Author: Geoffrey Block Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 9780195313437 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 378
Book Description
Richard Rodgers was one of America's most prolific and best-loved composers. A world without "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady is a Tramp," "Blue Moon," and "Bewitched," to name just a few of the songs he wrote with Lorenz Hart, is scarcely imaginable, and the musicals he wrote with his second collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein--Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music--continue to enchant and entertain audiences. Arranged in four sections, Rodgers and Hart (1929-1943), Rodgers and Hammerstein (1943-1960), Rodgers After Hammerstein (1960-1979), and The Composer Speaks (1939-1971), The Richard Rodgers Reader offers a cornucopia of informative, perceptive, and stylish biographical and critical overviews. It also contains a selection of Rodgers's letters to his wife Dorothy in the 1920s, the 1938 Time magazine cover story and New Yorker profiles in 1938 and 1961, and essays and reviews by such noted critics as Brooks Atkinson, Eric Bentley, Leonard Bernstein, Lehman Engel, Walter Kerr, Ken Mandelbaum, Ethan Mordden, George Jean Nathan, and Alec Wilder. The volume features personal accounts by Richard Adler, Agnes de Mille, Joshua Logan, Mary Martin, and Diahann Carroll. The collection concludes with complete selections from more than thirty years of Rodgers's own writings on topics ranging from the creative process, the state of the Broadway theater, even Rodgers's bout with cancer, and a generous sample from the candid and previously unpublished Columbia University interviews. For anyone wishing to explore more fully the life and work of a composer whose songs and musicals have assumed a permanent--and prominent--place in American popular culture, The Richard Rodgers Reader will offer endless delights.
Author: Geoffrey Holden Block Publisher: ISBN: 9780197728932 Category : Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Arranged in four sections, this collection offers informative, biographical and critical overviews. It also contains a selection of Rodgers's letters to his wife Dorothy, and concludes with selections from his writings on creative process, the state of the Broadway theater, his bout with cancer, and his Columbia University interviews.
Author: Geoffrey Block Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300127545 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 331
Book Description
Richard Rodgers was an icon of the musical theater, a prolific composer whose career spanned six decades and who wrote more than a thousand songs and forty shows for the American stage. In this absorbing book, Geoffrey Block examines Rodgers’s entire career, providing rich details about the creation, staging, and critical reception of some of his most popular musicals. Block traces Rodgers’s musical education, early work, and the development of his musical and dramatic language. He focuses on two shows by Rodgers and Hart (A Connecticut Yankee and The Boys from Syracuse) and two by Rodgers and Hammerstein (South Pacific and Cinderella), offering new insights into each one. He concludes with the first serious look at the five neglected and often maligned musicals that Rodgers composed in the 1960s and 1970s, after the death of Hammerstein.
Author: Todd S. Purdum Publisher: Henry Holt ISBN: 162779834X Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
"Even before they joined forces, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written dozens of Broadway shows, but together they pioneered a new art form: the serious musical play. Their songs and dance numbers served to advance the drama and reveal character, a sharp break from the past and the template on which all future musicals would be built. [This is a portrait of that creative partnership]"--Amazon.com
Author: Thomas S. Hischak Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN: 1567206840 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 462
Book Description
Still the most influential and popular songwriting team in the history of the American Musical Theatre, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein represent Broadway musicals at their finest. The team revolutionized the musical play with Oklahoma! in 1943 and then went on to explore territory never put on the musical stage before in such beloved shows as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music. The team also worked in film, as with State Fair, and in the new medium of television, with Cinderella. For the first time, the lives, careers, works, songs, and themes of Rodgers and Hammerstein have been gathered together in an encyclopedia that covers the many talents of these men. In addition to their plays and films together, every work that each man did with other collaborators is also discussed. Hundreds of their songs are described, and there are entries on the many actors, directors, and other creative artists who they worked with. A complete list of awards, recordings, and books about the team are included, as well as a chronology of everything either man wrote. But The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia is not just about facts. It explains their work, explores themes in their musicals, and illustrates why they remain a driving force in the American Theatre. This is the first encyclpoedia to look specifically at the careers and works of Rodgers and Hammerstein, covering all their musicals together for stage, screen and televsion, but also everything they wrote with others. The purpose is to create a comprehensive guide to the American Musical Theatres foremost collaboration. The encyclopedia is (1) comprehensve, describing the works, the people involved in those works, and many of their famous songs; ( 2) up-to-date, including the most recent revivals of their works and new recordings of their scores; and (3) easy to use, being alphabetically arranged with cross-reference listings, chronological lists, lists of awards and recordings, and bibliographic information for further reading.
