The principal form of Western popular musical theatre in the 20th century, in which sung and danced musical numbers in popular and pop music styles are combined within a dramatic structure. Although first associated with light romantic content, the form has increasingly drawn on a significantly wider range of subject matter. It is primarily identified with the USA and, especially in its formative years, England, and these centres provide the focus for this article. Musical theatre influenced by American and British models exists in other countries; but the global repertory of the musical has been almost exclusively informed by Broadway and the West End. Other centres (notably Germany in the latter quarter of the century and Italy more recently) have increasingly shown an interest in the presentation of musicals from the USA-UK canon, and the global spread of the musical as a principal world theatre form emphasizes both its important role within Western popular culture and its increasing links with international commerce. The organization of the canon has retrospectively been interpreted in ways such as by thematic sub-genre (fairytale musical; folk musical; show musical; initially applied to film musicals in Altman, b1987), or in chronological periods (as in Mordden, b1998, pp.37–8, 78–9). A chronological approach is used here to highlight the mainstream names and shows, while parallel discussions of themes and styles provide considerations of changing features of and approaches to the genre.
JOHN SNELSON (1, 2(ii), 3(ii), 4, 5, bibliography), ANDREW LAMB (2(i), 3(i))
The origins of the musical have been attributed to many different sources, all involving drama interspersed with different styles of either American or European popular song or light music. There are problems in identifying a specific origin for musical comedy (Borroff,c1984), but in general it has roots in comic opera and operetta, music hall, minstrel shows, vaudeville and burlesque, and its evolution was further influenced by early popular styles such as ragtime and jazz. The more mature musical has incorporated elements of developing pop music, innovations in theatrical presentation and an expansion in the range of its dramatic themes. Indicative of the coalescence of disparate forces into an identifiable genre has been the changing nature of its terminology. ‘Musical comedy’ has been variously attributed to American and English shows in the 1880s and 90s; through the first half of the 20th century variants can be found, most commonly ‘musical romance’ and ‘musical play’, although the latter term is primarily associated with post-Oklahoma! shows (1943 onwards) in which music, drama and dance aspired to an integrated dramatic whole. The abbreviation to ‘musical’ happened within about 20 years from around 1940, suggesting that the dramatic qualities shown by such qualifiers as ‘comedy’, ‘play’, ‘romance’ and ‘farce’ were subsumed within an increasingly established and identifiable genre of the ‘musical’.
The character of the musical also shifted from a light diversion (usually with a domestic narrative) as in ‘musical comedy’, to something that may include overt analysis and social comment, often encompassing psychological and symbolic focusses. The process through the century has been one of expansion of the genre, establishment of a repertory and concommitant conventions, and innovation from a core repertory that is itself constantly being re-evaluated. From a position of ‘musical comedies’ being considered transient – often representing an idealized, fashionable contemporary life – the ‘musical’ has become less transient, with many shows now reaching runs of over a decade. There is an implicit dialogue across historical periods and stylistic facets of the various sub-genres of the musical as new shows, shows in long initial runs and revivals are performed alongside each other. The establishment of a canon has been further validated by the expansion of writing on the subject from that of narrative histories to detailed analyses of key works and the publishing of critical editions. By the end of the 20th century, a growth in the academic study of the musical (primarily of American works) had begun the critical reconsideration of contributors to the canon and even the nature of the canon itself.
The status of the musical as a theatrical force has also changed. While early musical comedy of the 1890s onwards principally interpolated popular songs into light plots, a century later almost any subject is thought suitable for the musical, which is often presented as through-sung with extensive use of musical motif. In the latter form it is difficult to draw a clear boundary with that of opera, and shows including Kern's Showboat, Loesser's The Most Happy Fella, Bernstein's West Side Story and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd have been presented as part of the operatic repertory. The dissemination of the largest of the through-sung shows of the 1980s and 90s, particularly those associated with Andrew Lloyd Webber, has led to the term ‘mega-musical’ to describe their lavish stagings, simultaneous multiple productions around the world and their commercial importance. The assumption that the through-sung form of the musical is that most readily identified with the genre at the end of the 20th century – an impression reinforced by such long-playing shows as Les misérables, Cats and The Phantom of the Opera – has led to the occasional reintroduction of the term ‘musical comedy’ (as for The Witches of Eastwick, London, 2000) to denote a show which is not through-sung.
Many musicals are now so well established in the active repertory that their reinterpretations by different directors have opened up debate and comparisons similar to those of opera and drama productions; Rodgers and Hammerstein have been particularly prone to such re-presentation and re-evaluation, with revivals including such directorial impositions as that of, for example, the staging of South Pacific as though performed by the inmates of a mental asylum.
The immediate ancestors of musical comedy on both sides of the Atlantic are the comic operas, burlesques and extravaganzas of the second half of the 19th century. The term ‘musical comedy’ was used in a general sense to describe certain British and American works in the 1870s and 80s, but the credit for establishing musical comedy as a genre belongs to the London theatre manager George Edwardes. In 1892 at the Gaiety Theatre he produced the ‘musical farce’ In Town, composed by F. Osmond Carr, with a loose and vaguely topical plot, plentiful song-and-dance numbers, and featuring popular performers of the comic opera stage and a galaxy of female beauty. A year later at the same theatre Edwardes staged A Gaiety Girl with music by Sidney Jones, and for the first time a work was described simply as ‘musical comedy’. A contemporary press report described it as ‘one of the most curious examples of dramatic architecture that we have for some time seen. It is sometimes sentimental drama, sometimes comedy, sometimes almost light opera, and sometimes downright “variety show”’, and this evidently popular formula was adapted by Edwardes for his other theatres.
With the ‘musical farce’ The Shop Girl in November 1894, Edwardes took care to maintain continuity with earlier burlesque by stressing its ‘variety show’ aspect. With its sumptuous contemporary dresses, youthful cast, romantic plot and catchy tunes, The Shop Girl established the formula for the Gaiety musical comedy. Its score was by the Belgian Ivan Caryll, with additional numbers provided by Lionel Monckton; between 1894 and 1909 the pair collaborated on ten more musical comedies for the Gaiety. The emphasis on the chorus of ‘Gaiety Girls’ and on leading ladies such as Ellaline Terriss and later Gertie Millar was reflected in titles such as The Circus Girl (1896) and The Runaway Girl (1898).
Meanwhile, at Daly's Theatre, Edwardes developed a variant formula with a more consistent romantic plot, with comic relief restricted to secondary characters, and with a more substantial musical score, which was closer to traditional English light or comic opera. An Artist's Model (1895), with music by Sidney Jones, was first announced as a ‘comedy opera’ (a common alternative to ‘comic opera’), while The Geisha (1896, music also by Jones) finally bore the designation ‘musical play’, a description which continued to be used for works with a more consistent plot. At a time when French operettas and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan had, like burlesque, lost much of their appeal, musical comedies at the Gaiety and musical plays at Daly's became the fashionable forms of popular musical theatre in London.
Other managers copied Edwardes's formula in shows such as Florodora (1899; music by Leslie Stuart) and A Chinese Honeymoon (1899; music by Howard Talbot). Musical comedy spread round Britain and reached the Commonwealth and the USA. As early as 1894 an Edwardes company took A Gaiety Girl to New York and it was followed by a steady flow of later works. On the Continent many British musical comedies were staged in operetta theatres; around the turn of the century, for example, The Runaway Girl was at the Theater an der Wien and Florodora at the Bouffes Parisiens. The success of Jones's The Geisha surpassed even that of a earlier Japanese subject, The Mikado, and on German stages exceeded that of any current native work.
