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

In Carousel waltzes are associated either with the carousel itself, as in the procession of the several sharply defined waltzes that make up the pantomimed prelude, or in the chorus of community solidarity that characterizes the main tune of “A Real Nice Clambake.” Rodgers and Hammerstein therefore match the absence of directly expressed love between Billy and Julie by not allowing them to sing a waltz. Only when Billy sings his successions of triplets in his “Soliloquy” does Rodgers suggest a waltz (Example 9.4a), a suggestion that is reinforced with a melodic fragment identical to the melody of the final carousel waltz (Example 9.4b). Characteristically, Billy must keep his waltzes, as well as his expression of love, to himself.

Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Integrated Musical

As early as the 1920s, Rodgers strove to create musicals in which songs were thoroughly integrated into a dramatic whole. In his finest efforts with Hart, including On Your Toes and Pal Joey, and in his first collaboration with Hammerstein, Oklahoma!, Rodgers often succeeded in making the songs flow naturally from the dialogue and express character. But it was not until Carousel that Rodgers created a thoroughly unified musical score which also achieved a truly convincing coordination (i.e., integration) between music and dramatic action. Earlier, in On Your Toes, Pal Joey, and Oklahoma! Rodgers used the technique of thematic transformation for dramatic purposes, but the resulting musical unity did not always reinforce a drama generated by musical forces.

Example 9.4. “Soliloquy” and “The Carousel Waltz” (fifth waltz)

(a) “Soliloquy”

(b) “The Carousel Waltz” (fifth waltz)

In Carousel, many musical details, including the subtle reuse and transformation of rhythms that correspond to musical characters previously noted, frequently support dramatic details and generate dramatic themes. Some of these details serve more a musical than a dramatic purpose in their integration of disparate sections. For example, the parallelisms between the musical phrases that Carrie uses to describe Julie (“You are quieter and deeper than a well”) and Mr. Snow (“He comes home ev’ry night in his round-bottomed boat”) in the opening scene might be considered a musically meaningful but dramatically irrelevant unifying detail.

On the other hand, the primary accompaniment of “If I Loved You,” in which three arpeggiated eighth notes follow an eighth rest, foreshadows the less breathless collection of four arpeggiated eighth notes that mark the first half of most measures of “Two Little People” (a melody which also not incidentally exhibits several prominent quarter-note triplets).22 The musical link between the accompaniments of “If I Loved You” and “Two Little People” (Example 9.5a and b) shows up more clearly in the holograph manuscript on deposit at the Library of Congress, where the two songs share the key of C major.23 Even those who refuse to see the accompaniment of “If I Loved You” as a foreshadowing of the accompaniment to “Two Little People” might acknowledge its connection with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (Example 9.5c). In this song the arpeggiated eighth-note figure is now continuous, not only for an entire measure but for nearly the entire song (Rodgers breaks the pattern in the final four measures). “If I Loved You” and “Two Little People” demonstrate the unity between Billy and Julie; “You’ll Never Walk Alone” signifies musically as well as dramatically that neither of these star-crossed lovers will walk alone as long as Julie carries Billy in her memory.24

Example 9.5. Arpeggiated accompaniments

(a) “If I Loved You”

(b) “Two Little People”

(c) “You‘ll Never Walk Alone”

Rodgers and Hammerstein also manage to convey a musical correspondence that matches the dramatic contrasts between two pairs of contrasting romantic leads (de rigueur in musicals for the next twenty years): Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan on one end of the spectrum, Enoch Snow and Carrie Pipperidge on the other. In stark contrast to Billy (a baritone), Enoch (a tenor) is a man who plans ahead, whether he is building a fleet of herring boats or a fleet of children. With his irritating, self-satisfied laugh Enoch is reminiscent of Laurey’s silly rival Gertie in Oklahoma! and embodies the negative as well as the positive consequences of conventionality and practicality.

When he gives Carrie flowers, Enoch, the builder and planner, gives her a package of geranium seeds to plant rather than the beautiful but ephemeral real thing. And when he tells Julie that he likes to “plant and take keer” of flowers, Julie replies that Billy “likes t’ smell ‘em,” an impractical romantic trait that endeared the carousel barker to her in their first scene together. By the latter part of act II, Enoch has metamorphosed from an overbearing but essentially likable hard-working man with lofty plans for his sardine business and his family to an insufferable, condescending, and genuinely unsympathetic character. Unfortunately, his fleet of children are created in his image. Further, in opposition to Carrie’s open appreciation for the less savory entertainments witnessed on their trip to New York, the pure-as-snow Enoch (the name is also uncomfortably close to eunuch) suggests that she discuss the Shakespeare play instead. Enoch’s surreptitious visit to the burlesque house (where he runs into Carrie) adds hypocrisy to a growing list of negative characteristics, even if this action allows him a human vice that audiences might relate to.

In an age increasingly and justifiably less tolerant of wife-beating in any form and for any reason, Billy might be considered a much less wonderful guy than he was in 1945 (certainly than 1873), even if Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Billy is less abrasive than Molnár’s Liliom. Although his predilection for violence is indefensible—to satisfy his fragile ego he hits Julie because she is on the right side of their arguments—it is significant as part of the fantasy that his blows do not hurt either Julie or later Louise. In fact, when he slaps his daughter it feels like a kiss.

Without condoning Billy’s actions Hammerstein seems to be telling us that other forms of abuse might take an even