, ------- --- ----------------

'
-------
The _golden_age of _ musicals: _1 20 _to
' 1960 _
Opera is a staged musical drama
with sets and costumes, in which all The musical as we know it today developed in America at the end of the
or most nineteenth
of the words are sung to century and incorporates elements from all kinds of musical theatre, including
orchestral
accompaniment.
opera, light opera, ballet and revue. American musicals were first performed
Light opera is a light-hearted form on Broadway, the theatrical district of New York, giving rise to the term
of opera containing spoken dialogue Broadway musical; they became the most important form of entertainment in
and humorous plots in addition to
the songs sung to orchestral
New York.
accompaniment. Show Boat (1927, see below) is considered to be the first great Broadway
musical. A large number of musicals followed, many with catchy melodies that
Ballet is a stage entertainment
became popular music hits. In 1944 the revolutionary Rodgers and Hammerstein
with sets and costumes in which a
story or musical Oklahoma! that contained a dramatic plot, recognisable, real-life
idea is expressed through dance to

accompanying music. characters and a large number of memorable songs became an overnight success.
It was followed over the next 15 years by one masterpiece of musical theatre after
Revue is a form of another; for example South Pacific (1949), Guys and Dolls (1950, see page 76),
entertainment involving skits
(comedy routines), dances and
My Fair Lady (1956), West Side Story (1957), The Sound of Music (1959, see
songs. page 82) and the English musical Oliver! (1960). Throughout the 1950s songs
from new musicals were a dominant feature of the American popular music scene
and regularly topped the charts.

Many Broadway musicals have been

turned into big-budget films, or
movie musicals, which are not
limited by the confines of a stage
and therefore allow the director to
give free rein to his or her
imagination.

@ Listening example-'01' Man River' from Show Boat

(Kern and Hammerstein 11)

In 1927, a landmark musical was written that was alcoholism and unhappy marriages, but also
unlike anything that had come before it This was Show because of the high quality of its songs,
Boat, by Jerome Kern (music) and Oscar Hammerstein which ranged from light-hearted
II (lyrics), based on the 1925 novel of the same
name. It spans a 43-year period ( 1884- 1927) and
tells the tale of ill-fated lovers who meet on a
riverboat called Cotton Blossom.

Riverboats were large, glamorous floating theatres that steamed up

and down the Mississippi River during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Offering entertaining musical shows to the towns
where they moored, riverboats usually employed poorly paid and
harshly treated African-American crews.

The musical broke new ground, not only because

it dared to tackle serious issues such as racism,
32-bar songs in a popular style to operatic songs in a
classical style
The classic song '0 1' Man Rive r: first heard near the start
of Show Boat, is an expressiveballad sung by Joe, an old African-
Americancrewmember of the Cotton Blossom, whose rich, dark
bass voice, the lowest- pitchedmale voice, gives the song a
feeling of strength and authority. The lyrics, featuring much
Southern dialect, present a simple philosophy: no matter what
hardships and upheavals are endured by the characters, the
Mississippi River continues to flow tranquilly and unceasingly on
IN TUNE WITH MUSIC
its way
'0 1' Man Rive r' has an orchestral
accompaniment that supports the vocal line and
assists in communicating
the emotions of the lyrics The structure of the song is
typical verse-chorus, the verse being eight bars long (like
an introductory section ) and the chorus (the main
1h
section, WI
a more memorable melody) 32 bars long, with eight-bar
phrases (A phrase is a unit of melody frequently four or