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

47. Bordman writes that Kern “demonstrated the universality of some folk themes when he returned to his roots and used an old Bohemian melody for Cap’n Andy’s entrance.” Bordman, Jerome Kern, 291. Dvořák authority John Clapham notes a connection between Dvořák’s theme and the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Clapham, “The Evolution of Symphony ‘From the New World,’” Musical Quarterly 44 (April 1958): 175; see also Jean E. Snyder, “A Great and Noble School of Music: Dvořák” and “Harry T. Burleigh, and the African American Spiritual,” in Dvořák in America 1892–1895, ed. John C. Tibbetts (Portland, Ore: Amadeus Press, 1993), 123–48, especially 131–32. Three years before Show Boat Kern quoted the openings of both the first movement and the even more well-known slow movement from Dvořák’s symphony in the dance music of “Shufflin’ Sam” (from Sitting Pretty), perhaps as a musical pun to support Sam’s motto, “This old world’s no place to cry and be glum in.” Bordman attributes this last Dvořák reference to orchestrator Robert Russell Bennett. Bordman, Jerome Kern, 249.

48. It is more difficult to offer an unequivocal identification of the theme associated with Sheriff Vallon. Unlike the “Cotton Blossom,” Cap’n Andy, and Parthy themes, which establish immediate associations, Vallon’s theme, introduced immediately after the Overture, at first suggests a more generalized darker side of river life rather than a specific human representative of law and order. At its second appearance, where stage directions tell directors to “enter Vallon,” Kern makes a direct association between Vallon and his theme, an association that Kern will recall at the conclusion of “Make Believe” (“enter Vallon followed by Joe”).

49. In the 1994 Broadway revival Cap’n Andy’s theme is absent on both these occasions.

50. Not only does Kern adopt the B section of The Beauty Prize music as the B section of “Where’s the Mate?” he also retains its unusual modulation from G major to F major.

51. The three-note descending scalar fragment also returns prominently in the opening chorus (sung by whites) at the Midway Plaisance in Chicago (Harms, 181).

52. Julie’s song “Bill,” if not her fate, is also foreshadowed by the barker at the Chicago Fair (Harms, 186).

53. Also mm. 5–6, 9–10, and 15–16.

54. Stanley Green notes this reference to “Make Believe” in The Rodgers and Hammerstein Story (New York: John Day, 1963), 58–59. Ethan Mordden and Deena Rosenberg provide two additional examples of thematic reminiscence. In “Why Do I Love You?” the orchestra plays the first eight measures of “I Might Fall Back on You” while a chorus sings “Hours are not like years, / So dry your tears! / What a pair of love birds!” Immediately thereafter Ravenal reprises the first eight measures of “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man” to the words “I’ll come home as early as I can, / Meanwhile be good and patient with our man.” Mordden, “‘Show Boat,’” 81, and Rosenberg, “‘Show Boat’ Sails into the Present,” New York Times, April 24, 1983, sec. 2, 12.

55. Show Boat (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1926), 183–85.

56. The meeting scene portion of act 1, scene 1, is found in Harms, 37–53, Chappell, 36–52, and Welk, 31–46; the libretto appears in the McGlinn booklet of the EMI recording, 62–66.

57. This harmonic progression is known in classical theoretical parlance as a deceptive cadence (a B-minor triad in the key of D major).

58. This chord, an augmented sixth chord on B expands into a dominant A-major triad to prepare circuitously the return to the tonal center of D.

59. It is similarly not an accident that Magnolia and Ravenal’s declaration of love at the conclusion of the act will also be a waltz, “You Are Love.” Considering the importance of this waltz section in “Make Believe,” its omission in both the 1936 and 1951 film versions is regrettable.

60. The Library of Congress typescript (identified in “Manuscript Sources” no. 1 of the online website) shows that before settling on “convention’s P’s and Q’s” the line read, “There really is no cause to have the blues,” a lyric that was removed before Kern’s first musical draft of this scene. In the third section of the song, this same typescript shows that “the world we see” replaced “reality.”

61. The 1951 MGM film version offers yet another division of this material before Magnolia and Ravenal profess their love together:

RAVENAL: Others find peace of mind in pretending Couldn’t you?

MAGNOLIA: Couldn’t I?

BOTH: Couldn’t we:

RAVENAL: Make believe our lips are blending In a phantom kiss or two or three—

BOTH: Might as well make believe I love you—

     FOR, TO TELL THE TRUTH … I DO.

62. In addition to the Library of Congress and New York Public Library libretto typescripts there are two substantial musical drafts for this scene housed in the Library of Congress (designated Draft 1 and Draft 2 in the “Manuscript Sources” no. 1 of the online website). All of the Library of Congress material was acquired from the Warner Brothers Warehouse in Secaucus, New Jersey.

63. In the Library of Congress typescript Frank appears before Ravenal has the opportunity to pick up Ellie’s handkerchief.

64. The 1927 production offered two other exchanges between Ellie and Frank that succeeded in conveying the dynamics between them. The first of these opens act I, scene 3 (Outside a Waterfront Gambling Saloon), where Ellie explains to Frank that she “won’t never marry no actor”; the second appears in scene 5 where she informs him that she might settle for Frank if nothing better comes along (“I Might Fall Back on You”).

65. The dialogue in the New York Public Library typescript (see “Manuscript Sources” no. 2 of the online website) goes like this:

PARTHY (OFF): Magnolia! (She enters lower deck.) Andy! Drat that man, he’s never home—Magnolia! (Magnolia enters on top deck. Windy motions her to stand still where she is so that Parthy won’t see her. Windy exits R. Parthy exits L.)

RAVENAL (RAVENAL RESUMES SOLILOQUY): Who cares if my boat goes upstream?

PARTHY (OFF): Nola!

RAVENAL: Or if the gale bids me go with the