Bill Messenger - Great American Music Broadway Musicals, ZZZ Guidebooks

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Great American Music:
Broadway Musicals
Part I
Professor Bill Messenger
T
HE
T
EACHING
C
OMPANY
®
Bill Messenger
American Music Lecturer, The Peabody Institute
of the Johns Hopkins University
Bill Messenger studied musical composition, on scholarship, at The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins
University in Baltimore, Maryland, under Louis Cheslock. He attended a master class in 1963 with Nadia
Boulanger, the teacher of Roy Harris, Virgil Thompson, and Aaron Copeland. Mr. Messenger has two master’s
degrees, both from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He has done additional graduate work in musicology
at the University of Maryland.
Mr. Messenger has taught composition, music history, and music theory at Goucher College in Baltimore and at a
number of community colleges. He regularly lectures on American music at The Peabody Institute of the Johns
Hopkins University. Mr. Messenger’s latest book,
The Melody Lingers On
, has elicited the following from reviewer
and college dean Linda Nielson: “This book should be a mandatory part of the library of every senior citizen.”
Mr. Messenger’s musical career includes studio work on many early rock ’n’ roll recordings. He has accompanied
many nationally known performers during his years in the music business, including Cass Elliot before her tenure
with the Mamas and the Papas. In 1983, he was voted Baltimore’s best piano player by
Baltimore
magazine. For the
Peabody Elderhostel, he currently teaches a total of 11 different courses on various aspects of American musical
theater.
©2006 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
i
Table of Contents
Great American Music: Broadway Musicals
Part I
Professor Biography
............................................................................................i
Course Scope
.......................................................................................................1
Lecture One
The Essence of the Musical .......................................3
Lecture Two
The Minstrel Era (1828 to c. 1900) ...........................8
Lecture
Three
Evolution of the Verse/Chorus Song .......................13
Lecture Four
The Ragtime Years (c. 1890–1917).........................18
Lecture Five
The Vaudeville Era (1881 to c. 1935) .....................22
Lecture Six
Tin Pan Alley...........................................................26
Lecture Seven
Broadway in Its Infancy ..........................................31
Lecture Eight
The Revue versus the Book Musical .......................35
Timeline
.............................................................................................................39
Glossary
.............................................................................................................42
Music Credits
....................................................................................................43
Biographical Notes
......................................................................................Part II
Bibliography
................................................................................................Part II
ii
©2006 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Great American Music: Broadway Musicals
Scope:
This course covers the 200-year evolution of American musical theater, including the minstrel era, the vaudeville
era, the age of ragtime, the revue, and the book musical. Because recorded examples of music from recent
Broadway musicals are readily available in retail stores, these are used less frequently here than the older, rarer
recordings, without which most listeners would have little knowledge of the sound of early musicals. The shows
chosen to be discussed in this course are each important links in musical theater’s evolution.
“Give My Regards to Broadway,” the theme song that opens each of the 16 lectures in this course, was written by
George M. Cohan, the most popular star on Broadway during the 20
th
century’s first decade and the grandfather of
the integrated book musical. Every creator of Broadway musicals, from Kern and Hammerstein to Kander and Ebb
and beyond, owes a debt to Cohan’s innovations in musical theater.
The minstrel show represents America’s first original form of musical theater. After the Civil War, it became an
important source of employment for newly freed black performers.
In the songs of the minstrel and vaudeville eras, the form that dominates is the verse/chorus song. Such songs
contained one chorus and several verses, usually constructed to tell a story. This was a sophisticated outgrowth of
the folk ballad (including such songs as “On Top of Old Smokey” and “My Darling Clementine”), which
constructed stories by accumulating verses. Understanding the way these songs are constructed musically (out of
contrasting musical phrases) will aid the listener in understanding the processes involved in creating a musical.
Ragtime is, essentially, the use of marked and frequent melodic syncopation against an unsyncopated
accompaniment. During the period from 1890 to 1910, it dominated American popular music. Even today, the
rhythms of ragtime lie under the surface of much modern theater song.
Vaudeville appealed to men, women, and children and contained none of the offensive elements of the minstrel
show. Consequently, by the early 20
th
century, it had largely replaced the minstrel show as America’s primary
source of musical stage entertainment. The great vaudeville chains that circled the continent became a training
ground for thousands of young performers who later appeared in movies, on radio, and on television.