Edwardian musical comedy reached its zenith with Miss Hook of Holland by Paul A. Rubens (1907), Our Miss Gibbs by Caryll and Monckton (1909), The Arcadians by Monckton and Talbot (1909) and The Quaker Girl by Monckton (1910). Thereafter its appeal declined in favour of Viennese operetta and ragtime-inspired revue. Only in the special conditions of wartime did Edwardian-style musical comedy enjoy its last big successes with Rubens's To-Night's the Night (1915) and particularly The Maid of the Mountains (1916) with a score by Harold Fraser-Simson and additional numbers by James W. Tate. The latter achieved a run of 1352 performances, a record for a musical play exceeded only by the 2238 performances of Chu Chin Chow (1916), a ‘musical tale of the east’, with music by Frederic Norton.
The early history of American musical comedy was dominated by European works and styles. Besides the successful productions of British musical comedies by visiting British companies, many Edwardian shows were adapted for performance by American casts. There were also a number of European composers active in New York, among them Kerker, Luders, Victor Herbert, Ludwig Englander, Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg. The works of George M. Cohan were the immediate forerunners of an essentially American musical comedy style. His earliest shows were little more than extensions of vaudeville routines, but Little Johnny Jones (1904) had all the main elements of American musical comedy (fig.1). In contrast to the romanticized subjects, idealized characters and more extended writing of European and British works, it was a simple show with American characters and a story line linking dances and songs such as ‘Give my regards to Broadway’. Cohan's popularity began to fade around 1914, and the native successes of the following years showed that no individual style of musical comedy had yet been firmly established. Going Up (1917) was a successful work by the ragtime composer Louis A. Hirsch (1887–1924), while Irene (1919), with a score by Harry Tierney, was still highly dependent on European escapism and musical style. However, it was also during these years that the acknowledged founding father of American musical comedy, Jerome Kern, was attracting attention with his first complete musical comedy scores.
Kern received his early training in London as a songwriter for British musical comedies, and in the USA provided extra numbers for adaptations of European shows, such as ‘How'd you like to spoon with me?’ for Caryll's The Earl and the Girl (1905) and ‘They didn't believe me’ for Jones and Rubens's The Girl from Utah (1914). Then, with Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse, Kern created a series of intimate shows at the 299-seat Princess Theatre using a small orchestra and chorus and functionally simple sets and costumes; the first show, Nobody Home (1915), an adaptation of Rubens's book for his British musical comedy Mr. Popple (of Ippleton) (1905), was a moderate success. Two ensuing productions, Very Good, Eddie (1916) and Oh Boy! (1917), were outstanding situation comedies with catchy songs that not only possessed witty lyrics and rhymes but also contributed to the action.
The musical comedy arose from a variety of attempts to introduce contemporary music and dramatic material into comic opera forms and from the introduction of drama to link the disparate elements of vaudeville and music hall. The gradual claiming of the comic opera ground by the vernacular and contemporary was first expressed through approaches to plot, character and costume. For example Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart used working class Americans as characters in the Mulligan Guard series, notably The Mulligan Guard Ball (1879). Similar uses of more contemporary and ‘ordinary’ characters were brought into early British musical comedy, amplified by, for example, the use of the new White City Stadium as a dramatic location and contemporary fashions in the costuming of Our Miss Gibbs (fig.2). In America on the one hand was the modernization of the comic opera through Reginald De Koven in Robin Hood (New York, 1891; London, 1891, as Maid Marian) and on the other the crude dramatic linking of vaudeville styles in the works of George M. Cohan. Both were aiming at some new accommodation between existing musical theatre forms, popular music style and dramatic coherence. Comic opera provided the dramatic context to hold the work together, while the individual songs provided an injection of the contemporary.
Changes in popular music styles also provided the material to update the sound of comic opera, and operetta forms. Early examples of British musical comedy from the Gaiety and Daly's juxtaposed rather than integrated comic opera and popular song styles. Often these shows were collaborative, exploiting the more sophisticated ensemble writing and classical lyricism of composers such as Ivan Caryll and Howard Talbot alongside the popular songwriting of others such as Lionel Monckton, Leslie Stuart and Paul Rubens. By the time of the late example of The Arcadians the sense of old style versus new has become explicit in a plot which places Arcadians in contemporary London. The contrasts of the innocent and honest Arcadians with the dishonest city dwellers is portrayed musically in the comparisons of such operatic numbers for the Arcadians as ‘The Joy of Life’, ‘The Merry Pipes of Pan’ and ‘Arcady is ever young’ with popular songs for the Londoners on gambling (‘Back your fancy’), suggestive flirtations (‘All Down Piccadilly’ and ‘Half-past Two’), the music hall character number (‘My Motter’), the regional number (‘The Girl with the Brogue’) and the comically cynical (‘Truth is beautiful’).
It required the rise of new popular song styles, led by black music developments such as ragtime, to provide a new impetus to the music itself. For example, the cakewalk – an advertised feature of In Dahomey (New York 1902; London 1903) – spread through such shows to Europe and into operetta. However, while shows such as In Dahomey were hugely important in disseminating new dance styles, black performers remained more prominent in revue for much of the first part of the century. A second strand of contemporary popular music was developed by Kern in establishing a distinctive American idiomatic popular song style, first through interpolations into European shows for Broadway and after 1912 in his own works. His ‘They didn't believe me’ has often been described as a significant moment for this development. Kern's pivotal role in the ascendance of an American identity for the musical is also shown through many innovations associated with his shows, such as the use of the saxophone in the orchestra (Oh! I Say, 1912), and the introduction of his shows and interpolated songs into the West End through to the 1930s. The small scale ‘Princess’ shows of Kern with P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton drew on contemporary characters and fashions much as Our Miss Gibbs had in London but importantly established an American identity for the shows rather than a borrowed European one.
Although ragtime and jazz were to have more impact on revue than on musical comedy, American composers and styles increasingly influenced the British musical stage. To-Night's the Night had included two numbers by Jerome Kern, and the reversal of British and American dominance was symbolized by the importation of several works with scores by Ivan Caryll, by then settled in America. The romantic Ruritanian musical play was disappearing in favour of American song-and-dance musicals with their added emphasis on chorus dancing.
By the mid-1920s various teams of American writers were establishing themselves. Prominent among the composers was George Gershwin, who, after composing for several spectacular revues, wrote the score of Lady, be Good! (1924) with his brother Ira Gershwin as lyricist. Besides the title song and ‘Fascinating Rhythm’, it featured the singing and dancing of Fred and Adele Astaire, who helped to make tap-dancing a popular feature of musical comedies of the 1920s. The Gershwins continued with Tip Toes (1925), Oh Kay! (1926) and Funny Face (1927); their Girl Crazy (1930) introduced two new stars in Ethel Merman, who sang ‘I got rhythm’, and Ginger Rogers with ‘Embraceable You’. Another composer who made a significant (though brief) contribution was Vincent Youmans, whose No, No, Nanette (1924) and Hit the Deck (1927) contained songs such as ‘Tea for Two’ which for many people epitomize the spirit of the decade. Other teams who turned to musical comedy from the world of revue included that of the lyricists B.G. DeSylva and Lew Brown and the composer Ray Henderson, whose Good News! (1927) featured the song ‘The best things in life are free’. The following year the New York theatre was introduced to the highly sophisticated and often risqué songs of the lyricist and composer Cole Porter, whose Paris (1928) contained the song ‘Let's do it’.
Despite successful individual songs and routines, these shows were often little more than vehicles for individual stars with contrived boy-meets-girl situations and happy endings, songs that for the most part were just catchy tunes with lyrics tagged on, and occasional spectacular ‘production numbers’. A more creative approach characterized the works of the composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist Lorenz Hart: such shows as The Girl Friend (1926) produced songs with a more inventive matching of lilting tunes and adult wit and sentiment (together with ingenious rhyme schemes), and other shows experimented with musical comedy conventions and subject matter. Dearest Enemy (1925) was concerned with American history and Peggy-Ann (1926) with dream psychology. In 1927 New York first saw Show Boat with book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and music by Kern, a work that firmly pointed the way to the Broadway musical play of the 1940s. By contrast with the usual procedure of building a show around songs and performers, Show Boat boasted a cohesive story into which were integrated songs that contributed to the action by creating mood, revealing character or advancing the plot.
