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

by evolving chromaticism. Through his relentless dissonant harmonization of the Johnny-one-notes, Blitzstein creates a musical equivalent to support his single-mindedly vitriolic text.

Because Blitzstein himself is a genuine artist, in contrast to Dauber and Yasha, he cannot resist using Beethoven for his own artistic purposes as well. He does this by making two simple rhythmic alterations that effectively disguise the Egmont horn motive. The first allusion to Egmont occurs in the second chorus of their initial vaudeville routine when Dauber sings “Your lady friend does resemble a lot / Some one, and that’s very queer.” By adding one beat to the first note of the horn motive Blitzstein accommodates the difference between the triple meter of Beethoven’s original motive and the duple meter of the vaudeville routine, a subtle but recognizable rhythmic transformation (Example 6.6b). In the second allusion, the art-for-art’s-sake passage previously discussed in Example 6.6a, Blitzstein keeps the rhythmic integrity of Beethoven’s motive but distorts it almost (but not entirely) beyond recognition in a duple context with contrary accentual patterns.

Example 6.6. Scene Six, Hotel Lobby

(a) “Art for Art’s Sake”

(b) “The Rich”

It is possible, albeit unlikely, that Blitzstein’s rhythmic distortions, which parallel his bizarre atonal harmonizations of the B (“Art for Art’s sake,” “smart for Art’s sake,” etc.) can be interpreted as a critique of Beethoven’s noble purposes in Egmont as well as an indictment of Yasha and Dauber’s art. In any event, Blitzstein’s incorporation of Beethoven into his Hotel Lobby Scene goes beyond the conventions and expectations of a musical. It also shows that a revered European master can serve Blitzstein’s artistic as well as satiric purposes.

In contrast to Show Boat and Porgy and Bess, Blitzstein’s Cradle does not offer a grand scheme of musical symbols and musical transformations that reflect large-scale dramatic vision and character development. Unlike their counterparts in the other musicals discussed in this survey, the characters in Cradle for the most part sing their songs and then either assume a secondary role, merge into a crowd, or vanish entirely from the stage. The work is episodic within a structured frame; the characters, vividly outlined, are not filled in.38

It is significant that Moll, the pure prostitute, and Larry Foreman, who represents the juggernaut of the oppressed, are the only characters permitted to recycle musical material. In fact, both of the Moll’s songs are reprised. The melody of “I’m Checkin’ Home Now,” the first music heard in the show, returns as underscoring for Moll’s spoken introduction to her song “Nickel under the Foot” in scene 7.39 Before her big scene Moll had sung most of “Nickel” (using other words) in her conversation with Harry Druggist in scene 2. “Nickel” returns a last time in scene 10 against a din of conversation before Larry Foreman and the chorus of union workers concludes the work with a reprise of the title song.

Although Cradle has been called “the most enduring social-political piece of the period” and has generally received high marks as the musical equivalent of Waiting for Lefty, its didacticism has unfortunately overwhelmed its rich intrinsic musical and dramatic qualities.40 If other musicals of the time rival The Cradle Will Rock as a work of social satire, few musicals of its time (for example, those by Brecht and Weill the previous decade or E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen in the next) and few works since combine Blitzstein’s call for social action with a vernacular of such musical sophistication and, yes, artistry.41 In contrast to many avant-garde works eventually absorbed into the mainstream, The Cradle Will Rock, despite its intent to reach a wider public, has managed to sustain its anomalistic status remarkably well. After more than seventy years it continues to resist artistic classification within a genre. It also continues to offend its intended audience of middle-class capitalists through its messages, its devastating caricatures of clergy, doctors, and even university professors, and its occasionally difficult and unconventional score. With due respect to Blitzstein’s sincere didacticism, Blitzstein’s Cradle—cult musical, historical footnote, and agent of social change—might, even as it agitates and propagandizes, someday achieve the recognition it deserves as a work of musical theater art (for art’s sake).42

CHAPTER SEVEN

LADY IN THE DARK AND ONE TOUCH OF VENUS

The Broadway Stranger and His American Dreams

Within a year after Kurt Weill (1900–1950) emigrated to America his Johnny Johnson (1936) had appeared on Broadway. By the time he ended his brief but productive American career with Lost in the Stars (1949), the German refugee had managed to produce no less than eight shows in his adopted homeland, including two certifiable hits, Lady in the Dark (467 performances) and One Touch of Venus (567 performances). At the risk of minimizing such a notable achievement, it must be said that Weill’s hits did not run significantly longer than the disappointing 315 performances suffered by Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro (1947), which closed only a few months after Oklahoma!’s five-year run.

Furthermore, while all three of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1940s hits, Oklahoma!, Carousel, and South Pacific, have gone on to form part of the nucleus of the Broadway repertory, Weill’s two contemporaneous hits have nearly vanished. With the escalating success of Street Scene (1947) and Lost in the Stars and the championing of his previously neglected European music from both sides of the Atlantic, however, Weill’s critical and popular star continues to rise. At the same time, with the notable exception of the perennially popular Threepenny Opera (Off-Broadway 1954–1960), the once-popular Broadway Weill remains largely overlooked in the Broadway survey literature as well as in Broadway revivals.1

Weill, like Bernstein to follow, entered the world of Broadway after rigorous classical training. In contrast to Bernstein, Weill made his mark as an avant-garde composer before succumbing to the siren song of a more popular musical theater. The trajectory of Gershwin’s career perhaps better exemplifies the more usual evolutionary pattern of the Tin Pan Alley composer who harbored more lofty theatrical ambitions. Unlike most of his Broadway colleagues (including Gershwin), Weill, years