Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) (32 page)

The end of the scene caused difficulties. In every extant version of the song, the chorus resumes with the “There they are again” section. However, Rittmann composed an original piece of “Fainting Music” (to follow Eliza’s
faux pas
), which must have been rejected after it was first played. Rittmann’s autograph contains a message that illustrates her collegiality toward Bennett: “Russell, mon cher, this is the end of the Ascot Gavotte. It would be loverly, if the orchestra could have a GEGENBEWEGUNG [counter-movement] from the bass up. Love Trude.” Although her manuscript contains a chromatic scale descending two octaves, Rittmann requests a contrary motion gesture from the orchestrator; her sketch of the piece survives on the bottom of a photocopy of her “Gavotte Reprise” autograph.
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Orchestra parts titled “Fainting Music” have survived, presumably representing Bennett’s loose interpretation of Rittmann’s score.
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Bennett’s autograph full score for the scene contains its now-familiar ending, however, and there is no sign of the “Fainting Music.” Since there is no surviving autograph piano score of the final version of the section, we will probably never know who wrote it. But the first four bars of the music that follows Eliza’s cry of “Move your bloomin’ arse” were clearly added after the rest and were written on a separate page with its own title (“Intro to End of Gavotte”), suggesting this was a late addition.

The only drastic change made to the show during its out-of-town tryouts was the excision of “Come to the Ball,” the “Dress Ballet,” and “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” in the penultimate scene of act 1. These numbers were replaced by a short scene between Higgins and Pickering, after which Eliza enters the hallway underscored by “I Could Have Danced All Night” before moving straight to the Ball scene. This excision had an impact on other numbers, too. Various stages were gone through between the deletion of “Say a Prayer” and the definitive version of the show. There are at least sixteen different sources for this part of the show, including piano scores in the hands
of Loewe, Rittmann, Bennett, and an unknown copyist; orchestral parts; and Bennett and Lang’s full scores. Together, these sources amount to more than a hundred pieces of paper, many of which are fragments and in some cases may not have been used in any form.

The genesis of the waltz music was as much a question of arrangement as of composition. Here, Rittmann came into her own as the dance arranger. Five of the sources for the music of the end of act 1 contain her handwriting, either entirely or as annotations of others’ work. One piano score is in Bennett’s hand, and another is in Lang’s. Originally, the end of “Say a Prayer” segued straight into a piece of music called “Ballroom Intro” and from there into “The Embassy Waltz” via the “Processional.” The conductor’s piano scores of “Ballroom Intro” and “Processional” (which are bound together) are in two hands; Bennett’s is recognizable on the front page, but the other is of an unknown copyist.
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The “Intro” is a clever reworking of “Say a Prayer” into a Viennese waltz (first in D major, then E-flat major). At that point, it runs into the “Processional” in A-flat major, which is a four-bar version of the ten-bar published introduction to “The Embassy Waltz.” Geoffrey Block has noted that this piece of music—later retitled “Introduction to Promenade”—is derived from “Say a Prayer,” and now it becomes more apparent why: it is a continuation of the gradual dissolution of the “Say a Prayer” music into “The Embassy Waltz.”
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Consequently, the “Introduction” music was better integrated into the musical canvas when “Say a Prayer” was still in the show, since it alluded to Eliza’s nerves when she arrived at the ball, albeit transformed into a guise that was appropriate to the grand setting. When it was removed, there was no motivation for invoking the theme, a redundancy of meaning caused by musicians working at top speed during an intense period of creativity. It is only on this very pedantic level that one can find flaws in the show.

Of the numerous sources for this number, there are two main versions. The basis for the first is a score titled “The Pygmalion Waltzes,” which exists in two different versions in the Loewe and Warner-Chappell Collections. Both start off with two pages of photocopies, which have been annotated and then added to. The title on the front page is in Rittmann’s hand, but the two photocopied pages of music are in Loewe’s hand. The remaining five pages in the Loewe Collection version are in Rittmann’s writing, and consist of photocopies with pencil annotations (also by Rittmann); the Warner-Chappell version has those five pages plus another two, again photocopies rather than originals. Corresponding almost exactly to the Warner-Chappell version is a complete set of instrumental parts in the same collection.
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Interestingly, this version does not contain the main theme of the published “Embassy Waltz,” even though the orchestral parts are given that title. Instead, the main theme of this earlier
waltz (shown in
ex. 6.6
) was totally discarded. It resurfaced in the 1964 film version of the show, when it underscores the part of the Ball scene when Higgins and Pickering observe Eliza being the attention of the room, following her commendation from the Queen of Transylvania. As with the “Dress Ballet,” Rittmann mapped out the entire number, and it was orchestrated, without major amendment, by Bennett.
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The orchestration of the preceding “Intro to Ball” is by Lang, with the exception of the first page, which is in Bennett’s hand.
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Why this original waltz was discarded is unclear. The excision of the two songs and the ballet automatically changed the nature of the closing of the act, but that does not explain why the waltz theme was changed. It might be that Loewe felt that with its numerous accidentals and harmonic clashes, the music was a little too sardonic, almost sinister, for the romantic scene that was to unfold. The replacement, after all, is smoother and more fluent; it glides but does not draw attention to itself. There are several sources for the published “Embassy Waltz,” and yet again the Loewe autograph is not the “original” manuscript. It was clearly created after a score titled “New Waltz,” which is in Rittmann’s hand and contains corrections where she considered different possibilities. This is a draft that actually bears a direct relationship to the performance, because it is full of directions to Bennett about the orchestration. By contrast, Loewe’s manuscript is so fluent and free of errors that it is obviously a later creation. Nevertheless, the presence of notes on the front cover about a rehearsal venue makes it likely that it was produced sometime during the rehearsals or tryouts (rather than being a fair copy for use in the production of the vocal score, for instance). No copy of “Eliza’s Entrance” has survived among the Warner-Chappell materials, and there is no Loewe manuscript for it. Presumably, the fact that it is the music of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” re-orchestrated for its dramatic purpose, meant that Lang was simply told to base his orchestration on a straight copy of the song. However, an earlier version of the entrance has survived; it consists of the same thematic material, orchestrated for
tutti
rather than just the strings (as in the final version). It is also in A major rather than the definitive G major. Lang orchestrated the final version, but Bennett took over for the “Intro to Promenade” and the whole of “The Embassy Waltz,” leading to the end of act 1.