In The Cat and the Fiddle (1931) and Music in the Air (1932) Kern made further breaks with conventional precedents; like Show Boat, the former revolved around a ‘show within a show’, a procedure whereby the internal show, integral to the story, provided an excuse for introducing a big set number. Thereafter Kern concentrated on films in Hollywood. Cole Porter continued the song-and-dance tradition of the 1920s musical with Gay Divorce (1932, film 1934), in which Fred Astaire sang ‘Night and Day’, and followed it with Anything Goes (1934, film 1936) and others, while the Gershwins wrote works of increasing seriousness. Their Strike Up the Band (1927, rev. 1930) was a satirical look at war and big business, and Of Thee I Sing (1931) ridiculed the American presidential system and became the first musical play to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama. In their final Broadway collaboration, Porgy and Bess (1935), the Gershwins raised the musical to the level of opera. Other important American songwriters for musical comedies in the 1930s included Irving Berlin (Face the Music, 1932) and Arthur Schwartz (Revenge with Music, 1934; lyrics by Howard Dietz), Harold Arlen (Hooray for What?, 1938) and Vernon Duke, who composed the commercially unsuccessful but artistically highly regarded black folk musical Cabin in the Sky (1940, film 1943).
Among British composers Noël Coward was exceptional in capturing some of the sophistication of American songwriting, although he often relied more on European influences, as in Bitter Sweet (1929, films 1933 and 1941) and Operette (1938). One of the most prolific British theatre composers between the wars was Vivian Ellis, who produced many light musical comedies for London, including Mr Cinders (with Richard Myers, 1929), Jill Darling (1934) and Under Your Hat (1938). Another successful British composer of songs in the light, syncopated style of the time was Noel Gay, whose biggest musical comedy success was Me and My Girl (1937, film 1939, as The Lambeth Walk) which included ‘The Lambeth Walk’ and ran for 1646 performances. Other musical plays followed the romantic Ruritanian style of continental operetta, for example Balalaïka (1936, film 1939) with music by George Posford and Bernard Grün (1901–72), and above all such works of Ivor Novello as Glamorous Night (1935; fig.3), Careless Rapture (1936) and The Dancing Years (1939, film 1950).
With origins in European serious music, Kurt Weill began his American career with Johnny Johnson (1936), a bitter yet amusing antiwar piece. His Knickerbocker Holiday (1938, film 1944) had a historical subject that drew analogies with Fascist oppression and a score that included Weill's most celebrated American number, ‘September Song’, while the subject of Lady in the Dark (1941, film 1944) was psychoanalysis. Weill's works did a good deal to further the idea of the American musical play, with set numbers played down in the interests of integration of plot and music. At a time when the use of professional harmonizers, arrangers and orchestrators was standard practice, Weill was exceptional in completing his own scores.
The most significant works of the late 1930s, in terms of both their song content and their development of the musical comedy formula, came from Rodgers and Hart. In On your Toes (1936, film 1939) the subject was ballet, and the score featured a quasi-jazz ballet sequence ‘Slaughter on Tenth Avenue’ as well as such hit numbers as ‘There's a small hotel’. I'd Rather be Right (1937) was another political satire, featuring George M. Cohan as a US president with a striking resemblance to Franklin D. Roosevelt, while The Boys from Syracuse (1938, film 1940) was based on Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. Pal Joey (1940, film 1957) featured a cast of thoroughly disreputable characters and a story of blackmail, illicit love affairs and various types of skulduggery.
By 1919, there were two main strands contributing towards the establishment of the musical. From music hall and vaudeville came song-and-dance numbers, and from operetta and comic opera came a sense of musical and dramatic integration in structured musical scenes. Operetta, given a new prominence by the international success of Franz Lehár's Die lustige Witwe (Vienna, 1905; London, 1906; New York, 1907; Melbourne, 1908; France, 1909), had established conventions that did not naturally accommodate contemporary popular music. Conversely, musical comedy gained its distinctive musical motivation from vernacular song and new trends in dance music but had not established its own dramatic conventions. There is, however, no clear defining line between operetta and the musical at this time; the term ‘musical play’ was often applied to works which bridge the two genres, and included Sigmund Romberg's The Student Prince in Heidelberg (1924, later as The Student Prince; silent film 1926, film 1954), The Desert Song (1926, films 1929, 1943, 1953) and The New Moon (1928, film 1940) and Kern's Show Boat (1927, films 1929, 1936, 1951); similar hybrids include the ‘musical romances’ of Ivor Novello, such as Glamorous Night, Careless Rapture, Crest of the Wave (1937) and The Dancing Years. George Gershwin's shows were of two types; both used contemporary popular songs as their musical focal points but presented them in different settings. In the first, the songs were generally presented as discrete numbers, from the ‘song-and-dance’ heritage of musical comedy, and such shows included Oh! Kay, Funny Face, Rosalie (1928) and Girl Crazy. In the second, the songs were set within the longer musical scenes characteristic of operetta, as in Strike Up the Band, Of Thee I Sing and Let 'em Eat Cake (1933). Kern similarly integrated popular song into scenes in Show Boat, for example with his use of the ragtime number ‘Can't help lovin’ dat man of mine’ within an extended scene, so creating a flow akin to that of an operetta finale.
Such cross-fertilizations are typical of the 1920s and 30s, and even became themselves the subject of operetta as in Kálmán's Die Herzogin von Chicago (1928), and of musical comedy as in Kern's The Cat and the Fiddle and – through dance – Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes. Beyond this, operetta was associated with older European culture and 19th-century dance styles, particularly the waltz. The effects of World War I and the growing assertiveness of an American culture increasingly distinct from its European roots further led musical theatre away from operetta. In Die Herzogin von Chicago, the rich American, Mary Lloyd, literally and symbolically replaces 19th-century operetta with the 1920s jazz band and the waltz with the charleston, explaining ‘Sehen Sie, das ist Tempo, das ist Rhythmus, das ist business, das ist Amerika!!’ (Act 1).
The influence of popular dance styles on musical comedy went beyond that of just songs. While the operetta had appropriated such dances as the waltz, polka, and march for song, it had never fully exploited dance for its own sake. Musical comedy, however, featured dance as a major element, shown in the choice of starring performers (e.g. Fred and Adele Astaire or Jessie Matthews) and in the presence of the dancing chorus of girls, something associated with the origins of musical comedy and a continuing major feature of revue. The increased prominence of dance was also shown in the need for specialist music arrangers for dance numbers, and On Your Toes can be seen as the culmination of the growing ascendancy of dance in this period.
Vigorous and syncopated popular dance styles along with the instrumentation and voicings of the dance band were gradually incorporated into pit orchestra textures, especially for dance numbers. This was brought about in part through the occasional involvement of band leaders and their orchestras in the pit, but most importantly through work of specialist orchestrators such as Robert Russell Bennett from around 1920 onwards and Hans Spialek in the 1930s. Changes can be heard in the growing prominence of the saxophone and the close voicings of the brass, often employing mutes. The featured role of piano duos in several Gershwin shows including Oh! Kay and of a piano trio in Bennett's orchestrations for Kern's The Cat and the Fiddle displayed that instrument's potential in the pit as an exciting solo timbre, while its suitability for jazz rhythms and unobtrusive harmonic and rhythmic support led to it gradually replacing the harp.
