Richard Rodgers
Richard Rodgers was born in Hammels Station, near Arverne, Long Island, on June 28, 1902. As a child he began studying the piano and attending the popular musical theater. He wrote his first songs in 1916, a score for an amateur musical in 1917, and in 1919 created the music for the Columbia Varsity Show, the first freshman ever to do so. Meanwhile he had initiated a collaborative arrangement with the lyricist, Lorenz Hart, that lasted almost a quarter of a century. Their first song to reach the Broadway theater was “Any Old Place With You” in A Lonely Romeo in 1919. Their first Broadway musical was The Poor Little Ritz Girl in 1920, and their first success came with The Garrick Gaieties in 1925 where the song, “Manhattan,” was introduced. For the next twenty years, Rodgers and Hart—frequently with Herbert Fields as librettist—dominated the musical stage with some of the most original and freshly conceived musical productions of that period: Dearest Enemy (1925), The Girl Friend (1926), Peggy-Ann (1926), A Connecticut Yankee (1927), On Your Toes (1936), Babes in Arms (1937), I’d Rather Be Right (1937), I Married an Angel (1938), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), and Pal Joey (1940). From these and other productions came hundreds of songs some of which have since become classics in American popular music. The best of these were “Here In My Arms,” “Blue Room,” “My Heart Stood Still,” “My Romance,” “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World,” “There’s a Small Hotel,” “Where or When,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Spring Is Here,” “Falling in Love With Love,” “I Could Write a Book” and “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.”
By Jupiter, in 1942, was the last of the Rodgers and Hart musicals. Hart’s physical and moral disintegration made it necessary for Rodgers to seek out a new collaborator. He found him in Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom Rodgers embarked on a new and even greater career as composer for the theater. Their first collaboration was Oklahoma! in 1943, an unprecedented box-office triumph, and a production that revolutionized the musical stage by crystallizing the concept and procedures of the musical play as opposed to the musical comedy. After that Rodgers and Hammerstein brought to the stage such classics as Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I. Other Rodgers and Hammerstein productions were Allegro (1947), Me and Juliet (1953), Pipe Dream (1955), The Flower Drum Song (1958) and The Sound of Music (1959). Among the most famous songs by Rodgers from these productions—besides those from musical plays discussed below—were “A Fellow Needs a Girl,” “No Other Love,” “Everybody’s Got a Home But Me,” “All at Once You Love Her,” “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” “Do, Re, Mi,” “The Sound of Music” and “Climb Every Mountain.” The collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein ended in 1960 with the death of the lyricist.
Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I have become enduring monuments in the American theater. They are continually revived, have been adapted for motion pictures, and are perpetually represented at semi-classical concerts and on records. In whatever form they appear they never fail to excite and inspire audiences. It is in these productions that Rodgers has reached the highest creative altitudes of his career, with music of such expressive lyricism, dramatic impact, consummate technical skill, and pervading charm and grace that its survival in American music seems assured. Robert Russell Bennett has made skilful orchestral adaptations of the basic melodic material from each of these musical plays, and it is most usually these adaptations that are most frequently performed by pop and semi-classical orchestras.
Carousel is the second of the Rodgers and Hammerstein masterworks, succeeding Oklahoma! by about two years. It is one of the most radiant ornaments of our musical stage. Oscar Hammerstein II here adapted Ferenc Molnar’s play, Liliom, with changes in setting, time, and some basic alterations of plot. In the musical version the action takes place in New England in 1873. Billy Bigelow, a barker in an amusement park, falls in love and marries Julie Jordan. A charming but irresponsible young man, Billy decides to get some money in a holdup, when he learns his wife is pregnant. Caught, Billy eludes arrest by committing suicide. After a brief stay in Purgatory, Billy is permitted to return to earth for a single day to achieve redemption, the price for his admission to Heaven. On earth, he meets his daughter. Through her love, understanding and forgiveness he achieves his redemption. Thus the musical ends in a happy glow of love and compassion whereas Molnar’s original play ended on the tragic note of frustration.
Carousel opened in New York on April 19, 1945. John Chapman described it as “one of the finest musical plays I have ever seen, and I shall remember it always.” It received the Drama Critics Award and eight Donaldson Awards. Since then it has often been revived besides being adapted for the screen; in 1958 it was presented at the World’s Fair in Brussels.
