Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (79 page)

Writers such as Stephen Citron, John Snelson, Jessica Sternfeld, and Michael Walsh who have discussed the music of Lloyd Webber’s shows more often than not dismiss the borrowings as inconsequential. This chapter espouses the view that the sheer number of examples and their closeness to their borrowed sources suggest that students of musical theater should examine this phenomenon critically rather than ignore it. Lloyd Webber’s first major hit,
Superstar
’s “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” is the first of many examples that writers have noticed and commented on for its strong melodic and harmonic similarity to the second movement of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64. Before he goes on to show what Lloyd Webber added to Mendelssohn, Snelson writes that “from a musical standpoint, the resemblance between the pop melody and the concerto is so obvious and continues through such an extended passage (some seven bars) that any claim to coincidence is untenable.”
¹⁸

In his chapter-length study of “musical reminiscences” in Lloyd Webber, Snelson describes the even closer connection between “On This Night of a Thousand Stars,” sung by the nightclub singer Magaldi in
Evita
, and the popular Latin tune “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” by the composer who wrote under the nom de plume Louiguy, as “self-evident.”
¹⁹
He concludes that since the borrowing “sticks so closely to those features which create the character of the Louiguy number, the whole piece can even be seen as a vocal extemporization around ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ in the manner of an interpretation-in-performance of the original.”
²⁰
In short, Lloyd Webber’s “Thousand Stars” has accomplished for the unknown Louigay what Romberg’s
Blossom Time
earlier did for Schubert.

By way of comparison, Magnolia in
Show Boat
sings Charles K. Harris’s “After the Ball” to evoke fin-de-siècle popular music. The published score, however, credits Harris (and not Kern) as the composer. The composers of much of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and “On This Night of a Thousand Stars” receive no attribution. Before moving on to
Phantom
I would like to bring up another likely “musical reminiscence” that to my knowledge has gone unrecognized, at least in print. When I used to give an annual musical plagiarism lecture to non-music majors, I frequently asked students whether the melody and harmony of the opening of “I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You,” also from
Evita
, reminded them of any other popular song they happened to know. Invariably several students would immediately volunteer the Beatles’ “Yesterday.”

The relationship between these songs is analogous, but not identical, to the bop practice of creating new tunes using harmonic progressions from older popular tunes (e.g., “Shaw Nuff” and “Cottontail,” among others, employ the harmony of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm”). Among music historians, the term of choice to describe this practice is
contrafacta
(the plural of
contrafactum
), a fancy name used to describe either the appropriation of harmony from one song to another or the recycling of melodies with new texts. “I’d Be Surprisingly Good for You” borrows more than a little from both the melody and harmony of “Yesterday,” but unlike most contrafacta the borrowing does not continue throughout the entire song. The technique of contrafacta as more commonly practiced was widely used in the Renaissance and can be found later in multi-texted reharmonized chorale melodies in Bach’s
St. Matthew Passion
and in popular songs recycled with texts, such as the conversions of “Anacreon in Heaven” into “The Star Spangled Banner” and “God Save the King” into “America.” The technique ensures unity and musical integration and provides opportunities to create new dramatic meanings for previously heard musical themes.

Several borrowing possibilities in
Phantom
have been proposed, some by more than one author. Both Mark Grant and Michael Walsh, for example, suggest that the distinctive, powerful, and meaningfully employed descending instrumental chromatic figure that introduces
Phantom
’s overture, title song, and seven additional Phantom appearances in the score is noticeably derived from Ralph Vaughan William’s Second (or “London”) Symphony, the first version of which appeared in the years before World War I (see
Example 16.1
).
²¹

No fewer than three borrowings have been offered for the opening phrase of “Music of the Night” alone: “Come to Me, Bend to Me” from
Brigadoon
, “School Days” from 1907 (“School days, school days / Dear old Golden Rule days”), and a phrase from “Recondite armonia” from Puccini’s
Tosca
.
²²
In each case only the first five notes, and in the first two examples the rhythms also, are the same. The “School Days” connection became a part of popular culture when the character played by Billy Crystal in the movie
Forget Paris
(1995) left a performance of
Phantom
with Debra Winger accusing “Music of the Night” of ripping off the old tune. To prove his claim, Crystal sang the opening phrase of the earlier melody.

