In the finest tradition: new books on musical theatre

Musical Times, Summer 2004 by Banfield, Stephen

In the finest tradition: new books on musical theatre Richard Rodgers Geoffrey Block Yale University Press (New Haven & London, 2003); xiii, 3i5pp; £22.50. ISBN 0 300 09747 6.

The Cambridge companion to the musical Edited William A. Everett & Paul R. Laird Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 2002); xvii, 3iopp; £45,570 / £16.99, $25 PBK. ISBN 0 521 79189 8 / 0521 796393.

Sondheim on music: minor details and major decisions Mark Eden Horowitz Scarecrow Press (Lanham, MD, & Oxford, 2003); x, 4oipp;£3o.95. ISBNO 8008 44370.

George Gershwin: a new biography William G Hyland Praeger (Westport, CT, & London, 2003); xv, 28ipp; £25.80. ISBN 0 275 98111 8.

The Broadway musical: a critical and musical survey, second edition Joseph P. Swain Scarecrow Press (Lanham, Maryland, & London, 2002); xi, 373pp; £24.95 PBK. ISBNO 8108 4242 4.

Musical theater and American culture David Walsh & Len Platt Praeger (Westport, CT, & London, 2003); xiii, 201pp. ISBNO 275 98057 X.

SO MANY ACADEMIC BOOKS and articles have by now lamented 'that the musical has been neglected by academics as a[n] area of study' that it has to be patently untrue. These six publications, coming hard on each other's heels, are healthy proof to the contrary - and by no means the only recent proof, as their authors' refrain-like citation of influential precedents makes clear. But Walsh & Platt, quoted above, proceed to put their finger on a problem that is, if anything, becoming more true as time goes on, the 'problem of a copyright culture that, to put it mildly, is not very conducive to serious academic work':

Originally Musical Theater and American Culture was illustrated by many quotations from the lyrics of songs, especially, of course, songs from musicals. The authors tried for several months to get copyright permissions to use these materials but in the end were defeated, sometimes by difficulties in finding copyright holders, sometimes by demands for large fees to quote just a few lines, but most often by companies simply refusing to respond to our requests (p.xi).

When companies refuse to respond, publishers should take a chance, but the smaller ones in particular are unwilling to do so, and short of a test case in the courts (has there ever been one?) this stalemate, of increasing concern to the academic community, is only likely to intensify.

It may seem perverse to have begun a review by citing prefatory material, and this is not the place to pursue the copyright argument, but the point is that, as any teacher knows, the warp and weft of an essay depends on how its core data is dealt with. Close reading is difficult without timely quotation, and this writer's experience is that publishers are less and less willing to countenance comprehensive music (and lyric) examples. The reason normally given is that the consumer of books on popular or vernacular music is put off by them. That in itself is enough of a worry for the serious author, for it suggests a vicious circle in which musically literate readers will decline ill so far as they are marginalised, commentary retreating to theory, assertion, bland description, generalisation or, as is the tendency in William Hyland's George Gershwin, citation of prior authorities without personal adjudication. But add to this injury the insult of a copyright battle - or the suspicion of a publisher hiding behind the one as a way of avoiding the bother of the other - and the conscientious author may begin to wonder whether the task is even worthwhile. Certainly it is possible to be critically specific and comprehensive without citation, but it is not easy; nor is it attractive, which publishers seem not to recognise. And when the field is popular musical theatre, scholarly laziness soon enters the equation, for scores and, still more, scripts (which were rarely published) can be extremely difficult to get hold of and, if only on perusal from one of the production licensing agencies, raise the stakes of copyright clearance yet higher. It is so much easier simply to rely on the cast recording and accompanying synopsis. But what bad scholarship can ensue!

Bad scholarship or no, four out of the six books under review suffer to some degree from citation anorexia, be it of scripts (an almost traditional dearth, as implied above), lyrics, accompaniment (what can you tell from a melody without its harmony?) or overall musical notation. The exceptions are Horowitz's interviews with Sondheim and the second edition of Swain's The Broadway musical.

I have never been a great fan of Swain, but he does seem to me to get the balance about right when it comes to music, lyric, dialogue and secondarysource examples. His discussion is nearly always generously illustrated, and the exception, for the duration of chapter 13, is because 'the Wren Music Co [...] refused all permission to reprint the music and lyrics from A Chorus Line because of the critical nature of the attending discussion' - in other words, because they didn't like what he said about it. (Ouch. That is the kind of attitude that gets musical theatre a bad name, but the Wrens have clearly not relented since this was mentioned in the first edition.) The new edition of The Broadway musical includes an extra chapter, 'Epic as musical', on Les miserables. Copyright clearance has not proved elusive here, but that is a mixed blessing, for how clumsy Schonberg's music and, still more, Boublil's lyrics in Kretzmer's translation, appear in the cold light of academic morning! No amount of laboured justification (pp.397-400) can rescue the fustian modulations and intonation of 'Come to me' from their banality, which stems from a displacement of folk melody and figuration, heavily reminiscent of Joni Mitchell's or Joan Baez's, on to melodrama, a borrowing which has tainted a whole generation of musical theatre practitioners and seems to me no more authentic in 1985 than its equivalent was with Rutland Boughton in 1914. Swain has to go along with this idiom more than he would like, one suspects, because he wants musicals to aspire to the condition of opera and wants opera to aspire to the condition of Joseph Kerman's Opera as drama, where music must always be master, not servant, and is quickly found out when it abuses or relinquishes its authority. That view of musical drama always was tendentious, and while it would hardly be fair to blame Kerman for the rise of the all-sung megamusical, a little more concern for opera as great music might have held back misplaced ambition. Admittedly Swain's work on how Lloyd Webber's musicals are actually constructed with their salient contrafacta has from the start been a useful feature of The Broadway musical, and this carries through in the new chapter on Lloyd Webber's French counterparts. But in many respects close scrutiny does the material no favours, as Swain acknowledges at various critical moments. When he describes Kretzmer's lyrics 'fallfing] on the ear like bricks' (p./joi), one can only agree.