Ex. 6.6. “The Pygmalion Waltzes,” original ball music.

Once again, four different sources for the Entr’acte highlight the composer-arranger-orchestrator relationship: a piano score in Loewe’s hand, another in Rittmann’s hand, the full score, and an early or alternative orchestration of the end of the Entr’acte. Rittmann’s autograph piano score is the earliest of these.
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As the number follows conventional musical theater entr’acte medley form, Rittmann writes out the introduction and transition passages but only indicates the beginning and end of each of the statements of the three songs sounded in the number (“I’ve Grown Accustomed,” “I Could Have Danced,” and “Little Bit of Luck”). However, she provides no conclusion. The manuscript introduces three bars of the “Little Bit of Luck” theme, and then underneath indicates: “And a big glorious Russell Bennett finish!!” Bennett’s full score follows Rittmann’s outline up to bar 110 (the middle of the chorus of “With a Little Bit”); the second half of the chorus has been crossed out, then the melody of the song picks up again. Bennett seems to have written out more of “Luck” than was desired, so several pages have been crossed out.

The original ending of the Entr’acte was also discarded completely, and extra music was added to the end, orchestrated by Lang and stuck onto the rest of the score.
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Appended to the full score is a manuscript called “End of Temp[orary] Entr’acte” in Bennett’s hand. The word “Out” has been written across the middle, indicating that it was cut, though this music later became the final sixteen bars of the show’s “Exit Music.” There is another score in Lang’s hand titled “Finish of Entr’acte,” which brings the tally of endings to the number to three; clearly, the piece was more difficult to write than might be expected.
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That leaves the difficult task of placing Loewe’s autograph score in the process. Like Rittmann, Loewe indicates the sections where “Accustomed” and “Danced” are to be sounded, but he writes out the final abbreviated version of “Luck” and continues straight to the end. The fact that he reproduces the completed version of the number suggests he wrote it out for his own reference, or perhaps for the vocal score.

Lerner tells us little about the genesis of “You Did It.” He mentions that it was written during the middle of 1955, and recounts a story about the supposed meeting between Lerner, Levin, Loewe, and Michael Kidd, when the latter was approached to be the choreographer of
My Fair Lady
; Lerner claims that Kidd said “You Did It” was “wrong” because “it’s describing offstage action” and that as a result, Moss Hart refused to have Kidd on the show.
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However, as we saw in
chapter 2
, Hart was certainly not part of the creative team at the time when the meeting with Kidd took place, so at least part of the story must be inaccurate. Lerner’s only other mention of the song is in a
passage about the Philadelphia tryout. He says that he and Loewe tried to improve the song one night by adding a “proper climax” to a section in the middle with the words “I know each language on the map, said he, / And she’s Hungarian as the first Hungarian rhapsody.” According to Lerner, Harrison “loved” the new lines, but “the night they went in he forgot every lyric in the entire show,” whereupon they were removed.
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Lerner’s story is confirmed by the compositional sources for the show, but he does not mention that the song was partly cut as well as added to. A lyric sheet from the Levin Collection, various copyist’s scores from the Warner-Chappell Collection, Bennett’s full score, and Loewe’s piano-vocal score all indicate two extra sections that are not included in the published vocal score.
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None of these contains the section Lerner refers to as having been added late in the day (though he misleads us slightly by suggesting that only two lines were added; it was in fact a stanza of four lines, beginning “‘Her blood,’ he said, ‘is bluer than the Danube is or ever was!’”).
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The first excision involved condensing the first return of the opening theme. Pickering sings three sections, starting “Tonight, old man, you did it” (A), “I must have aged a year tonight” (B) and “I said to him, ‘You did it!’” (A), respectively. Originally, the return of A was as long as its original statement:

Pickering

I said to him, ‘You did it!

You did it! You did it!

I didn’t think it possible

But there she is!

I told you to forget it;

I warned you’d regret it.

And now a prince is telling her

How fair she is.

I was as excited

And agog as I could be.

Higgins

It was nonsense. Silly nonsense.
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Pickering

I was more uneasy,

More afraid than even she.

Higgins

Of course. Of course.

Dear chap, of course you were.

It didn’t mean half as much to her.

Pickering

You absolutely did it!

You did it! You did it!

They thought she was ecstatic

And so damned aristocratic,

And they never knew that

You did it!

Eventually, the first two lines of Pickering’s first stanza and the last four of his final stanza were welded together and the rest discarded. The change shortened the number and thereby increased its musical pressure, and also removed the comments made by Higgins and Pickering that vigorously insult Eliza. Pickering asserts that he was more afraid about the ball than Eliza was, while Higgins agrees that the episode did not mean “half as much to her” as it did to the Colonel. This represents something of a turn of character for Pickering: though the entire song finds him less sympathetic than normal toward Eliza, the point is that the men ignore her after her triumph, rather than being actively insulting.
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Likewise, for Higgins to say “It didn’t mean half as much to her” demonizes him in a way that the rest of the song does not.