Lecture 7 - Golden Age of the American Musical

I have been talking about the characteristics of musical theatre and the development of American musical theatre, which is sort of our contribution to the theatrical world from somewhere in the early 1940s to the mid-1960s or so. This period of probably about 25 years is frequently referred to as the Golden Age of the American Musical. In fact, probably most of or many of the titles which one thinks of when one talks about musical theatre, and many of the titles that perhaps you have seen or have been done in high schools or colleges or other organizations, have indeed come from this golden age of the musical. We talked about and developed last time at some length the team of Rodgers and Hammerstein, and their first creation of Oklahoma. Following that creation of Oklahoma, they continued writing together from 1943 until 1959, upon the death of Oscar Hammerstein. In that period of time, they produced some titles which have remained among the great musicals of the American musical theatre: Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and then their final work together, The Sound of Music. The Sound of Music, of course, then moved from the stage into the film world and became one of the most successful film musicals ever made. There are many other titles that we could certainly come up with and talk about from this era. Again, another team of Lerner and Loewe, who produced Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, Camelot, and then there are indeed the great comic musicals, and one should certainly not leave them out. Carrying on their tradition of being musical comedy, we have titles such as Guys and Dolls, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Annie Get Your Gun, Damn Yankees, Hello, Dolly!, and of course, musicals that also continued that tradition of celebrating American life, an American tradition, and American values in such things as Meredith Willson's The Music Man. In fact, this particular musical is one in which there is the sole creator, and that is Meredith Willson, who did indeed write the book, the dialogue, the lyrics, and the music for The Music Man. Also during this period of time, we moved from being musical comedy into the serious musical. And in fact, it is the very reason that eventually the word "comedy" was sort of dropped from this category, and it simply became "the musical," because we had such things as West Side Story, which was the Romeo and Juliet story from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet story moved to New York City in the 1950s and to the gang warfare that existed then during that period of time. Or the musical Gypsy, which, while certainly it has some funny moments in it, is, however, very much about a mother who was quite a monster, a mother who drives her daughters to live the life that she wanted but never had a chance to live, and that is to be a part of show business. And things like Fiddler on the Roof, which again deals with the persecution of Jews in Russia and eventually, under the Czarist period, leads them to the Jews being driven out of Russia and immigrating into another land. Now, all of these are part of what we sometimes call the strong book musical or sometimes referred to as the organic unity musicals, and that is that every element here—the music, the song, the dance, the dialogue—everything here is driven by, in some way, developing either the story or the characters who are a part of that art of the story, all of these elements are integrated, and we talked last time about how Agnes de Mille sort of took that final piece, and that is, in this case, dance and artistic dance, and integrated it into Oklahoma, so that we find then in all of these musicals that every element comes together here to be a part of a totality, to be a part of a unity. Well, in all movements, in all artistic movements, they go through phases, and that is, they have a point at which they begin, they develop, they have a kind of full flowering, and that is very nature-oriented. Here, they have a flowering, and then once they have reached that full flowering, then they go into decline. Well, just as this is exactly what happens in mother nature, then the same thing happens in artistic movements, and they have a point at which they reach a zenith and their full flower wing, and then at that point, they move into their final stage, the stage of decline. And this is exactly what happened in the American Musical, and that is, by the time we reached the late '50s and into the early '60s, we could find out, specifically some of the ones I named earlier, but Gypsy and West Side Story, we find then that that is, if anything, sort of the zenith of this organic musical story, organic character-driven musicals here. And so then, at that point, once we've reached that point, then we begin to find that it's necessary to find something else to move on, to move to a new movement, to move to a new staging of some kind. And also, what we find here is that both what was happening in American popular music and also what was happening in the American Society of the time begins to be reflected in the problems that then the American musical begins to develop. By the end of the 1960s, American popular music is no longer the sound of the music which had developed in the '20s and the '30s and continued on into the '40s and into the '50s. And frequently what we still today call American popular song standard. But what now happens is that by the middle '50s and on into the early '60s, American popular music has changed. There began to appear on the scene artists like Chubby Checker and Elvis Presley and then and the Doors and then the invasion from England with The Beatles, with Mick Jagger, with many other artists, and that no longer sounds like American popular music. There is now a completely different kind of sound. But what happens is the American musical doesn't absorb that change. The American musical no longer is a part of American popular music. It's still continuing in the same vein that it had been writing in in the '40s and the '50s. And so, the writers of American musical now are no longer the writers of American popular music, as they had been for almost the 50 years prior to that. There are now a whole new series of artists who are a part of the popular scene, and that is no longer a part of the American musical. We also find that at this time, we are, by the mid-1960s, we are at the beginning of the Vietnam controversy. We are in a great period of unrest in American society. And that unity which the American musical had was certainly no longer a sign of the times that we are in. And most of all, those values that the American musical celebrated, that is, those values of American life, of American philosophy, American belief, what we find is by the mid-1960s, all of those beliefs, all of those philosophies are being challenged, are being upset. And so now we find that the American musical is perhaps exonerating and writing musicals about values for which a great part of the society no longer even believes in. So we now find that the American musical is in problems. It is needing to find new forms, it is needing to find a new sound, and it needs to find a new way to go. But seemingly, the people who are working the musical this time are not giving an awareness of this. They are the writers who, yes, have come through the background of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and they do not seem to realize that there is a need to change. Here, there begin to be signs that there are some breaks that are coming, that there are some experimentation is going to take place. And maybe