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

included in all three published vocal scores. Although Kern never acknowledged a source, all of these themes might be traced, appropriately enough, to Dvořák’s contemporaneously composed “New World” Symphony (1893) (Example 2.2f).47

Example 2.1. “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”

(a) original form

(b) transformation into a rag

Parthy and Sheriff Vallon also lead their lives along the river. In contrast to the characters who are in sympathy with this life force, however (Cap’n Andy and his Cotton Blossom, Joe, Queenie, the black laborers, and the women of any race who can’t help loving their men), Parthy and Vallon demonstrate their intrinsic antipathy to the river with subtle alterations that intrude on the simplicity and perfection of the perfect fourth. Audiences first meet Parthy and her theme (Example 2.3) after the climax of the song “Cotton Blossom” as underscoring to her yelling “Andy!!!! Drat that man, he’s never around!” moments before we hear Magnolia’s piano theme (Example 2.4).

Example 2.2. “River Family” of motives (transposed to the key of C Major)

(a) “Cotton Blossom”

(b) “Ol’ Man River”

(c) Cap’n Andy’s theme

(d) “Queenie’s Ballyhoo”

(e) “Mis’ry” theme

(f) from Dvořák’s “New World” Symphony

The first two notes of Parthy’s theme are a descending perfect fourth (D-A). But although Parthy may lead a life along the river, Cap’n Andy cannot and Kern will not make her drink in its physical beauty and spiritual richness. Consequently, after this perfect fourth, Kern has Parthy introduce a Bb, only a half-step up from the A but a giant step removed from the natural world of the river. The Bb and its following note G combine with the still-held D above to produce a G-minor triad, significantly the same chord that generates and supports Magnolia’s inhibition and lament later in the scene in section 4 of “Make Believe” (“Though the cold and brutal fact is”). By the second measure of her theme Parthy has moved below the descending fourth of the “Cotton Blossom” (to an F). In the third and fourth measures—a repetition of the first two but transposed up a sinister augmented fourth or tritone (D to G), the tense and dissonant interval that will figure so prominently in the music of Sporting Life (Porgy and Bess) and the Jets (West Side Story)—Parthy’s theme has moved radically from G minor to C minor (also a tritone) where it will remain for the duration of its remaining four measures. Perhaps in her musical resistance to the river Parthy is expressing a longing for her home state of Massachusetts, where “no decent body’d touch this show boat riffraff with a ten foot pole.”48

Example 2.3. Parthy’s theme

Once he has established musical equivalents for his characters and their world, Kern transforms and links these themes melodically and rhythmically to make his (and Hammerstein’s) dramatic points, as, for example, the transformation of Cap’n Andy’s theme into a wedding march at the end of act I and then into a processional and hymn in Kim’s convent school.49 Perhaps the clearest example of this technique can be observed in the evolution of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” In the late 1880s the song is introduced in its lyrical form by Julie (Example 2.1a) followed immediately by an accelerated version sung by Queenie, Joe, the black chorus, and Magnolia (act I, scene 2); in the second act (scene 4) the song undergoes further transformation into a rag tune in 1904, when the Trocadero pianist Jake encourages Magnolia to sing a more animated modern version in order to get her act into the Trocadero production (Example 2.1b).

Example 2.4. Magnolia’s piano theme and “Where’s the Mate for Me?”

(a) Magnolia’s piano theme

(b) “Where’s the Mate for Me?” (B section, or release)

Magnolia’s piano theme (Example 2.4), one of the most ubiquitous themes of the show, will also undergo various transformations after its introduction in the opening scene. These include a reharmonized statement that underscores Cap’n Andy’s announcement of Magnolia’s wedding to Ravenal near the end of act I and a jazzy version, “It’s Getting Hotter in the North” (the original finale dropped after the Washington, D.C., tryouts), sung by Magnolia’s daughter, Kim, in 1927. It is also possible that Kern intended audiences to hear a musical connection between Magnolia’s piano theme and the opening fragment of the verse to “Ol’ Man River”—a verse that not incidentally also begins the show opener, “Cotton Blossom”—when he decided to adopt it almost unchanged from The Beauty Prize (1923).50 In any event, Kern’s decision to join the second measure of Magnolia’s theme with the central theme of the all-knowing and timeless river is more than a detail. Not only does this touch provide another dramatically strong musical linkage, but it also bonds Ravenal to his future bride and all she represents. Her theme immediately enters his consciousness (even before they meet) and takes over the B section of his song, “Where’s the Mate for Me?”51

The vast network of thematic foreshadowings and reminiscences introduced here rarely fail to credibly unite the present with the past. One such example of Kern’s ability to make a dramatic point through a musical reference is his use of the “Mis’ry” theme (from the discarded song), which underscores Julie’s lecture to Magnolia about men, immediately after the impressionable younger woman has met Ravenal (at which point such a lecture is, of course, already too late). The presence of “Mis’ry’” here anticipates Julie’s misery two scenes later, when her partially black heritage is exposed and she and her blood partner Steve are exiled from the Cotton Blossom. It also prepares listeners for Julie’s and Magnolia’s eventual misery in act II when both will lose the men they love.52 A rhythmic connection that might also suggest a dramatic interpretation is the similarity between the prevalent long-short-short rhythm of this “Mis’ry” theme and the opening two measures of Ravenal’s “Where’s the Mate for Me?” (Example 2.5).53 In any event Ravenal’s musical remembrance of the waltz portion (section