Shows at this time are generally remembered more for leading performers and for individual songs than as whole shows. Particularly in the 1920s, many shows were designed as star vehicles for such names as Marilyn Miller, Eddie Cantor, Fred and Adele Astaire, Gertrude Lawrence and Ethel Merman. Closer in spirit to revue or pantomime, these shows easily allowed performers to interpolate dramatically irrelevant routines and songs to show off their trademark idiosyncracies. Examples include Al Jolson in Sinbad (1918), Bombo (1921) and Big Boy (1925), Ed Wynn in The Perfect Fool (1921) and W.C. Fields in Poppy (1923; silent film 1925 as Sally of the Sawdust, film 1936). The songs of Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart and of Cole Porter in the USA and, to a lesser degree, Vivian Ellis in England, are still remembered where the original show has fallen from the repertory, as with Kern's ‘Smoke gets in your eyes’ (Roberta, 1933), Rodgers and Hart's ‘My heart stood still’ (A Connecticut Yankee, 1927) and ‘Dancing on the Ceiling’ (Evergreen), Porter's ‘Begin the Beguine’ (Jubilee, 1935) and Ellis's ‘Spread a little happiness’ (Mr Cinders, 1929) and ‘She's my lovely’ (Hide and Seek, 1937). The notion of a show as a complete score was more associated at this time with operetta-derived forms and with exceptions such as Youmans's No, No Nanette (Chicago, 1924; London and New York, 1925).
While such individual numbers are standards and contemporary recordings have documented elements of their original performance style, restoration of whole shows has been necessary to put the music into its forgotten dramatic context. Consequently, the move towards establishing original performing versions of musical comedies has focussed on this period. Such interest has been fuelled by the discovery of material previously unknown or thought lost – notably that found in Secaucus, New Jersey (1982) – and through such resultant recordings as that of Show Boat under John McGlinn (EMI, 1988) and Girl Crazy under John Mauceri (Elek., 1990).
The musical underwent a far-reaching exploration and expansion in the USA through works which form the basis of the mainstream canon today, written by such established figures as Rodgers and Hammerstein (previously writing, however, with different partners), Cole Porter and Irving Berlin, and newer ones such as Frank Loesser, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and Leonard Bernstein. British musical theatre equally drew on established theatre writers, notably Vivian Ellis, Noël Coward and – most importantly for the West End – Ivor Novello, but there were no significant newer writers until well into the period, and the influences from British musical theatre were consequently limited.
Oklahoma! (1943, film 1955) has been considered pivotal in the rise of the musical play over the musical comedy. It was the first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and was also distinguished by stylized movement from the choreographer Agnes DeMille which further added to its significance as a seminal work. Oklahoma!'s impact was great (fig.4), and although the nature of its importance is increasingly being reconsidered, the serious contemporary attention paid to the work is indicative of a maturity in the musical. However, the diversity of the form can be seen in other works of the time. Hammerstein's updated reworking of Meilhac and Halevy's libretto for Bizet as Carmen Jones (1943, film 1954) showed classical aspirations that were followed through by Robert Wright and George Forrest in their adaptation of Grieg for their biographical musical of him, Song of Norway (1944, film 1970). 1944 saw Porter's latin-tinged score for Mexican Hayride (1944, film 1948), the last work by Romberg, Up in Central Park (1945, film 1948), and the start of the long Broadway careers of Leonard Bernstein, the writers Betty Comden and Adolph Green and the choreographer Jerome Robbins, in On the Town (1944, film 1949). With Carousel (1945, film 1956) Rodgers and Hammerstein further established their own dominance in musical theatre through a dramatically driven approach to the musical play that continued through the successes of South Pacific (1949, film 1958) and The King and I (1951, film 1956). Alongside these were the continuing works of Cole Porter, especially Kiss Me, Kate (1948, film 1953), with its clever plotting and consistently memorable score, and the less effective Can-Can (1953, film 1960). From Irving Berlin came the more resolutely musical-comedy style in the star vehicles for Ethel Merman, Annie Get Your Gun (1946, film 1950) and Call Me Madam (1950, film 1953).
In 1943, the West End musical was more directly related to World War II through the provision of diverting entertainments alongside reflections of the war in the few new works. In this latter category were the spy story of Harry Parr Davies's The Lisbon Story (1943, film 1946), and Novello's Arc de triomphe (1943). In 1945, Manning Sherwin's Under the Counter reflected wartime rationing in a successful comedy for Cicely Courtneidge. The war prevented any new American shows being produced in London for seven years, and so the opening of the much-heralded Oklahoma! (1947) became a major theatrical force. A.P. Herbert and Vivian Ellis's Bless the Bride (1947) dealt with the consequences of war and national identity, distanced by time – it was set around the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870–71 – and with an operetta style appropriate to its European setting. Its opening, just a few days apart from that of Annie Get Your Gun on top of the success of Oklahoma!, provoked comparisons between British and American musical theatre styles that affected the confidence of the West End for well over a decade. Yet those few long-running American shows of the late 1940s were matched by the hugely successful works of Ivor Novello. Through Perchance to Dream (1945) and King's Rhapsody (1949, film 1955) he retained links with a more European comic opera and operetta heritage that has persisted at an almost sub-conscious level in British musicals, and in Gay's the Word (1951) represented the ongoing American (‘new’) versus British (‘old’) musical theatre debate of the time. Ellis and Novello had been leading forces in British musical theatre of the 1930s, as had Noël Coward: Novello died in 1951, and by the mid-1950s Ellis and Coward had been eclipsed by shows from American writers. From Bless the Bride through to The Water Gipsies (1955) Ellis showed a growing tendency towards a more lyrical and serious style. Coward's musical theatre reputation never recovered from the disaster, despite much musical merit, of Pacific 1860 (1946) and changes of direction as with the shades of Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls in his Ace of Clubs (1950) followed by the drawn-out operetta of After the Ball (1954).
The period 1943–59 encompasses most of the musicals by Loesser, a well-established popular song lyricist, especially for Hollywood, who had also begun to compose his own music. His Broadway shows from Where's Charley? (1948) through to the Pulitzer prize-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961, film 1967) display a constant reinvention of style and approach that encompasses the extremes of Broadway of the time, from the concentrated musical-comedy writing of Guys and Dolls (1950, film 1955) to the expansive operatic writing of The Most Happy Fella (1956). This dynamism of approach to the musical is further borne out by the works of Bernstein which included the experimentation of Candide (1956, initially unsuccessful and subsequently revised many times) and the canonic West Side Story (1957, film 1961). The latter work, although not as long-running as many other key works of the period, was nonetheless hugely influential through its rich and vivacious score and its culmination for the 1950s of the gradual elevation of dance to a central narrative role (fig.5). It also brought its co-lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, to wider attention. Harold Rome moved from the striking popular styles of Wish You Were Here (1952) to the broader emotional canvas of Fanny (1954). Jule Styne had a light musical comedy success with Bells are Ringing (1956, film 1960), but with Gypsy (1959, film 1962) produced one of the great dramatically charged and psychologically complex musicals of the canon.
Kurt Weill continued to be active on Broadway during the 1940s with innovative works whose value has only more recently been understood. His operatic tendencies came through in both Street Scene (1947), set in a New York City tenement, and Lost in the Stars (1949), an adaptation of Paton's Cry the Beloved Country, whose story of racial prejudice in South Africa gave an opportunity for black performers to gain wider exposure. In particular, he collaborated with Lerner on Love Life (1948), a ‘vaudeville’ about marriage through the centuries in America, presented in self-contained scenes rather than a continuous narrative. Lerner had already collaborated with the composer Frederick Loewe to write Brigadoon (1947, film 1954), and later wrote with him Paint Your Wagon (1951, film 1969), My Fair Lady (1956, film 1964) and Camelot (1960, film 1967). The decade finished on Broadway with the last collaboration of Rodgers and Hammerstein (who by now signified an older mainstream) on the song score to The Sound of Music (1959, film 1965). Far from the perceived revolution of realism in Oklahoma!, this last work has become – somewhat unjustly – a symbol for the most sentimental aspects of the musical. In the same year, further contrast was found with a parody of Romberg and Friml's operetta in Besoyan's Little Mary Sunshine (1959), and with Bock and Harnick's political satire Fiorello! (1959) which won the Pulitzer prize for drama.