Example 16.1.
Descending chromatic motive in Vaughan Williams’s Second (“London”) Symphony

The second phrase of the Phantom’s serenade shares eight consecutive notes and the same rhythmic contour with another melody, this time by Puccini (see
Example 16.2
). Snelson acknowledges that this phrase in “Music of the Night” “is identical to the climactic section of Dick Johnson’s declaration of love to Minnie at the conclusion of act I of
La fanciulla del West
.” Although he does not claim a dramatic purpose in the borrowing, in Lloyd Webber’s defense Snelson finds an “
emotional
[italics mine] link from one musical theater work to the other.”
²³

Example 16.2.
Dick Johnson’s “Una gioia” from Puccini’s
La fanciulla del West

Walsh notes that the melody first sung by Christine when she describes the Phantom to Raoul on the rooftop of the opera house with the words “Yet in his eyes, all the sadness of the world,” “is closely related to Liù’s suicide music in the last act of Puccini’s
Turandot
” (see
Example 16.3
).
²⁴

This is not the first time audiences heard this famous theme, however. It appeared earlier in the orchestra after the Phantom had cursed Christine for unmasking him in his lair and again in the orchestra when Raoul and Christine first arrive on the roof. The theme then reappears at two significant moments in the second act, once when Raoul asks Christine to sing the Phantom’s opera and later when Christine tells the Phantom in the final scene that “This haunted face holds no horror for me now.” The melody is one of the most important in
Phantom
, as Liù’s melody is in
Turandot
.

Example 16.3.
Liù’s motive in Puccini’s
Turandot

Surprisingly, neither Citron, Snelson, nor Sternfeld mentions the extraordinary melodic and rhythmic correspondence between this
Phantom
theme and Liù’s comparably significant melody, heard relentlessly for nearly eight minutes in
Turandot
’s second act. Snelson, who alone among this trio acknowledges that scholars need to seriously consider the issue of Lloyd Webber’s borrowing, provides numerous examples that he tries to explain or justify, but not this one. For the most part, Sternfeld’s response to Lloyd Webber’s accusers seems unwarrantedly dismissive: “When critics or historians do go hunting for actual stolen tunes, they rarely find any, and when they do, the results do not amount to much.”
²⁵

Unless one is wearing a mask that covers the ears, however, I would argue that borrowings come to some of us unbidden and that they do add up to something significant. The amount Lloyd Webber borrows from
Fanciulla
in “The Music of the Night” and the
Turandot
borrowing in “Yet in his eyes” and “This haunted face” is approximately the same as Bernstein’s appropriation of Wagner’s “Redemption through love” motive in “I Have a Love” and the death processional in
West Side Story
. The issue is not the fact of borrowing or even how much is borrowed. The problem lies in the gratuitousness and apparent arbitrariness of the borrowings. In another famous, more recent Puccini borrowing that occurs in
Rent
, Roger, the character doing the borrowing, informs the audience that he is trying to compose a love song that does not sound like “Musetta’s Waltz” from Puccini’s
La bohème
. Eventually Puccini’s melody returns, but not before Roger has finished his own original love song, “Your Eyes,” inspired, but not composed, by Puccini.

To a remarkable extent perhaps not seen since his British predecessor Handel, who is nonetheless generally credited for borrowing with interest, Lloyd Webber reuses music by other composers and does not acknowledge his sources. A typical Lloyd Webber show also contains more reprises and contrafacta than most previous and current successful Broadway shows. More significant than the number of reprises is the frequent absence of dramatic meaning. Lloyd Webber continues to receive criticism from many quarters
for these practices and habits and audience approbation in spite of them. Either way, friends and foes alike perhaps might concede that the works he created for London and Broadway from
Joseph
to
Sunset Boulevard
amply support Lloyd Webber’s claim as the reigning champion of Broadway.
²⁶

If Rodgers and Hammerstein did not invent what soon would become known as the “integrated” musical, their success with
Oklahoma!
and
Carousel
popularized this approach, gave it cachet, and arguably made it desirable, if not imperative, for others to follow in their path. The fundamental principles of the integrated musical, in contrast to the allegedly more frivolous fare of the 1920s and 1930s, are that the songs advance a plot, flow directly from the dialogue, and express the thoughts of the characters who sing them. In addition, the presence of dance serves to advance the plot and enhance the dramatic meaning of the songs that precede them, and the orchestra, through accompaniment and underscoring, parallels, complements, or advances the action.
²⁷

Despite increased attention to these basic principles of integration, which also involved greater attention to the integrity, coherence, and depth of the book, the principle of the integrated musical is to some extent undermined by the separation of dialogue and song.
²⁸
The megamusicals of Lloyd Webber and Boublil-Schönberg from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s increased the possibility of integration by making their works through-sung. Even such a harsh detractor of the megamusical as Scott McMillin, who finds
Phantom
“pretentious and overblown,” concedes that the through-sung musical, often composed in a rock style, surpasses the Rodgers and Hammerstein integrative model: “I can see the logic of claiming that the drive for integration has finally been achieved in Lloyd Webber. Perhaps
Phantom
should be celebrated for being a musical on the verge of becoming an opera.”
²⁹