Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber by Block, Geoffrey (good story books to read .TXT) 📕

musicological study of a Broadway composer, Stephen Banfield’s Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals. Five years later the American Musicological Society national meeting in Boston devoted a special evening session to Sondheim. Lloyd Webber’s musicals have gradually attracted theater scholars and musicologists as well, albeit far fewer than the legions of literary and dramatic critics, cultural historians, and sociologists in addition to the many musicologists attracted to the work of Sondheim. The chapters on Sondheim and Lloyd Webber will try to shed light on why there exists such a deep chasm between the ways audiences, critics, and theater historians have assessed these two major contributors to the American musical.

Audiences did not know it at the time but by 1997 both Sondheim and Lloyd Webber had completed most of their Broadway work.22 Their most recent New York successes, Sondheim and Lapine’s Passion and Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, both arriving in 1994, had also recently closed. It turns out that the years since the first edition of Enchanted Evenings marked the beginning of the Post-Sondheim and Post–Lloyd Webber Era, a subject for future books by future authors. Meanwhile, the contrasting achievements and reputations of Sondheim and Lloyd Webber and the issues these important Broadway figures raise (e.g., tradition vs. modernity and popularity vs. critical acclaim) will serve in this second edition of Enchanted Evenings as worthy representatives of the Broadway story beyond West Side Story.

To quote Cinderella’s opening and closing lines in Into the Woods, “I wish.”

Tacoma, Wash.

G. B.

January 2009

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Without more than a little help from parents, family, friends, teachers and professors, colleagues, students, readers and editors, librarians and archivists and the collections they serve, and copyright owners and their assistants and lawyers, this book could not have been written. I am glad for this opportunity to thank some of the institutions and people that contributed to this collaborative process.

Collections in the New York Public Library (Loesser), Yale University (Porter, Weill), the State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Blitzstein, Moss Hart, Sondheim), the Kurt Weill Foundation (Weill), and the Library of Congress (Gershwin, Kern, Loewe, Porter, Rodgers, and Weill) were indispensable in my research. Of the many who facilitated my use of these priceless holdings I would like to thank individually Harold L. Miller of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, David Farneth and Joanna C. Lee of The Kurt Weill Foundation, Victor Cardell and Kendall Crilly of Yale University, and especially Raymond A. White of the Library of Congress, for sharing his time and knowledge so generously.

For special kindnesses I would like to identify and thank the following: Louis H. Aborn, President, Tams-Witmark; Tom Briggs, Director, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Theatre Library; Tom Creamer, Dramaturg, The Goodman Theater; Marty Jacobs and Marguerite Lavin of the Museum of the City of New York; David Leopold, Al Hirschfeld’s representative at the Margo Feiden Galleries; and Roberta Staats and Robert H. Montgomery of the Cole Porter Musical and Literary Property Trusts. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1990 enabled me to research and draft several chapters, and the University of Puget Sound provided generous financial and other assistance at several stages over the past decade. I am also grateful for the expertise and helpfulness of Oxford University Press, especially my editor, Maribeth Payne, her assistant, Soo Mee Kwon, production editor Joellyn M. Ausanka, and copy editor Paul Schlotthauer.

Jacqueline Block, Andrew Buchman, and Richard Lewis read portions of various early drafts, offered useful advice and encouragement, and helped me to consolidate central ideas as well as many details. In later stages several reviewers offered valuable suggestions both large and small that I was able to incorporate into the final draft. Throughout I was guided by the wise counsel of my friend, colleague, and “ideal reader” (i.e., intelligent, curious, and challenging, but not necessarily a musician), Michael Veseth, Professor of Economics.

The following people also provided much-needed information, services, or support: Marcie Bates, Ronald L. Blanc, Abba Bogin, John E. Boswell, J. Peter Burkholder, Theodore S. Chapin, Tara Corcoran, Christopher Davis, Lee Davis, Denise Dumke, Sarah Dunlop, Arthur Elias, Hugh Fordin, April Franks, Peter P. Mc.N. Gates, Rosemarie Gawelko, Peter Greenfield, David Grossberg, John L Hughes, Judy Hulbert, Autumn Inglin, Caroline Kane, Andrew King, Al Kohn, Frank Korach, Deann Kreutzer, Arthur Laurents, Florence Leeds, bruce d. mcclung, Anne McCormick, Judith McCulloh, Kathy McCullough, Paul McKibbins, Zoraya Mendez, Betty Kern Miller, Jeremy Nussbaum, Leonard Pailet, Harriet F. Pilpel, Mitchell Salem, Evelyn Sasko, Joan Schulman, Larry Starr, Jo Sullivan, Hope H. Taylor, Andrea N. Van Kampen, and Robin Walton.

Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends. My parents and my sister, Norma, introduced me to the joy of musicals when I was a child, and the senior Blocks have unceasingly nurtured my intellectual and aesthetic growth ever since. My friends shared and profoundly enriched my processes of discovery. My wife, Jacqueline, was my friendliest and most helpful critic. My daughters, Jessamyn and Eliza, not only inspired me to organize my time more efficiently but gave perspective and meaning to this and all my other work.

The second edition of Enchanted Evenings was born and nurtured from inception to fruition through the generosity and wisdom of my editor at Oxford University Press, Norm Hirschy. Throughout every stage of the process, including an insightful reading of the new chapters, Norm offered the full range of his punctual, thoughtful, nuanced, and always kind and enthusiastic editorial expertise, guidance, and support. I can’t thank him enough. Thanks also to Oxford’s Senior Production Editor Joellyn Ausanka for honoring me by requesting this book and then ably guiding it through the production process as she did with the first edition and with The Richard Rodgers Reader. I would also like to thank Patterson Lamb for her unobtrusive and helpful copy editing and Katharine Boone and Madelyn Sutton for their administrative assistance.

For this, as with every project I have undertaken, the library and music office staff at the University of Puget Sound was invariably friendly and helpful. In addition, Media