Most of the 1950s in London's West End was marked by productions of recent new American shows, notably Love from Judy (1952) by the American composer Hugh Martin but written for London, and by two small-scale shows that surprisingly achieved long runs. Julian Slade's Salad Days remained a quaint English piece whose charm was gained through a naivety of musical and dramatic style. Although it ran for over five years in London, it has never spread seriously into an international repertory. But with The Boy Friend (1953, film 1971), Sandy Wilson wrote a work based on the characteristics of earlier 1920s musicals that went beyond pastiche, introduced Julie Andrews to Broadway in its first US production and became a work of the international repertory. Both of these works are retrospective in style and set apart from the mainstream, gaining their success by contrast with contemporary large-scale shows of more serious dramatic intent; a more original impetus to take the British musical into the 1960s came with a swing towards ‘realism’ in Bart's Fings ain't wot they used to be (1959) and the early pop styles and dramatic cynicism of Expresso Bongo (1958, film 1959), that in turn built on some of the ‘youth’ orientation of Julian More and James Gilbert's Grab me a Gondola (1956).
This period saw the rise of the ‘integrated’ musical play as a development of the musical comedy. In the musical play, music and dance were intended to support the drama by providing advancements in the plot or characterization; consequently the songs and other music had to fulfil a more specific function than before. Through the 1940s and 50s, elements of both the entertaining diversions of musical comedy and the more serious intent of musical plays are found alongside each other, often within a single show. Although it has been common to pinpoint Oklahoma! as the pivotal moment of change towards the musical play, it was not so much a cause as a symptom. All of its supposed innovations – opening with a solo voice rather than a chorus, the use of ballet for psychological revelation, the advancement of character through song – have earlier precedents. However, Oklahoma! provided a focus for all of these, further aided by its creation of an American mythic folk history and an assertion of ‘American-ness’ at a time of war, and its wide dissemination through broadcasting and recordings both nationally and internationally.
Developments in recording, broadcasting and film helped many shows of the 1940s and 50s to become classics of the canon. While individual songs from shows of the 1920s and 30s have lived on as ‘standards’ in the jazz and popular singer repertories, many 40s and 50s shows have become known in their original versions, often as near-complete song scores. Although partly encouraged by the placing of numbers more clearly and memorably within an obvious dramatic context, most importantly by 1948 the LP had been introduced and so allowed show scores to be recorded almost complete on a single disc. It was thus possible to be well acquainted with the numbers from, for example, My Fair Lady through its landmark high-selling Broadway cast album without seeing the show. By raising the prominence of musical theatre in general and in providing publicity for an individual show, original cast recordings contributed greatly to the increasing length of initial runs of musicals (My Fair Lady achieved 2717 performances on Broadway) and to their viability and longevity as touring productions. Additional exposure through radio and through relatively faithful screen adaptations in the 1950s also increased audiences for musicals, in turn creating a wider base for stage revivals and the basis of a mature performing repertory.
Dance became increasingly important in this period as a part of dramatic advancement; there are important ballet scenes in, for example, Oklahoma!, On the Town, Carousel, The King and I and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951), while the use of stylized movement as in Michael Kidd's choreography for Guys and Dolls and Lil' Abner (1956, film 1959) further brought the roles of choreographer and director together. In such a combined role, Agnes DeMille broke new ground in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Allegro (1947), while Jerome Robbins's extensive influence is most remembered through West Side Story in this period and seven years later through Fiddler on the Roof (1964). The two Adler and Ross hits, The Pajama Game (1954, film 1957) and Damn Yankees (1955, film 1958), provided early choreographic opportunities for Bob Fosse who was to become important as a director-choreographer in the following decade, firmly establishing the ‘concept musical’.
The essential constitution of the theatre orchestra stayed relatively constant in the 1940s and early 50s, although the textures themselves increasingly relied more on reeds and brass than on strings, as in Don Walker's orchestrations for Kiss Me, Kate. The voicings of the big band and its interplay of brass and reeds becomes more noticeable and woodwind doublings of clarinet and saxophone enabled the orchestration to cover both big-band styles and more lyric orchestral textures as in Walker's orchestration of Call Me Madam. The symphonic aspirations of the pit orchestra can be heard in Walker's orchestrations of The Most Happy Fella and most famously in those of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal for West Side Story. Amplification was still at a relatively unsophisticated level for most of this period – Annie Get Your Gun was presented in one of London's largest theatres in 1947 with only three microphones to provide general cover – and orchestrations needed to allow for this. It is only towards the end of the 1950s that developments from the emerging pop scene entered the theatre with greater use of amplification on stage and electric guitars in the pit.
Along with the increasing strength of the developing orchestral sound, voices further developed a popular-vernacular rather than operatic style. Such performers as Ethel Merman and Judy Holliday established the dominance of the strong female belt voices (with limited mezzo rather than soprano registers) that also mark the leading ladies of the 1960s such as Liza Minnelli and Carol Burnett, who first made her mark in 1959 with Mary Rodgers's Once Upon a Mattress. The leading romantic male voice was baritone, as with the ‘operatic’ Alfred Drake in Oklahoma!, Kiss Me, Kate and Kismet (1953, film 1955), and the more youthful, popular music sound of Jack Cassidy in Wish You Were Here. The romantic tenor associated with operetta had become sufficiently dated by this time so that Novello could use one in Gay's the Word as a symbol of obsolescence and a figure of fun, although the emerging styles of contemporary pop performance were also parodied at an early stage in America (Bye Bye Birdie, 1960) and England (Expresso Bongo).
Although there had been occasional mainstream shows both by black writers and with black performers, Broadway was predominantly white. Works by the white composer Harold Arlen addressed this by using racially integrated casts: with the lyricist E.Y. Harburg for Finian's Rainbow (1947, film 1968) and Jamaica (1957), and with Truman Capote for House of Flowers (1954). Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Flower Drum Song (1958) also made use of a racially disparate cast. A revival and international tour of Porgy and Bess that began in 1953 brought black performers significant exposure in musical theatre, although it was with the rise of pop music in subsequent decades and its integration into musical theatre that black performers and writers became more integrated into the mainstream.
There was a substantial generational shift in musical theatre writers in the 1960s. The last Broadway work from Frank Loesser was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961, film 1967), whose satire on big business won a Pulitzer prize and maintained Loesser's reputation for an ever-adaptable style. The successful partnership of Adler and Ross – protégés of Loesser – was abruptly curtailed by Ross's early death in 1955. The last major success for Richard Rodgers was The Sound of Music (1959, film 1965) and his later works without Hammerstein, who died in 1960, did not achieve mainstream popularity. The most notable of these works was Do I Hear a Waltz (1964) with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, who had already established his abilities as a lyricist in collaboration with Bernstein (West Side Story). Cole Porter died in 1965, and although Irving Berlin was to live for most of the rest of the century, his last work was the indifferent Mr. President (1962). One of the few composers from before 1960 to carry over successfully into the new decade and beyond was Jule Styne, and two of his biggest successes border this period: Gypsy (with lyrics by Sondheim, 1959) and Funny Girl (1961, film 1968).
