainly continued the European and "cultivated" styles and a brasher type of musical influenced by popular American styles such as ragtime and early jazz. Many shows combined elements of both types.



 

Operetta

 

An operetta is a light, usually comic, style of opera. It was a popular form of entertainment at various times and places in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, especially in France, Austria, Britain and the United States. Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas like The Pirates of Penzance, H.M.S Pinafore, and The Mikado were especially popular with British and American audinces.

From the turn of the century through the 1920s, an American style of operetta flourished on Broadway. These shows were usually set in exotic or fantistical locations with music strongly influenced by the European opera and operetta traditions. The composer Victor Herbert was well known for his operettas. Like many operetta composers, he was born and trained in Europe before settling the United States. Among his best-known works are Babes in Toyland (1903) and Naughty Marietta (1910). Here is a scene from the 1935 film version of Naughty Marietta. It stars Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald, who were popular stars of the 1930s known for doing these kinds of roles. Naughty Marietta is set in French colonial New Orleans and tells the story of a Princess who seeks the man who can finish her song--with him she will fall in love. That is exactly what happens in this scene.
 

Naughty Marietta by Victor Herbert

 

 

 

Musical Comedy



 

The musical comedy embraced the vernacular styles of American music that were popular at the time (especially ragtime and jazz), usually along with zesty, modern plots set in familiar or American locations such as New York City or the Wild West, and fast, zingy humor. The shows of George Cohan might be considered early examples of the musical comedy. Cohan, who started out in a family act on Vaudeville, was the librettist, composer, lyricist and star of his own shows. A patriotic Irish-American, he sometimes literally wrapped himself in the American flag on stage. His first big hit was Little Johnny Jones (1904). Here is James Cagney's spot-on portrayal of Cohan in a recreation of scenes from that show in the 1941 film Yankee Doodle Dandy.

 

 

 

The musical comedy reached its maturity and flourished most fully during the 1920s and 1930s. (It should be noted that in the meantime the operetta and musical comedy had a good deal of influence on each other, with some composers like Jerome Kern representing a more cultivated end of the spectrum and others like Irving Berlin more fully representing the vernacular). These shows had plots that are often  described as "flimsy," "silly," or "forgettable," but no one cared, because it was the songs and the performers that were the real draw. A really good show in this era was one that served as a showcase (a "vehicle") for stars like Ethel Merman and produced a couple of hit songs. As we already know, the songs from Broadway shows in this era became the Tin Pan Alley hits and jazz standards of the time. For the most part, it was the songs, not the shows themselves, that lived on in popular culture and memory. Popular composers and lyricists of musical comedy include George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

 

One of the few musical comedies of this era that is still commonly performed in full is Anything Goes, with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is a typical example of the form, with a modern setting (on a cruise ship), smart humor, and several musical numbers that became popular hits then and are classics now. Here is a performance of the title song from the 2011 revival (new production of an old show) of Anything Goes with Sutton Foster, one of Broadway's current biggest stars, taking a role originated by Ethel Merman in 1934.





 

Anything Goes by Cole Porter

 

 

 

The Musical Play

 

A new style of musical became prominent starting in the 1940s. Sometimes called musical plays, these shows had stronger plots with songs that were intended first and foremost to help tell the story (rather than using the show as an "excuse" to produce hit songs and put popular performers on stage). It's often said the that songs in these shows are integrated into the plot, because they help to reveal characters or move the story along in specific ways. Thus the term integrated musical is often applied to these works. This type of musical flourished from 1943 through the 1960s, a period known as the golden era of musicals. This idea of the musical play with integrated songs continues to be influential to the present day.

 

The integrated musical play is best exemplified by the work of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, who popularized the form with the premier of Oklahoma! in 1943. Oklahoma! has gained legendary status as the "first" integrated musical--a status that is not really true. There were stage musicals, operettas, and film musicals with integrated songs before Oklahoma! (examples include Show Boat (1927) on Broadway, Snow White (1937) and The Wizard of Oz (1939) in Hollywood, and virtally any operetta). However, Oklahoma!, because if its success, did inaugurate a whole new era in the Broadway musical in which the integrated musical became the dominant style, which had not been the case before. After Oklahoma! other creative teams imitated the Rodgers and Hammerstein model, with varying degrees of success. Classic musicals of the "golden era" that ensued include Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959); Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady (1956); Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls (1950); Adler and Ross's Damn Yankees (1955); Meredith Willson's The Music Man (1957); Jerry Herman's Hello, Dolly! (1964) and Bock and Harnick's Fiddler on the Roof (1964).

 

 The following two excerpts from Oklahoma! demonstrate the musical play as developed by Rodgers and Hammerstein. First, in "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" Curly, the cowboy, is introduced in a solo song. This was a departure from the normal convention in musicals, which was to open with a splashy, spectacular opening number for the chorus. Rodgers and Hammerstein, had a simple, sincere story to tell, so they opened instead with the simple, folk-like song--at first Curly even sings a cappella, without orchestral accompaniment. Notice that the dialogue alternates with sections of the song so that we learn about the characters and the situation during this musical scene.

 

Oklahoma! by Rodgers and Hammerstein

 

 

 

In "Surrey with the Fringe on Top," we learn about the complicated relationship between Curly and his would-be girlfriend Laurie. Once again, the song is integrated with plot and character and alternates with dialogue. The character of the song changes as the dynamic between Curly and Lauried does.

 

 

 

Over time, the golden era musical became more and more daring in its treatment of serious themes. West Side Story (1957), with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, is an updated retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Instead of rival families, two street gangs, the Puerto Rican sharks and the white ethnic Jets, battle it out in New York City. The ill-fated lovers are Tony and Maria. They meet at a dance in the gym. For this scene, Bersnstein composed Latin-inspired music, including the Cuban dance the Mambo, to evoke the Latin flavor of the story. At the time, Cuban and Puerto Rican musical styles were fusing with jazz in urban scenes like New York City. You can hear all of these influences along with Bernstein's training as a symphonic conductor and composer in this scene. (The following excerpts are from the movie version of West Side Story, which is pretty faithful to the stage version.)

 

West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim

 

 

 In the musical number "America," Bernstein borrows the Afro-Cuban rhythmic pattern of the son clave, which we have discussed before, along with other syncopated and polyrhythmic effects. This song also makes an important sympathetic (if many would say inauthentic) social statement about Puerto Ricans who have relocated to New York City.



 

 

This song has been criticized for presenting a stereotyped image of Puerto Rico and its current and former inhabitants. It should be noted that West Side Story is a musical about Hispanic Americans and heterosexual tragedy created by a team (director-choreographer Jerome Robbins and librettist Arthur Laurents along with Bernstein and Sondheim) who were all Jewish and basically gay. On one hand, the collaboration between these authors (with the best of intentions) and the performers, many of whom were in fact Hispanic, suggests much that is admirable about the cultural diversity of American culture. On the other hand, it raises legitimate and serious questions about who has the right to represent whom in words, music and image.

 

The "golden era" musical and its cohort, the Tin Pan Alley song, would face interesting challenges in the years after a significant sea change in popular music--namely the rise of rock and roll, which would quickly displace the musical and Tin Pan Alley from the center of American popular music. This new development will be the topic of our next unit.