Title: American Musical Theater:
1American Musical Theater
2Making of an Exhibit
- Red, Hot Blue
- In research production seven years
- Natl Portrait Gallery/American History
- Sought to infuse museum w/ musical life
- Not just flat portraiture
- Posters, playbills, set design
- 3D costumes, props, ruby slippers
- Multi-media Time Warner video
- www.npg.si.edu/exh/rhb
3Street Scene, 1866-1906
- Bowery 1880s
- Minstrelsy still popular
- Variety shows bawdy pastiche
- Played in saloons
- Catered to illiterate audiences
- Exaggerated skits and parodies
- Spectacle appealed to non-English speakers
- Limited appeal because of reputation
- Tony Pastor catered to middle class
- Cleaned up variety shows
- Appealed to a wider audience . . .
4Street Scene 1880s
- Vaudeville 1890s
- Derived from minstrelsy and circus
- Olio (series) of specialty acts/skits
- Marketed as family entertainment
- New York Herald rowdyish and troublesome
elements eliminated - From Bowery to Broadway
- Pastor architect of popularity
- Featured tightrope acts, Magic Flute, and
everything in between -
5Vaudeville Ellis Island
- Popular acts immigration pattern
- Blackface -gt Irish -gt Dutch (German)
- Harrigan Hart Irish
- Acts relied on parodies of Bowery life
- Mimicked countrymen others
- Weber Fields Polish Jews
- Slapstick, parody
- Rooted in everyday experience
- Williams Walker cakewalk
- In Dahomey performed for Queen
6Tin Pan Alley early 1900s
- Named for cacophony of song plugs
- Before 1900 plugging by minstrels
- Oliver Ditson Co. also sold choral music,
sacred music, chamber music - From old-school gents to Bohemian
- Witmark, Stern followed profits
- Published coon songs and ragtime
- Song pluggers travelled to music halls, jockeying
for position - Composers a licentious group
7Larger Marketplace
- Producers send shows on tours
- August theater owners went to NYC to lure show
direct from Broadway - Agents combine into Syndicate
- Network of 700 theaters
- Centralization NYC popularity
- Little attention to local tastes
8Vaudeville Operetta to Musical
- Craze for light opera
- Lillian Russell
- Retained European flair
- Victor Herbert
- Made music central, not just enhancement
- Integrated music and story
- Babes in Toyland, Naughty Marietta
- George M. Cohan
- Could carry a show
- Lent coherence to form
- Give My Regards to Broadway
- Vaudeville grad. becoming mainstream
9Rise of the Impresario, 1907-1927
- Ziegfeld Follies 1907 - 1943
- Professional staff
- Joseph Urban
- Lavish settings, costumes
- More attention to staging
- Topical comedy
- Feminine - er, appeal
- Narrative loosely tied acts together
- Stars Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor
- Produced Showboat 1927
10Rise of the Impresario, cont.
- Messrs Shubert
- Lee and J.J. Shubert
- Imitated Ziegfeld style
- Did not aspire to art
- Theater machine that
- makes dollars
- Encouraged individual (often native) performance
styles in entertainers - Shubert Alley 44th/45th St., national
- Al Jolson
11Jerome Kerns Show Boat
- Equal importance to story, music, and character
- All-star production team
- Lyrics-libretto Hammerstein
- Produced by Flo Ziegfeld
- Designed by Joseph Urban
- American sentiments in an American idiom
- Ol Man River
- Descendants 10 years later
- Depression escapism
12B-way Hollywood, 1927-1942
- Jazz Singer talkies musicals
- Berkeley Warner Bros film director
- Elevated dance to critical acclaim
- In movies, camera determines gaze
- Shot and edited with one camera
- Used fountains, elaborate costuming, cast of
thousands, girlsgirlsgirls - RKO Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers
- Each dance ought to spring somehow out of
character or situation, otherwise it is simply a
vaudeville act.
13Fair and Balanced Biography
- Biographical conventions
- 1800s
- Sing the subjects praises
- No unwarranted private information
- 1900s
- Tell it like it is
- More smarmy details
- A.S. Byatt
- Biography should give factual information, make
no inference
14George Gershwin 1898-1937
- Straddled popular and classical genres
- Tin Pan Alley song plugger
- Studied harmony composition
- Musical theater 24 scores, enduring songs
popular today - Orchestral/instrumental works
- Rhapsody in Blue, Concerto in F, Three Preludes
for Piano, An American in Paris - www.gershwin.com
15George and Ira
Collaborated on two dozen scores together Ira
later collaborated with Kurt Weill, Burton Lane,
Harold Arlen
- Fascinatin Rhythm retrofitted lyrics
- Unusual rhymes Im bidin my time,
- Cuz thats the kinda guy Im . . .