New composers built upon and developed the musical from the basis of a now-established repertory. They included Charles Strouse, Cy Coleman, Jerry Herman and John Kander, all of whose works informed the main canon of the genre almost to the end of the century. Strouse had established himself as a popular songwriter before writing the music for Bye Bye Birdie (1960, film 1963), a musical that drew on the contemporary rock and roll scene both for its plot and some of its musical style. This was followed by Golden Boy (1964) for Sammy Davis jr, and the now perennial Annie (1977, film 1982), whimsically adapted from the cartoon strip, ‘Little Orphan Annie’. Coleman had his first big success with Wildcat (1959), but produced his most vibrant score for Sweet Charity (1966, film 1969) which strikingly drew on contemporary pop and jazz for its distinctive sound. Such inventive use of a wide range of styles has become a hallmark of his best work, from the ‘comic operetta’ set pieces of On the Twentieth Century (1978) and the jaunty vaudeville and ragtime of Barnum (1980) to the big-band and swing styles of the stylishly clever City of Angels (1989). Less wide-ranging in style, but with its own strong sense of theatricality, is the work of Jerry Herman, whose ability to encapsulate a particular strain of Broadway optimism in shows such as Hello, Dolly! (1964, film 1966), Mame (1966, film 1974), Mack and Mabel (1974) and La cage aux folles (1983) has put him at the fore of characterizing the genre in the USA. John Kander's work has been more sporadic in its success, but no less significant; of his shows with the lyricist Fred Ebb, Cabaret (1966, film 1972) and Chicago (1975) have both extended the ability of the musical to comment as well as narrate. This role of the musical for commentary through the elevation of its dramatic subtext has played an increasing part in the musical post-1970.
Continual stylistic searching has been uniquely shown by Stephen Sondheim, whose work has moved from the status of cult failure to the core of the repertory. He has adapted popular song forms as commentary (Follies, 1971), for thematic transmutation (Merrily We Roll Along, 1981) and even broken them down for a more overtly motivic-based use (A Little Night Music, 1973, and Sunday in the Park with George, 1984). His shows have ranged from the book musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962, film 1966), through the quasi-operatic Sweeney Todd (1979) to revue in Assassins (1991). Through his constant musical reinventions, complex lyric writing and profile as both composer and lyricist, he has significantly shaped the contents of and approaches to the musical, particularly from the 1980s onwards.
Others have influenced the form in more limited ways. Lionel Bart's Oliver! (1960, film 1968) established a new record for the West End, running for over 2600 performances; David Heneker's Half a Sixpence (1963, film 1967) combined the direct style of Oliver! with a more American format and provided a showcase for the pop singer Tommy Steele. Both shows found ways of combining English music hall and contemporary popular ballad styles effectively in scores that suggested something of their period settings, but also owed much to affectionate caricature. Although both transferred successfully to Broadway, only Oliver! has been continually revived. The reworking of older forms also characterized other succesful British shows of the time. Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse's Stop the World – I Want to Get Off (London, 1961; Broadway, 1962) used revue with an allegorical story. More surprising was the bold operetta of Ron Grainer's Robert and Elizabeth (1964), which also reminded British musical theatre of its strong operetta links that have periodically come to the fore, from Novello to Lloyd Webber, and so perhaps delineate a difference between British and American musical theatre at a fundamental level.
The growing split between pop music and musical theatre became clearest in the 1960s. In 1958, pop had already successfully been used in a witty and ironic setting in the English show Expresso Bongo, a neglected early use of true pop style. However, the most radical change came through Galt McDermott's ‘American tribal love-rock musical’ Hair (1968, film 1979) which brought the ‘summer of love’ philosophy, fashions and music on to the Broadway stage. Indeed, even in the creation of the work, its approach was more to do with an overt sense of ‘community’ rather than ‘cast’. Although not the first musical to address political concerns, its timing and profile place it as the most significant. In contrast, Burt Bacharach and Hal David's Promises, Promises (1968) had a pop score that became equally iconic, but of the 1960s commercial mainstream. With the established ‘theatrical’ styles invigorated with newer ‘pop’ styles, the musical language available for use in stage works rapidly and widely increased. The range of styles taken into the musical is well shown in the juxtapositions of the 1970s: in 1975 there was the self-referential theatre setting of A Chorus Line (1975, film 1985) and 1920s pastiche in Chicago; in 1978 the ‘overblown, bravura comic-operetta’ of On the Twentieth Century was set against the country music styles of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (film 1982) and the soft rock of I'm Getting my Act Together and Taking It on the Road. By 1981, Broadway contrasted an updating of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance (film 1983) with a more conventional ‘showtune’ style in Woman of the Year and girl-group pop in Dreamgirls. The musical palette and dramatic forms encompassed most pop music styles, mediated by the Broadway derivatives of the Tin Pan Alley popular song.
Sometimes viewed as in opposition to Sondheim's explicitly cerebral and intellectual approach are the so called mega-musicals that began in the late 1970s. Particularly associated with the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber, such quasi-operatic works characteristically integrate story lines of high drama with impassioned music that uses fusions of contemporary pop and rock rhythms and accompaniments, often filtered through a broader 19th-century Romantic sensibility. Unlike that of most of the British composers of this period, Lloyd Webber's work has found an international audience. In collaboration with the lyricist Tim Rice, he had huge international success first with Jesus Christ Superstar (recording 1970; Broadway stage 1971; London stage 1972; film 1973) which established a new confidence in using pop and rock in musicals. Such mega-musicals have also tended towards being completely sung or with minimal spoken interludes, often an effect achieved by implying narrative through a non-continuous episodic line as with Evita (1978, film 1996) and most notably Boublil and Schoenberg's Les misérables (1985) after Victor Hugo's novel. Later examples include Lloyd Webber's more overtly operatic Phantom of the Opera (1986), and Boublil and Schoenberg's Miss Saigon (1989), a reworking of Madame Butterfly set against the backdrop of the Vietnam war. These shows, primarily from London, gradually began to dominate the Broadway repertory in lengthy runs, leading to the use of the term ‘British invasion’, paralleling the supposed ‘American invasion’ of the West End immediately after World War II.
One antidote to the increasing intellectual or emotional weight that the musical has been expected to bear through the mega-musical is found in the increasing number of revivals, which both reaffirm the canon and by comparison shape the value judgments of the active repertory. But alongside the regular reinterpretations of classic ‘post-Oklahoma!’ book musicals, by such writers as Rodgers and Hammerstein and Frank Loesser, there has been an increasing interest in pre-World War II shows. On Your Toes (Broadway, 1983) was followed by the hugely successful Me and My Girl (London 1984; Broadway 1986), a light concoction for 1939 by the English composer Noel Gay, revised with a new book; 1992 saw a major rewriting and revival of Gershwin's Girl Crazy (1930) as Crazy for You (1992).
Not all influential shows were large scale. With the high cost of mounting major productions set alongside the growth of fringe theatre activity, small-scale productions have also played a role in extending the range of the musical. One of the most notable of such productions is the ‘Falsetto’ trilogy of William Finn. In the first of the series, March of the Falsettos (1981), the four characters chart a plot of domestic relationships centred on sexual orientation and psychoanalysis. There has also been a more recent move to use the term ‘musical’ to describe any presentation involving substantial pop or popular music elements that takes place in the theatre; accordingly, the designation has become interchangeable in publicity material with what would formerly have been considered ‘revue’. The compilation show, drawing on the work of a particular person or musical style, has long been a popular small-scale format. Following the success of the London revue Cowardy Custard (1973; Oh! Coward on Broadway) later shows have adopted the format, most notably Side by Side by Sondheim (1977) which also substantially raised the profile internationally of that composer. Most major figures have now had revue compilations, Jerry Herman scoring twice with Jerry's Girls and The Best of Times. The pop world has been represented by bio-musicals of such figures as Buddy Holly and revue compilations such as Smokey Joe's Cafe for the work of Leiber and Stoller. These shows inevitably use the personae of a well-established pop past, but effective musicals drawing on current pop styles have been few, partly reflecting the shifts in pop music towards on the one hand a predominant soul-derivative ballad style and on the other repetitive and non-vocal club dance music. Rent (1996) was unusual in its effective use of contemporary musical styles, and its modern approach was further emphasized by a visual presentation in which performers used head-microphones such as those used in stadium rock concerts and by stage direction that drew on both the extrovert postures of a rock concert and the acting of a drama with a ‘fourth-wall’ integrity.