The heartwarming glow that pervades the play in Hammerstein’s moving dialogue and lyrics was magically caught in the score, which begins with an extended waltz sequence for orchestra. In the play this music is heard under the opening scene which represents an amusement park dominated by a gay carousel. This waltz music is a self-sufficient composition that can be, and often is, played independently of the other excerpts. The other main musical episodes include the love duet of Billy and Julie, “If I Loved You”; Billy’s eloquent and extended narrative, “Soliloquy,” when he learns he is about to become a father; the spiritual “You’ll Never Walk Alone”; the ebullient “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over”; two vigorous choral episodes, “Blow High, Blow Low” and “This Was a Real Nice Clambake.”
The King and I, presented on March 29, 1951, was adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II from Margaret Landon’s novel Anna and the King of Siam (which had already been made into a successful non-musical motion picture starring Rex Harrison and Irene Dunne). Anna, played in the musical by Gertrude Lawrence, is an English schoolmistress come to Siam to teach Western culture to the royal princes and princesses. Her own strong will and Western independence comes into sharp conflict with the king, an Eastern despot enacted by Yul Brynner. But they are nonetheless drawn to each other, partly through curiosity, partly through admiration. Naturally, since they are of different social stations and cultures, a love interest is out of the question, but they are ineluctably drawn to each other, particularly after Anna has managed to save a critical political situation in Siam through her ingenuity. The king dies just before the final curtain; Anna remains on as a teacher of the children she has come to love.
Part of the attraction of Rodgers’ music is its subtle Oriental flavoring. In the music—as in text, settings and costuming—The King and I is a picture of an “East of frank and unashamed romance,” as Richard Watts, Jr., said, “seen through the eyes of... theatrical artists of rare taste and creative power.” The Oriental element is particularly pronounced in the orchestral excerpt, “The March of the Royal Siamese Children,” with its exotic syncopated structure and orchestration. Other popular excerpts from this score include Anna’s lilting “I Whistle a Happy Tune”; her poignant ballad “Hello, Young Lovers”; Anna’s duet with the king, “Shall We Dance?”; her amiable conversation with the children, “Getting to Know You”; the King’s narrative, “A Puzzlement”; also two sensitive and atmospheric duets by the two Siamese lovers, Tuptim and Lun Tha, “We Kiss in the Shadow” and “I Have Dreamed.”
Oklahoma!, the first of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical plays—which opened on March 31, 1943—made stage history. Its run of 2,248 performances was the longest run of any Broadway musical up to then; a national company toured for ten years. It was successfully produced in Europe, Africa, and Australia. But beyond being a box-office triumph of incomparable magnitude, it was also an artistic event of the first importance. This was musical comedy no more, but a vital folk play rich in dramatic content, and authentic in characterization and background. The play upon which it was based was Lynn Riggs’ folk play, Green Grow the Lilacs, adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II. In making his adaptation, Hammerstein had to sidestep long accepted formulas and clichés of the American musical stage to meet the demands of Riggs’ play. Chorus-girl routines made way for American ballet conceived by Agnes De Mille. Set comedy routines were replaced by a humor which rose naturally from text and characters. Each musical incident was basic to the movement of the dramatic action. Even the plot was unorthodox for our musical theater. At the turn of the present century in West-Indian country, Laurey and Curly are in love, but are kept apart by their respective diffidence and a false sense of hostility. An ugly, lecherous character, Jud Fry, pursues Laurey. Laurey and Curly finally declare their love for each other. At their wedding Jud arrives inebriated, attacks Curly with a knife, and becomes its fatal victim when he accidentally falls upon the blade during a brawl. A hastily improvised trial exonerates Curly of murder and permits him and his bride to set off on their honeymoon for a land that some day will get the name of Oklahoma.
The play opens at once with its best musical foot forward, a simple song, “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” which has the personality of American folk music. It is sung offstage by Curly. After that the principal musical episodes include the love song of Curly and Laurey, “People Will Say We’re in Love”; several songs with a strong American national identity, including “Kansas City,” “The Farmer and the Cowman,” “The Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” and the title number; and two highly expressive numbers, “Out of My Dreams” and “Many a New Day.”