For more than a century, the music publishing industry and the Broadway stage worked together to create America’s
hit songs. With the advent of talking-singing films, that relationship slowly began to deteriorate. Tin Pan Alley
focused on selling sheet music; today, sheet music accounts for only a tiny fraction of song sales compared to
recordings and music videos.
Musical theater as we now know it began in 1866 with a crude but popular show called
The Black Crook
. By the
dawn of the 20
th
century, George M. Cohan was creating shows in which the songs had a dramatic purpose and the
stories engaged the audience. Though most of Cohan’s characters (such as little Johnny Jones) are drawn from his
own personality, they are consistently lively and believable.
By 1909, Flo Ziegfeld and his extravaganzas were on Broadway to stay. Beautifully gowned girls and fabulous
special effects (including an airplane that flew over the heads of the audience) made the Ziegfeld Follies the most
popular item on Broadway.
Meanwhile, Jerome Kern (a decade before
Show Boat
) was creating intimate shows at the tiny 299-seat Princess
Theatre that focused more on low-key plots, believable characters, and well-crafted songs.
Despite
Show Boat
’s great innovations as a musical in which story, song, and dance were integrated, the revue
dominated the 1920s and 1930s. Revues showcased a variety of songs and sketches, often unrelated but sometimes
unified by a broad theme, such as
Paris Nights
or
New Faces on Broadway
.
A year before World War I, America seemed to be getting ready for the jazz age. The new music appeared on
recordings and began to emerge on Broadway. Between 1916 and 1920, Cole Porter and George Gershwin were
writing their first Broadway songs. The George White Scandals (Ziegfeld’s greatest competition) helped develop
the talents of composer George Gershwin. Both American clothing styles and American music were becoming
streamlined.
©2006 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
1
If any one person can be said to be the musical soul of the 1920s, it is George Gershwin. Using jazz ideas in both
his concert and his theater works, he helped make the formerly despised idiom acceptable to America’s intellectual
elite.
With the exception of Gershwin’s
Porgy and Bess
, what seems to be permanent about the Depression era is not the
shows but the songs—the great standards of Rodgers and Hart, Jerome Kern, and Cole Porter. The collaboration of
Rodgers and Hammerstein, however, created a large body of classic musicals, beginning in 1943 with
Oklahoma!
.
While this team dominated the 1940s, new greats shared the scene during the 1950s, including Leonard Bernstein,
Frank Loesser, and Lerner and Loewe. The huge number of classic musicals produced during the 1950s included
The King and I
,
The Music Man
,
West Side Story
,
Guys and Dolls
,
The Sound of Music
, and
My Fair Lady
. As a
result, the decade is often referred to as the “golden age of Broadway.”
The 15 years from 1960−1975 represent an incredible variety of different kinds of classic Broadway shows. From
1960,
Bye Bye Birdie
is a hilarious, fast-paced satire of rock ’n’ roll. That same year saw the beginning of the 40-
year run of
The Fantasticks
at Greenwich Village’s Sullivan Street Playhouse. Each new blockbuster seemed
determined to surpass the attendance record of its predecessor. Starting in 1964,
Hello, Dolly!
ran for 2,844
performances.
Fiddler on the Roof
, mounted a few months later, ran for 3,242 performances. And 1975’s
A Chorus
Line
beat them all with a run of 6,137 performances.
The dark themes introduced by
West Side Story
in the 1950s and
Cabaret
in the 1960s dominated the remainder of
the century, with such shows as Sondheim’s
Sweeney Todd
, Schönberg’s
Les Miserables
, Webber’s
The Phantom of
the Opera
, and Kander and Ebb’s
Chicago
and
Kiss of the Spider Woman
. But by the late 1980s, Broadway
lightened up and offered something for everyone—remakes of
Oklahoma!
and
Anything Goes
, along with all-dance
shows, such as Jerome Robbins’s
Broadway
and
Fosse
. As the century turned,
Hairspray
and
The Producers
brought back the old-fashioned fun that had dominated the street in its golden age.
2
©2006 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
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