The major innovation of the 1960s and early 70s is the ‘concept musical’, in which ideas of how the show will be staged affect the content and construction of the drama. It came to the fore mainly through the rise of the director-choreographer towards the end of the 1950s, and particularly through Bob Fosse (Sweet Charity, Pippin, 1972, Chicago) and Michael Bennett (A Chorus Line). Notably the director Hal Prince (associated with many shows by Sondheim) has been innovative in the presentational style of the musical through such diverse key works as Cabaret, Pacific Overtures (1976), Evita and The Phantom of the Opera. These musicals also demonstrate a widening base of musical styles, including respectively 1960s jazz, rock, ragtime, popular ballad, Weimar cabaret, far-eastern influences, symphonic rock and opera.
The historical links between popular music and musical theatre were increasingly strained as pop styles became more diverse; from the late 1960s onwards it has been rare for a show song to enter the pop charts unless distanced from its theatrical origins by different arrangements, lyrics and singers. Dramatic narrative was not well served by aspects of developing pop, such as repetitive lyrics, loud and heavy instrumentation and a strong emphasis on the rhythmic rather than lyric element: the successful rock works Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita notably began as studio recordings rather than being first conceived for the stage. Musical theatre in part adapted to the growing rift with pop music by drawing on a wider range of existing musical styles of popular resonance. These included those styles listed above along with those representing a wider cultural diversity. In the 1960s this resulted in such musical borrowings as the Jewish sounds of Fiddler on the Roof (1964) and the Spanish rhythms of Man of la Mancha (1965, film 1972). Later came the 1950s doo-wop of Grease (1972, film 1978), the classic Hollywood film score of the 1940s in Sunset Boulevard (1993) and Eastern ethnic colorations in Miss Saigon. By the late 1990s, almost any musical style of the century had become acceptable for use in a musical.
The effective dramatization of large-scale themes became a major characteristic of musicals in the 1980s and 90s. Such works include Maury Yeston's Titanic (1997), which describes the events of the sinking of the liner in 1912, and puts characterization above narrative, using an eclectic range of musical styles and approaches from sung-through montage to period pastiche. Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens's Ragtime (1998), based on the novel by E.L. Doctorow, whose broad themes include black civil rights and immigrant life in America in the first years of the 20th century, is set to the music of ragtime and its derivatives. In both of these examples, the musical has adopted a greater awareness of its ability to interpret history, using characters as signifiers of an underlying philosophical discourse. This has been an implicit feature of musicals from early times (as in the important but exceptional Showboat some 70 years previously) but has become one of the leading explicit features of the mainstream musical at the start of the 21st century.
The growing heritage of the musical has been asserted and referenced, resulting in the pastiche work and theatrical settings of, for example, Cabaret, Follies, Chicago, Barnum, On the Twentieth Century and Phantom of the Opera. More recent works have also shown the establishment of a distinct and consciously intellectualized style of music for theatre, independent of contemporary pop music, and drawing on overt thematic development and juxtaposition to highlight strong psychological and analytic elements in the drama. Such an approach, characteristic of the through-sung musical of the 1980s or 90s, is at the root of both Sondheim's style and his influence on later composers. Even the work of composers with distinct individual voices, such as that of Yeston in Titanic, is inevitably heard against a background of Sondheim's stylistic traits. The through-sung musical also exhibits aspects of its operetta forerunners and perennial operatic aspirations, while its lack of distinction between the dramatic registers of speech when all set to music, as in Aspects of Love (1989), has been viewed as a weakening of the musical (Steyn, b1997, p.278).
More flexibility of instrumentation and scale was needed as the music encompassed a wider base of genres. Early 1960s shows shifted from a more traditional sound based on conventional string, woodwind and brass divisions to something more akin to a big band, centred on reeds and brass, supported by drum kit and (often electric) bass. This has created the archetypal ‘Broadway’ sound of scores by composers such as Coleman and Herman through orchestrators such as Philip J. Lang and William Brohn, while the increasing diversity of orchestrational approaches is shown by Jonathan Tunick – especially in his work on Sondheim's shows – and has considerably increased a general awareness of the importance of the orchestrator's role. Such changes were also facilitated by the greater sophistication of microphones, allowing at first better general stage coverage with float microphones, then individual and invisible radio microphones. With the balance between voice and orchestra in the hands of a sound engineer, the orchestrator has been able to explore a wider range of accompanimental sounds and the use of rock ensembles was possible. Rock groups and the use of electric, then electronic, keyboards have become the basis of such shows as The Rocky Horror Show (1973, film 1976; primarily rock and roll styles) and Little Shop of Horrors (1982, film 1986; 1960s girl-group pop), while the ‘mega-musical’ style of Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita encompasses the wide instrumentation of symphonic rock and pop. Synthesizers were first used to add unusual sounds, an early example being for Company (1970), but are now ubiquitous, often replacing string sections or boosting the effect of a limited number of players. Common features of show sound systems include: additional singers offstage in an amplified booth who boost the chorus sound onstage; pre-recorded vocal lines for soloists to facilitate special stage effects or retain, paradoxically, a consistent standard of ‘live’ performance; pre-recorded chorus lines to strengthen the vocal level, particularly during strenuous dancing or difficult staging; pre-recorded backing tracks that broaden the textures produced by the live players or help to reproduce in live performance arrangements more familiar through recordings that rely on special studio techniques. Soloists have also been able to exploit the individual amplification afforded by body microphones, especially with intimate and breathy vocal tones which would otherwise be inaudible in a theatre, so bringing vocal interpretations in theatre closer to those of pop.
Whereas the source material for musicals up to the 1950s that did not use original plots had generally been found in novels and plays, from the 1960s onwards the sources expanded to include the staging of successful film musicals (42nd Street, 1980 and Meet Me in St. Louis, 1960, rev.1989) and the musicalization of successful films (Applause, 1970, the notorious disaster of Carrie, 1988 and The Witches of Eastwick, 2000). This represents a reverse on the tendency of the 1930s–50s to transfer primarily from stage to screen. The films of stage musicals have also had an effect on revivals on stage where the films – increasingly after the 1950s with rewritten scores and plot lines – have led to the inclusion in stage productions of film material. A good example is found in Cabaret: for the film, much of the score was rewritten, and the numbers ‘Mein Herr’ and ‘Money, Money, Money’ replaced their respective stage numbers, ‘Don't tell Mama’ and ‘Sitting Pretty’; in new stage productions the film songs often replace the original show songs, reflecting the wider dissemination available through film and consequent expectations of the audience. By the 1990s, the screen to stage transfers had extended to include cartoons, Disney having major successes first with a stage re-creation of its Beauty and the Beast (1994) and then with an innovative adaptation of The Lion King (1998). Such shows also provided material more suitable for a family audience, not previously widely addressed by the repertory.