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue is one of Rodgers’ most famous orchestral compositions, and one of the finest achievements of the school of symphonic-jazz writing. This music was used for a ballet sequence in the Rodgers and Hart musical, On Your Toes, first produced in 1936. Since On Your Toes dwelled in the world of ballet, with dancers as principal characters, ballet episodes played an important part in the unfolding of the story; these episodes were conceived by George Balanchine. The play reaches a dramatic climax with a jazz ballet, a satire on gangsters, entitled Slaughter on Tenth Avenue. This is a description of the pursuit by gangsters of a hoofer and his girl. Caught up in a Tenth Avenue café, the gangsters murder the girl and are about to kill the hoofer when the police come to his rescue. Rodgers’ music for the ballet is an extended and integrated symphonic-jazz composition which has won its way into the permanent repertory of semi-classical music. It is constructed from two main melodic ideas. The first is an impudent little jazz tune, and the second is a rich and luscious jazz melody for strings.
South Pacific, produced on April 7, 1949, was both commercially and artistically of the magnitude of Oklahoma! Its Broadway run of 1,925 performances was only 325 less than that of its epoch-making predecessor. In many other respects South Pacific outdid Oklahoma!: In the overall box-office grossage; in sale of sheet music and records; in the capture of prizes (including the Pulitzer Prize for drama, seven Antoinette Perry and nine Donaldson awards). The book was adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan from Tales of the South Pacific, a series of short stories about American troops in the Pacific during World War II. In the adaptation two love plots are emphasized. The first involves the French planter, Emile de Becque, and the American ensign, Nellie Forbush; the other engages Liat, a Tonkinese girl, and Lieutenant Cable. The first ends happily, but only after complications brought on by the discovery on Nellie’s part that Emile was once married to a Polynesian and is the father of two Eurasian children. The other love affair has a tragic ending, since Lieutenant Cable dies on a mission. With Ezio Pinza as De Becque and Mary Martin as Nellie, South Pacific was “a show of rare enchantment,” as Howard Barnes reported, “novel in texture and treatment, rich in dramatic substance, and eloquent in song.” Among its prominent musical numbers are De Becque and Nellie’s love song, “Some Enchanted Evening”; De Becque’s lament “This Nearly Was Mine”; Cable’s love song “Younger Than Springtime”; three songs by Nellie, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair,” “A Cockeyed Optimist,” and “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy”; two exotic numbers by the Tonkinese Bloody Mary, “Happy Talk” and “Bali Ha’i”; and a spirited and humorous choral number by the Marines, “There Is Nothing Like a Dame.”
Victory at Sea is a nine-movement suite for symphony orchestra adapted by Robert Russell Bennett from the extended musical score for a series of documentary films on naval operations during World War II. These films were presented over NBC television in 1952 and received both the Sylvania and the George Foster Peabody Awards. Much of the acclaim accorded to these remarkable films belonged to Rodgers’ background music which, as Otis L. Guernsey said, “suggested courage, self-sacrifice and the indomitable spirit of the free man.” A New Yorker critic described Rodgers’ music as a “seemingly endless creation, now martial, now tender, now tuneful, now dissonant... memorable and tremendously moving.”
The first movement, “The Song of the High Seas,” is a picture of ships menaced by Nazi U-boats on the seas during the early part of World War II. They finally get involved in battle. “The Pacific Boils Over” describes the beauty of Hawaii at peace in a melody suggesting Hawaiian song and dance. War comes, and this idyllic mood is shattered. A broad melody for strings ending in forceful chords tells about the tragedy of Pearl Harbor and the grim business of repairing the damage inflicted upon it by the Japanese. The third movement is one of the most famous in the suite, often performed independently of the other sections. It is stirring and dramatic march music of symphonic dimensions entitled “Guadalcanal March.” This is followed by “D Day,” its principal melody a broad, strong subject for brass telling of the gradual build-up of men and materials for the invasion of Fortress Europe. The fifth movement, “Hard Work and Horseplay” provides the lighter side of war. American soldiers find relief from grim realities in mischievous escapades and playtime. “Theme of the Fast Carrier” brings up the picture of a battle scene and ends with moving funeral music. In “Beneath the Southern Cross” we get an infectious tango melody which Rodgers later borrowed for his hit song, “No Other Love,” for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play, Me and Juliet. “Mare Nostrum” recalls the harsh realities of war, first by presenting a serene Mediterranean scene, and then showing how it is torn and violated by the fierce naval attack on North Africa, Sicily, Salerno, and Anzio. The suite ends on a note of triumph with “Victory at Sea.” A hymn of thanksgiving is sounded. Then we hear reminders of the “Guadalcanal March” and the seductive tango melody from “Beneath the Southern Cross.” This tango is soon transformed into a rousing song of joy and triumph with which the suite comes to a magnificent culmination.