- Word Play Love is Sweeping the Country
- Waves are hugging the shore . . .
16Political Operettas
- Strike up the Band 1928
- Commercial, but not critical success
- Of Thee I Sing 1930
- Wintergreen runs for Pres on platform of love
contest for fiancee - Pokes good-natured fun at electorate
- Won Pulitzer Prize
- Let Em Eat Cake 1933
- Commercial flop
- Too sardonic for Depression audiences
17- Schoenberg
- Many musicians do not consider George Gershwin a
serious composer. But they should understand
that, serious or not, he is a composerthat is, a
man who lives in music and expresses everything,
serious or not, sound or superficial, by means of
music, because it is his native language. There
are a number of composers, serious (as they
believe) or not (as I know), who learned to add
notes together. But they are only serious on
account of a perfect lack of humor and soul.
18Gershwin jazz composer?
- Regarded as such in his lifetime
- Jazz emerging, not clearly defined
- Deems Taylor Gershwin a link between the jazz
camp and the intellectuals - Gershwin on jazz
19Porgy Bess
- African American cast, set in South
- Blue motives urban/rural
- Four characters recurring motifs
- Connections, musical foreshadowing
- Armitage In PG is a promise of a future
Gershwin opera in which he might have been able
to eliminate even the aria.
20Curtain
- Died at age 38 from brain tumor
- Oscar Hammerstein
- Our friend wrote music
- And in that mould he created
- Gaiety and sweetness and beauty
- And twenty-four hours after he had gone
- His music filled the air
- And in triumphant accents
- Proclaimed to this world of men
- That gaiety and sweetness and beauty
- Do not die . . .
21Broadway Hollywood
- Golden Era of musicals
- Oklahoma, Wizard of Oz, Carousel, South Pacific,
Sound of Music, King I, My Fair Lady, Meet Me
in St. Louis, Music Man - Composers/Lyricists
- Lerner Loewe, Rodgers Hammerstein, Bernstein
Sondheim, Comden Green, Frank Loesser,
Meredith Willson - Choreographers
- Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins
- Designers Harold Prince, Oliver Smith
22Oklahoma - 1943
- Ran on Broadway 2,248 performances
- 10 years touring
- Most successful to date
- RH worked forward from setting story
- No show stopping
- Opening/Act I Finale this will be different!
- Agnes de Mille choreo
- Wartime optimism, open air spirit
Live and in person! Oklahoma, Cabaret, Jason
Robert Brown
23West Side Story
- Recasting of Romeo Juliet in NYC
- Shows constraints of art. difficulty
- Needed dancers who could handle Robbins choreo
- Didnt get real singers
- Arthur Laurents insisted no opera!
- Bernstein recorded w/opera singers and symphonic
players - Opportunity to explore rehearsal process
DVD 1, 8, 10
24Redefinition (1960-)
- Boundary-pushing
- Hair, Pippin, Cabaret sex, drugs
- Godspell Jesus as . . . game show host?
- Tommy rock music
- Cabaret Nazi Germany
- RENT AIDS
- New forms of musical
- Twyla Tharpe/Billy Joel dance-ical
- Twist on familiar story Wizard of Oz
- The Wiz (African American retake)
- Wicked (told from Witches POV)
25Different forms of revival
- Disney animated musicals
- Little Mermaid, Aladdin, BB, Lion King
- Many are revivals of familiar stories
- Use popular composers for theme song
- Chicago, Moulin Rouge, RENT, Phantom of the
Opera, Annie - Revivals of popular musicals
- Stage versions of opera
- Aida, RENT (Boheme), M. Butterfly
26New compositions
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
- Dave Zabriskie video games/slots
- Musical version of traditional story
- Premiered Oct. 29, 2004
- Croswell Opera House
- Lyricist looked online for composers
- Only five pieces written when booked
- Still being written during rehearsal!
- DVD recorded for marketing purposes
- Ichabod Crane and composer to NYC
26 DVD
27References
- Armitage, M. (1938). George Gershwin. New York
Longmans, Green Co. - Crawford, R. (2001). An introduction to
Americas music. New York W.W. Norton Co. - Ewen, D. (1970). George Gershwin, his journey to
greatness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall,
Inc. - Gershwin, G. (1926). Does jazz belong to art? In
G. Suriano (Ed.), Gershwin in his time. New York
Gramercy Books. - Henderson, A. Blocker Bowers, D. (1996). Red,
hot blue a Smithsonian Salute to the American
Musical. Washington, DC Smithsonian Press. - Jablonski, E. Stewart, L.D. The Gershwin years.
New York Doubleday Co. - Peyser, J. (1993). The memory of all that. New
York Simon Schuster.