On Richard Rodgers' 100th Birthday
Noel Katz
innovate and improve the form of entertainment we love. But more than moving
the form forward, it was his talent that made him the most-sung composer in
history. Sometimes his melodies seem very simple: Hello Young Lovers,
Do-Re-Mi, The Blue Room, Oh What a Beautiful Morning, but it takes great art to
make such simplicity work. At other times, his music is as bold and complex as
any Broadway contemporary writing: You Are Too Beautiful, The Carousel Waltz,
The Sweetest Sounds, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, You Took Advantage of Me. But
more often, it's the juxtaposition of a simple line with an unexpected harmony
that makes them great. "The hills are alive" starts as predictably as "Whistle
on the Wind" (around 40 years earlier) but then at the end of the phrase, "with
the sound of music" he utilizes the rarely-used major chord on the major
seventh of the scale. A blue note will pop up when you least expect it, as in
"Wait Till You See Her" which up until the word "when" seems a fairly normal
waltz. And oh the waltzes Rodgers wrote! He was the master of the form at a
time when most writers stayed away from the rhythm: Falling In Love With Love,
A Wonderful Guy, Edelweiss, It's a Grand Night For Singing, Do I Hear a Waltz?
Every Christmas I visit a friend who asks me to play a medley of Rodgers
waltzes. We all sing along and it goes on for hours.
Tonight, I'm having a few friends over and we'll sing Rodgers songs all night,
in every tempo. When I was a kid, and Rodgers turned 75, I did the same thing.
My mother wrote him about his birthday party in absentia and he wrote back
that hearing of these youngsters singing his songs all night meant more to him
than a recent concert on the White House lawn where the president had praised
him.
Part of growing old is the nagging suspicion that kids today aren't aware of
the radical experiments the "traditional favorite" made so many years ago. In
1925, when Rodgers had his first hit, he and his contemporaries didn't like
what they saw on Broadway: it seemed stilted and unnatural, too much overblown
singing and not enough wit. You know, like a Wildhorn show. Rodgers had
attended Columbia just so he could write the Varsity Show (as did I) and there
met both Oscar Hammerstein and the greatest lyricist ever, Lorenz Hart. In
their first hit, "We'll have Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too" the
20-somethings shook up the world with light and humorous turns of phrase set to
sprightly melodies. The following year they opened five musicals. Then they
decided to innovate some more, by musicalizing a Mark Twain novel (nobody had
adapted him before). When the depression hit, they headed for Hollywood, where
they created amazingly unusual films with extended musical sequences (the
camera following a tune as it gets hummed all over France) and rhymed dialogue.
When Broadway lured them back, they put a whole circus on stage, musicalized a
Shakespeare play, used narrative ballet, and spun a sexy story with an
anti-hero. And they didn't break rules just to break rules, either. They
were, always, looking for ways to entertain. When they had the idea to write a
show for a cast of young unknowns, they had the brilliant idea of writing for
kids as if they were adult sophisticates.
Once Hammerstein took over for Hart, the theatrical revolutions hit even
greater heights. No piece of American theatre changed things more than
Oklahoma, and Carousel is the first "dark" masterpiece. The King and I still
plays like gangbusters: a battle of wits pitting East vs. West and man vs.
woman, all set to glorious music that gives a flavor of Siam without slavish
imitation. And if the preachiness of South Pacific seems quaint to you,
imagine, forty years ago, Rodgers presenting an interracial romance and not
commenting on it, not preaching. And not a violin or cello in the orchestra.
Some songs are so familiar, we don't take time to stop and think of the
artistry that went into making them work so well: Where Or When, My Funny
Valentine, Some Enchanted Evening, Getting To Know You. Well, today would be a
good day to do so. I'd say it's also a good day to hum or sing a Richard
Rodgers melody, but I've a feeling everybody does that every blessed day.
http://hometown.aol.com/noelkatz/main.html
Kaffitimi
that I might have let the Rodgers centennial pass in a perfunctory way were it
not for your eloquence. Instead, I've lined up all my projects like ducks in a
row and stocked the fridge and will spend the weekend listening only to
Rodgers. Thank you, Noel, for the lovely and loving tribute to the Master.
kaffitimi
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noel...@aol.com (Noel Katz):
Robert Gordon
> ...and Carousel is the first "dark" masterpiece.
Oh, I think Show Boat is that. Nice tribute, though.
-- Rob Gordon
Robert Deutsch
special gift was his ability to write a melody that goes along in a
fairly predictable direction and then then something changes (a
musical phrase, an unexpected note or harmonic progression) and all of
a sudden the song is going in a direction that's different than the
one you predicted, but that in retrospect seems inevitable. The
resolution of the phase "...sound of music" that you refer to is a
good example of this sort of thing. However, even Rodgers couldn't
manage this trick all the time: "Away from You," from REX, goes along
like a vintage Rodgers tune, but then that special turn, that
unexpected *something* doesn't come and the song just ends. My guess
is that Rodgers never found a sufficiently interesting resolution, but
the first part of the song is pretty good, so he let it go.
Bob
Connelly Christopher
Steve & Rhonda
then that special turn, that unexpected *something* doesn't come and the
song just ends. My guess is that Rodgers never found a sufficiently
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These days, the whole song, and parts of the score are sounding better
and better.
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Second smash sunny year!
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http://community.webtv.net/NewportsRetro/HAPPYSUMMER