Author: Steve Swayne Publisher: University of Michigan Press ISBN: 0472026356 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
“ Steve Swayne’ s How Sondheim Found His Sound is a fascinating treatment and remarkable analysis of America’ s greatest playwright in song. His marvelous text goes a long way toward placing Stephen Sondheim among the towering artists of the late twentieth century!” — Cornel West, Princeton University “ Sondheim’ s career and music have never been so skillfully dissected, examined, and put in context. With its focus on his work as composer, this book is surprising and welcome.” — Theodore S. Chapin, President and Executive Director, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization “ . . . an intriguing ‘ biography’ of the songwriter’ s style. . . . Swayne is to be congratulated for taking the study of this unique composer/lyricist into hitherto unnavigated waters.” — Stage Directions “ The research is voluminous, as are the artistry and perceptiveness. Swayne has lived richly within the world of Sondheim’ s music.” — Richard Crawford, author of America’ s Musical Life: A History “ Amid the ever-more-crowded bookshelf of writings on Sondheim, Swayne’ s analysis of Sondheim’ s development as a composer stands up as a unique and worthy study. . . . For the Sondheim aficionados, there are new ideas and new information, and for others, Swayne’ s How Sondheim Found His Sound will provide an intriguing introduction into the mind of arguably the greatest and most influential living Broadway composer.” — talkinbroadway.com “ What a fascinating book, full of insights large and small. An impressive analysis and summary of Sondheim’ s many sources of inspiration. All fans of the composer and lovers of Broadway in general will treasure and frequently refer to Swayne’ s work.” — Tom Riis, Joseph Negler Professor of Musicology and Director of the American Music Research Center, University of Colorado Stephen Sondheim has made it clear that he considers himself a “ playwright in song.” How he arrived at this unique appellation is the subject of How Sondheim Found His Sound— an absorbing study of the multitudinous influences on Sondheim’ s work. Taking Sondheim’ s own comments and music as a starting point, author Steve Swayne offers a biography of the artist’ s style, pulling aside the curtain on Sondheim’ s creative universe to reveal the many influences— from classical music to theater to film— that have established Sondheim as one of the greatest dramatic composers of the twentieth century.
Author: Julianne Lindberg Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190051221 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
When Rodgers and Hart's Pal Joey opened at the Barrymore on Christmas day, 1940, it flew in the face of musical comedy convention. The characters and situation were depraved. The setting was caustically realistic. Its female lead was frankly sexual and yet not purely comic. A narratively-driven dream ballet closed the first act, begging audiences to take seriously the inner life and desires of a confirmed heel. Pal Joey: The History of a Heel presents a behind-the-scenes look at the genesis, influence, and significance of this classic musical comedy. Although the show appears on many top-ten lists surveying the Golden Age, it is a controversial classic; its legacy is tied both to the fashionable scandal that it provoked, and, retrospectively, to the uncommon attention it paid to characterization and narrative cohesion. Through an archive-driven investigation of the show and its music, author Julianne Lindberg offers insight into the historical moment during which Joey was born, and to the process of genre classification, canon formation, and the ensuing critical debates related to musical and theatrical maturity. More broadly, the book argues that the critique and commentary on class and gender conventions in Pal Joey reveals a uniquely American concern over status, class mobility, and progressive gender roles in the pre-war era.
Author: Megan Woller Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0197511058 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
For centuries, Arthurian legend has captured imaginations throughout Europe and the Americas with its tales of Camelot, romance, and chivalry. The ever-shifting, age-old tale of King Arthur and his world is one which depends on retellings for its endurance in the cultural imagination. Using adaptation theory as a framework, From Camelot to Spamalot foregrounds the role of music in selected Arthurian adaptations, examining six stage and film musicals. The book considers how musical versions in twentieth and twenty-first century popular culture interpret the legend of King Arthur, contending that music guides the audience to understand this well-known tale and its characters in new and unexpected ways. All of the productions considered include an overtly modern perspective on the legend, intruding and even commenting on the tale of King Arthur. Shifting from an idealistic utopia to a silly place, the myriad notions of Camelot offer a look at the importance of myth in American popular culture. Author Megan Woller's approach, rooted in the literary theory of scholars like Linda Hutcheon, highlights the intertextual connections between chosen works and Arthurian legend. In so doing, From Camelot to Spamalot intersects with and provides a timely contribution to several different fields of study, from adaptation studies and musical theater studies to film studies and Arthurian studies.
Author: Tim Carter Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190693444 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 169
Book Description
"Following the success of their first collaboration, Oklahoma! (1943), composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II worked again with producers Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner, director Rouben Mamoulian, and choreographer Agnes de Mille to put on a very different kind of show. Based on the play Liliom (1909) by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnaaar, Carousel (1945) took Broadway musical theater in a far darker direction than it had gone before with its gritty plot, anti-hero protagonist, and extensive music that critics claimed came close to opera. Carousel transplants the themes of Molnaaa's play into a new setting on the New England coast, telling the story of two social misfits struggling to survive harsh economic times: Julie Jordan defies the conventions of small-town America in her choice of a husband, and Billy Bigelow--unemployed and prone to domestic violence--dies in the course of committing a robbery. Author Tim Carter examines how this troubling subject matter fits into the context of a country moving through the end of World War II to an uncertain future, and how Carousel transformed the American musical on stage and screen."--Back cover.
Author: Geoffrey Block
Author: Geoffrey Holden Block
Author: Geoffrey Block
Author: Richard Rodgers
Author: Todd S. Purdum
Author: Thomas S. Hischak
Author: Steve Swayne
Author: Julianne Lindberg
Author: Megan Woller
Author: Tim Carter