Customer Reviews

The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey

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This is one of the best books on musicals that I know of. It's serious about book, lyrics and music alike, and full of insight.

The heart of the book is a series of studies of important musicals, one by each of a series of important writing teams (Kern/Hammerstein, Sondheim, Kander/Ebb, Rice/Lloyd Webber, Bock/Harnick -- Rodgers and Hammerstein get two chapters because of their importance). For each show, we get some interesting historical background, an outline of the plot, and detailed analysis of the music. The analysis is quite technical, but readable, and anyone can learn from it. Most importantly, it's not a dry analysis. The question Swain asks throughout is the question all musical writers should be asking themselves: how does the music help the show tell the story it wants to tell?

He's not afraid to make strong judgements, either. He praises Jesus Christ Superstar for its eclectism and atmosphere, but considers that the reuse of tunes in different contexts in Evita robs them of narrative power; on this basis, he judges Evita a (relative) failure. His review of A Chorus Line is so hostile that the authors, uniquely for the shows under review in this book, refused him permission to use extracts from the score. Yet even in this review there's insight and sympathy.

Read this book. It will educate your ears. You'll approach all musicals more intelligently after reading it.

Joseph Swain was a professor of music at Colgate University. He is an authority on Broadway shows and the music which carries them to success. He wrote" The influence of 'Showboat' was subliminal or subconscious, but there is no doubt that members of the younger generation of stage composers, especially George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers, were impressed by the play. It established a new set of dramatic ideals only approximated in the 1930s, but realized again and again thereafter." When George Gershwin labored to produce the folk-opera, 'Porgy and Bess' he was unjustly criticized as an outsider because the American Negro in 1935 coudl speak for himself. Things haven't changed in the past seventy years for some people; Essie Johnson declared at the KTA meeting that "we have NOT overcome." She is a product of the Gem Theater theatrics of that prohibition era, singing and dancing herself into the sidelines of local politics. And she's still not satisfied, but still holding old grudges. George Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess' is a complicated case owing to its intensity of ethnic setting and expression. The main dramas of Porgy's loneliness and Bess' weakness remain an extreme but typical case of ethnic usage.

As did Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's 'Oklahoma' based on the play "Green Grow the Lilacs." Both of these musicals had beautiful songs intermingled with the story line. Who will ever forget "Old Man River." In 'The King and I' there is "Shall We Dance," and in 'Flower Drum Song, "You Are Beautiful" and "I Enjoy Being a Girl." 'Kiss Me Kate' is based on Shakespeare's drama. 'Fiddler On the Roof' has the most beautiful music throughout of all the musicals.

All the great composers like Jerome Kern, Frank Loesser, Lerner and Lowe, and Leonard Berstein with those mentioned above are included in this concise book about Broadway Musicals. They are good but, since I have yet to go to New York, I enjoy the movie versions, especially Richard Harris in "Camelot." He was a great King Arthur, the best there is, by far greater than Richard Burton on stage. I could go on and on about this fabulous music and the men who wrote it, but there comes a time for a conclusion so I hope that the English teacher at Grainger County High will not be too critical of my feeble renderings.