Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) McHugh, Dominic (snow like ashes series txt) đ
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Musically, she goes silent at this point in the show, until her reprise of âJust You Waitâ in Act 2.25 The number is sung up a tone in D minor this time, rather than in the darker key of C minor, and the mood is fragile. Eliza sings just over six bars before crying bitterly, and the mood is less martial: thereâs no thudding trombone to lead into the singing this time, for instance, but lyrical clarinets and an appassionato violin solo instead. We then lose sight of Eliza for a couple of minutes, but the music continues straight into a reprise of Freddyâs âOn the Street Where You Live.â His singing is interrupted upon Elizaâs appearance from Higginsâs house, but the music continues into the verse of âShow Me.â This is in two parts: first, Freddy maintains the lyric vein of âOn the Streetâ with the words âSpeak, and the world is full of singing,â then Eliza interrupts with the choppily textured âWords! Words! Words!â The emptiness of verbose language has become too much for her, be it from the adoring Freddy or the pedantic Higgins, and she cuts through Freddyâs wafflingâtwo phrases, the second repeated higher than the firstâwith a furious Molto vivace in triple time.
âShow Meâ has a Latin flavor, a bit like the huapango that Bernstein was later to use for âAmericaâ in West Side Story but without any obvious intention of evoking the exotic.26 In âShow Me,â seven bars of 3/4 time are concluded with a bar of 6/8. The same procedure is followed a minor third higher, then in the bridge Loewe uses three groups of four eighths in the melody (on âHere we are to-/ ge-ther in the / mid-dle of theâ) to undermine the bar line and make the two bars seem like three. Elizaâs fury is dazzlingly presented in this way: it is almost as if she is in such control of her world now that she can move through multiple meters without losing her way. Her fury also makes her seem to get ahead of herself. Part of this comes from the lyric, too: whereas the standard lines are only six or seven feet long, Lerner resorts to wordy, thirteen-syllable lines in the bridge, such as âNever do I ever want to hear another word.â These are also colloquial and irritable in tone. Overall, the tension and fury of the piece are matched in words and music by dense harmonies and the imperative tense (such as âDonât,â âRead,â and âTellâ).
There are no copies of the reprises of âJust You Waitâ and âOn the Streetâ in Loeweâs hand because, obviously, they required no new composition other than an introduction and linking material. This new music was provided by Rittmann, and her piano-vocal score survives in the Warner-Chappell Collection.27 âJust You Waitâ is written out in full and presents the song exactly as it appears in the published score. Rittmann indicates that the first sixteen bars of âOn the Streetâ are to be played by the orchestra, with Freddy joining in at âAre there lilac treesâ and giving way to the underscoring again at âPeople stop and stare.â This was orchestrated by Bennett, and then discarded as the orchestral part was cut and Freddy sang from the beginning of âOn the Street.â28 On a manuscript titled âStreet Reprise,â Rittmann wrote out Freddyâs introductory verse to âShow Meâ (âSpeak, and the world is full of singingâ).29 This was probably because Loeweâs autographâwhich otherwise produces the song in fullâdoes not contain the introduction to Freddyâs part. Still, it is intriguing that Bennettâs orchestration of this section follows Rittmann in writing the bass part as a D-flat major arpeggio (a false relation) rather than its enharmonic, C-sharp major, as in Loeweâs manuscript (again, probably a fair copy).30 The full score contains a certain amount of revision at this point alone, where Lang seems to have orchestrated an earlier version of Freddyâs opening line in F-sharp major rather than E major; this one-page score is crossed out and hidden beneath Bennettâs revision.
Elizaâs final number, âWithout You,â was partly revised during the rehearsal periodâthough not quite in the way Lerner later described. The lyricist claimed that during the last week of rehearsals in New York, âa major storm was gatheringâ because Rex Harrison refused to stand on the stage in silence while Julie Andrews sang âWithout Youâ to his face. Lerner continues: âIn preparation for the struggle over âWithout Youâ, Fritz and I thought it might incorporate it more into the emotional action if Harrison interrupted the song at the climax with: âI did it. I did it. I said Iâd make a woman and indeed I did.ââ31 However, not only does the rehearsal script include the
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