one of the first departures that we find is in 1966 and the musical called Cabaret, with music and lyrics by Kander and Ebb. The breakdown here, or where Cabaret differs from the musicals that have preceded it, is that Cabaret, while it is a book musical, does indeed have a story taken from the book called Berlin Stories. The stories are set in Berlin in the 1930s, and the story of Sally Bowles, who works at a nightclub in Berlin called the Kit Kat Club. But what we find then is that the story of Cabaret is the story of Sally Bowles, but within this story, there is sort of a framework that goes around that story. And that is the various scenes or maybe we should say the numbers that take place within the Kit Kat Club itself. There is an MC within the Kit Kat Club, and it starts, in fact, with a very direct invitation to the audience with his "Willkommen," meaning welcome, which is the opening number. The MC is moving the audience into the world of Berlin of the 1930s, just before the rise of Nazism but before Hitler has taken power. So, the MC welcomes us into this world, of which Sally Bowles is an entertainer. Now, the numbers that the MC will do throughout the musical lie outside the story of Sally Bowles. By being outside, meaning that they frequently become songs which comment on situations that are developing within the story itself. So, these songs move outside of the story, they are not a part of the organic unity, they are not contributing directly to it, but instead are being outside that story and are now commenting on it. Somewhere, the other, what we also find here is that Kander and Ebb are drawing some parallels between America and the unrest that was going on in our country, starting in the mid-1960s, and what was happening in Berlin in the early 1930s. What we have begun to do then here is we have begun to fragment this structure that the particular musical is here. Instead of it being an organic unity and everything tying together in some way, we have begun to fragment this. And this is exactly what the musical Cabaret does. The individual who is to carry this on and become the American master of musical theatre from this period in the mid-1960s down to the present day is Stephen Sondheim. Now, Stephen Sondheim was born in 1930. As a boy, he was family friends with Oscar Hammerstein. He was friends with the sons of Oscar Hammerstein, and Sondheim adored Oscar Hammerstein. Oscar Hammerstein became a kind of surrogate father to him after Sondheim's parents divorced. And so, Sondheim felt that he wanted to write musicals, and he certainly asked Hammerstein to help him in many ways. Hammerstein was certainly one of the major influences on the development of Sondheim as a writer, and many of the things that Sondheim learned about writing lyrics, he learned from Oscar Hammerstein. However, Sondheim was not content to continue writing the same kind of musicals that Rodgers and Hammerstein had written. Instead, he wanted to branch out and push the limits of what could be accomplished in the American Musical. One of the first musicals in which he wrote both music and lyrics is the farce musical called "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," and it has remained one of the most successful musicals that Sondheim has written in terms of the number of productions and money earned. However, what we mostly know Sondheim for are the musicals that he started writing and developing starting in 1970, with the musical "Company." "Company" is sometimes referred to as the first concept musical. By concept, I mean that the unity that ties the musical together is not necessarily a strongly developed story, but instead an idea or a concept. In the case of "Company," the concept is married life. We see Bobby, who is a bachelor struggling with commitment, or what was called narcissism in the 1970s. Bobby finds it difficult to make a true commitment to any single person. The musical consists of a series of scenes in which Bobby interacts with his married friends, who are five couples. Through these interactions, we get an acerbic view of married life. The musical takes place leading up to Bobby's surprise birthday party, where all these couples are coming together. However, Bobby doesn't show up, and his friends realize that he needs to find his own way of making a commitment. The last song in the show, called "Being Alive," brings together all the various strands of the musical in terms of music and lyrics. This musical was extremely successful in both New York and London. Sondheim continued with a series of experimental musicals, each one pushing the boundaries of what the musical could do. From "Company" followed by "Follies," which deconstructed what the American musical is all about while paying homage to it through various musical numbers that echo the music of the early 20th century. The 30s into the 40s, but setting all of this into the period of the 1970s when this particular musical was written. Then came A Little Night Music. In some ways, A Little Night Music may seem like an operetta because, among other things, the task that Sondheim set out for himself here is to take three-quarter-time music, which was the basis of the Viennese operetta of the 1880s and again at the turn of the century. Sondheim now experiments and sees what he can do by writing every piece of music in the show in three-quarter time. It's very much in the vein of an operetta. From A Little Night Music, the song that has become the best known of all the songs Sondheim has written comes from, and that is the song "Send in the Clowns." Then comes a musical called Pacific Overtures, and in this case, it is an experiment to see what happens if one writes a musical about the period when Americans first visit Japan in the 1850s and combining it with Japanese kabuki staging. It's a wonderful musical that was not to everyone's taste, but it certainly was another experiment to see what could be done. Then comes Sweeney Todd, perhaps where Sondheim is at his most operatic, especially in terms of the music that he wrote here. Sweeney Todd is a story taken from a 19th-century melodrama about a barber called Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. So, taking that melodrama and turning it into a modern American musical, but also giving it songs that have a very operatic tinge about them due to the melodramatic nature of the story. Sunday in the Park with George comes in the early 1980s, and in this particular musical, it is about artistic creation, using the French artist George Seurat. Sondheim writes a musical about George and the great painting that Seurat did, "Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte." The musical is about the creation of that particular painting. Throughout the musical, Seurat was called a pointillist because he painted in little dots. Sondheim finds music that reflects and gives a musical sound to the pointillist technique of the painting. Then comes what has become the second most popular musical that Sondheim has written called Into the Woods. It is a wild experiment in which Sondheim and the man who wrote the book for him, James Lapine, bring together various Grimm fairy tales. What happens if you cause all of these fairy tales (Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood) to cross paths in the first act of the musical? At the end of the first act, we are where all of those fairy tales are, and everybody lives happily ever after. But then comes Act Two of Into the Woods, and now we have moved beyond that moment. We begin to find out that most of these characters do not have the happy ending that they dreamt of. "Happily ever after" is not how they develop at all.