Subject matter has become more representative of wide social concerns and interests and explicitly representative of certain key groups of writers, performers and audience. Thus the 1960s saw mainstream shows representing Jewish culture, such as Milk and Honey (1961), I Can Get It For You Wholesale (1962) and Fiddler on the Roof (1964). The self-referencing of the world of theatre was portrayed in Applause and even more cynically in A Chorus Line than in the stock ‘backstage’ musicals of earlier periods. Gay themes in particular, formerly an important but implicit and covert element of the musical, are now explicit in the mainstream, such as in La cage aux folles, Kiss of the Spider Woman (1992) and Rent. The deconstruction of Miller (c1998) is indicative of both this and the increasingly serious academic approach to the musical, here from a literary and dramatic standpoint. From earlier narratives of such noted chroniclers as Gerald Bordman and Stanley Green, the range of musicological writings now extends to the intense analysis of Sondheim (Banfield, c1993) or popular song construction (Forte, c1995). Block (c1997), produced as a study guide for key texts, indicates the extent to which the musical has developed a history and social importance to warrant its serious study.
A Source books, catalogues and discographies. B General surveys. C Specific studies.
GänzlBMT
GänzlEMT
R. Lewine and A.Simon: Encyclopedia of Theatre Music (New York, 1961)
S. Green: Ring Bells! Sing Songs! Broadway Musicals from the 1930s (New York,1971)
S. Green: Encyclopaedia of the Musical (New York, 1976)
J.P. Wearing: The London Stage …: a Calendar of Plays and Players (Metuchen, NJ, 1976–93)
B. Rust with R.Bunnett: London Musical Shows on Record 1897–1976 (Harrow, 1977; 2/1989 as London Musical Shows on Record 1889–1989, by R. Seeley and R. Bennett)
W.T. Stanley: Broadway in the West End: an Index of Reviews of American Theatre in London, 1950–1975 (Westport, CT, 1978)
J.P. Wearing: American and British Theatrical Biography (Metuchen, NJ, 1979)
G.W. Hodgkins: The Broadway Musical: a Complete LP Discography (New York, 1980)
D. Hummel: The Collector's Guide to the American Musical Theatre (Metuchen, NJ, 1984)
G.B. Bryan: Stage Lives: a Bibliography and Index to Theatrical Biographies in English (Westport, CT, 1985)
S. Green: Broadway Musicals: Show by Show (Milwaukee, WI, 1985, 4/1994 rev. by K. Green)
S. Suskin: Show Tunes …: the Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway's Major Composers (New York, 1986, enlarged 3/2000)
R. Simas: The Musicals No One Came to See: a Guidebook to Four Decades of Musical-Comedy Casualties On Broadway, Off-Broadway and in Out-of-Town Try-Outs, 1943–1983 (New York, 1987)
K. Gänzl: The Blackwell Guide to the Musical Theatre on Record (Oxford, 1990)
S. Suskin: Opening Night on Broadway: a Critical Quotebook of the Golden Era of the Musical Theatre, ‘Oklahoma!’ (1943) to ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ (1964) (New York, 1990)
S. Suskin: More Opening Nights on Broadway: a Critical Quotebook of the Golden Era of the Musical Theatre, 1965 through 1981 (New York, 1997)
Grove6
GroveA
GroveO
J.W. McSpadden: Operas and Musical Comedies (New York, 1946, 2/1951)
E. Short: Fifty Years of Vaudeville (London, 1946)
W.J. Macqueen-Pope: Gaiety: Theatre of Enchantment (London, 1949)
C.M. Smith: Musical Comedy in America (New York, 1950)
D. Ewen: Complete Book of the American Musical Theater (New York, 1958, 3/1976 asNew Complete Book of the American Musical Theater)
D.C. Blum: A Pictorial History of the American Theatre, 1860–1960 (Philadelphia,1960)
S. Green: The World of Musical Comedy (New York, 1960, 3/1974)
D. Ewen: The Story of America's Musical Theater (Philadelphia, 1961, 2/1968)
L. Engel: The American Musical Theatre (New York, 1967, 2/1975)
R. Mander and J.Mitchenson: Musical Comedy: a Story in Pictures (London, 1969)
L. Engel: Words with Music (New York, 1972)
E. Mordden: Better Foot Forward: the History of American Musical Theater (New York, 1976)
L. Engel: The Making of a Musical (New York and London, 1977)
G.M. Bordman: The American Musical Theatre: a Chronicle (New York, 1978)
D. and J. Parker: The Story and the Song: a Survey of English Musical Plays, 1916–78 (London, 1979)
R. Altman: The American Film Musical (Bloomington, IN, and London, 1987)
S. Morley: Spread a Little Happiness: the First Hundred Years of the British Musical (London,1987)
K. Mandelbaum: Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops (New York, 1991)
P. O'Connor: ‘Music for the Stage’, Music in Britain: the Twentieth Century, ed. S. Banfield (Oxford, 1995), 107–24
E. Mordden: Make Believe: the Broadway Musical in the 1920s (New York, 1997)
M. Steyn: Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Broadway Then and Now (London, 1997)
E. Mordden: Coming Up Roses: the Broadway Musical in the 1950s (New York, 1998)
F.M. Collinson: Orchestration for the Theatre (London, 1941)
A. Wilder: American Popular Song: the Great Innovators, 1900–1950 (New York, 1972)
M. Wilk: They're Playing our Song: from Jerome Kern to Stephen Sondheim (New York, 1973)
O.L. Guernsey, ed.: Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers on Theater (New York, 1974) [repr. of selected articles from Dramatists Guild Quarterly, 1964–74]
R.R. Bennett: Instrumentally Speaking (Melville, NY, 1975)
G. Loney, ed.: Musical Theatre in America: Greenvale, NY, 1981
J.P. Green: ‘In Dahomey in London in 1903’, BPiM, xi (1983), 22–40
E. Borroff: ‘Origin of Species: Conflicting Views of American Musical Theater History’, American Music, ii/3 (1984), 101–11
O.L. Guernsey, ed.: Broadway Song & Story: Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers Discuss their Hits (New York, 1985)
A. Lamb: ‘From Pinafore to Porter: United States-UK Interactions in Musical Theater, 1879–1929’, American Music, iv/1 (1986), 34–49
T.L. Riis: ‘The Experience and Impact of Black Entertainers in England, 1895–1920’, American Music, iv/1 (1986), 50–58
F. Hirsch: Harold Prince and the American Musical Theatre (Cambridge, 1989)
A. Woll: Black Musical Theatre: From ‘Coontown’ to ‘Dreamgirls’ (Baton Rouge, LA, 1989)
P. Furia: The Poets of Tin Pan Alley (New York, 1990)
J.P. Swain: The Broadway Musical: a Critical and Musical Survey (New York and Oxford, 1990)
S. Banfield: Sondheim's Broadway Musicals (Ann Arbor, MI, 1993)
L. Davis: Bolton and Wodehouse and Kern: the Men who Made Musical Comedy (New York, 1993)
A. Forte: The American Popular Ballad of the Golden Era 1924–1950 (Princeton, NJ, 1995)
T. Hischak: Word Crazy: Broadway Lyricists from Cohan to Sondheim (Westport, CT, 1995)
R. Lawson-Peebles, ed.: Approaches to the American Musical (Exeter, 1996)
G. Block: Enchanted Evenings: the Broadway Musical from ‘Showboat’ to Sondheim (New York,1997)
D.A. Jansen: ‘“Tell Me Dusky Maiden”: the First Black Composers on Broadway’, ‘If You've Never Been Vamped by a Brown Skin: Black Theatre Composers of the 1920s’, Spreadin' Rhythm Around (New York, 1998), 77–117, 335–413
D.A. Miller: Place for Us: Essay on the Broadway Musical (Cambridge, MA, 1998)
M. Wilk: Overture and Finale: Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Creation of their Two Greatest Hits (New York, 1999) [incl. material previously pubd as OK! The Story of Oklahoma, New York, 1993]
For further bibliography see entries on individual composers and Film musical, Lyrics, London (i), Music hall, New York, Operetta and Vaudeville.