Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

tread the fine line between opera and Broadway, between realism and poetry, ballet and ‘just dancing,’ abstract and representational,” and to “avoid being ‘messagy.’”18

On February 1, 1957, Bernstein noted briefly that with Candide “on and gone … nothing shall disturb the project.” In the next entry (July 8), shortly after rehearsals had begun, Bernstein confirmed the wisdom of 1949 in not casting “‘singers,’” since “anything that sounded more professional would inevitably sound more experienced, and then the ‘kid’ quality would be gone.” On August 20, one day after the opening-night tryout in Washington, Bernstein made his final entry. With great enthusiasm and pride he assessed the successful artistic collaboration (“all writing the same show”). Together, the quartet had created a work that possessed a “theme as profound as love versus hate, with all the theatrical risks of death and racial issues and young performers and ‘serious’ music and complicated balletics.”19

Shortly before his death Bernstein revealed that the melody of “America,” portions of “Mambo” from “The Dance at the Gym” (both derived from a never-completed Cuban ballet called Conch Town begun in 1941), and the centrally important “Somewhere” and “Maria” were among the first musical ideas conceived.20 Regarding the origins of “Somewhere” Bernstein explained: “‘Somewhere’ was a tune I had around and had never finished. I loved it. I remember Marc Blitzstein loved it very much and wrote a lyric to it just for fun. It was called ‘There Goes What’s His Name.’”21 Larry Kert (the original Tony) placed Bernstein’s recollection about “Somewhere” more precisely when he remembered that “Somewhere” was “written about the time of On the Town” (1944), which would make this song the earliest musical antecedent of the future West Side Story.22 Of equal importance is Bernstein’s recollection that at the time the musical was still East Side Story he “had already jotted down a sketch for a song called ‘Maria,’ which was operable in Italian or Spanish.”23 Not only did Bernstein’s sketch have a “dummy lyric,” it “had those notes … the three notes of ‘Maria’ [that] pervade the whole piece—inverted, done backward.”24

Stephen Sondheim (at piano) and Leonard Bernstein rehearsing West Side Story (1957). Museum of the City of New York. Theater Collection.

Example 13.1. “Somewhere” in Beethoven and Tchaikovsky

(a) “Somewhere”

(b) Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 5, op. 73 (“Emperor”)

(c) Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet

Example 13.2. Blitzstein’s Regina and “Maria”

(a) Blitzstein’s Regina, Introduction to act I

(b) “Maria”

In the light of their contribution to the organic unity of the work, the knowledge that “Somewhere” and “Maria” were the first two songs drafted provides invaluable historical confirmation of the analytical conclusions that follow. Also striking, even if perhaps coincidental, is the fact that both of these pivotal songs bear unmistakable resemblances to music of Bernstein’s predecessors. The opening five pitches and rhythms of “Somewhere” (Example 13.1a) correspond closely to the fifth and six measures of the second movement of Beethoven’s E major Piano Concerto, op. 73, known as the “Emperor” (Example 13.1b).25 More significantly, the thrice-repeated three-note motive in the cello part at the conclusion of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture (Example 13.1c) is identical to the first three notes of Bernstein’s melody. Intended or not, “Somewhere” seems to begin where Tchaikovsky’s overture leaves off. Unlike borrowed material in other shows, a number of Bernstein’s central classical borrowings were apparently chosen for their programmatic and associative meaning.26

The main tune of “Maria” is more obviously indebted to an aria from the opera Regina (based on Hellman’s The Little Foxes), composed by Bernstein’s mentor and friend, Marc Blitzstein (Example 13.2).27 Perhaps not coincidentally, Regina premiered in 1949, the year Robbins conceived his “noble idea.” The exceedingly strong melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic similarities between “Maria” and the introductory music to act I of Blitzstein’s lesser known opera should be readily evident, even to those previously unfamiliar with the model.

Before intensive collaborative work began in 1956, several months after the entrance of Sondheim, the tangible evidence of West Side Story included a draft of several scenes, an outline of the remaining scenes, and substantial compositional work on two dramatically and musically central songs, “Somewhere” and “Maria.” The cross-fertilization between West Side Story and Candide of the previous year is also evident. In 1956 the comic duet now indelibly associated with Candide and Cunegonde, “Oh, Happy We,” had been considered for the bridal shop scene in West Side Story, and the song that was eventually placed there, “One Hand, One Heart,” was originally intended for Candide.28 Until at least 1957, however, this future bridal shop song was located in the balcony scene, after which it was replaced by “Tonight” (see “Libretto Drafts 1 [January 1956] and 2 [Spring 1956]” in the online website). Another version of an unused Candide song, “Where Does It Get You in the End?,” served as the basis for “Gee, Officer Krupke,” a song that was not added until rehearsals in July.29

By the end of 1956 Laurents had completed his fourth libretto draft (out of eight), and much of the eventual version was fixed. The most significant changes in the months prior to and during the rehearsal schedule from mid-June to mid-August 1957 were the addition of two songs, “Something’s Coming” and “Gee, Officer Krupke,” and considerable revamping of the opening Prologue. Also in 1957 more dance numbers would be added to the “Dance at the Gym” (only the “Mambo” was indicated for this section at the end of 1956); Tony’s and Maria’s “One Hand, One Heart” on the tenement balcony had still not been replaced by “Tonight.”30

The Prologue and first scene, which had already undergone a number of changes in the first four librettos (all in 1956), required considerable revision before it achieved its revolutionary final version in the summer months of 1957. Although Bernstein exaggerates the ease with which he and his collaborators worked out the solution to the complex problems posed by this opening, the libretto and musical score drafts support his recollection in 1985 that the Prologue was