On this day in 1957, West Side Story opened on Broadway. It has since become a permanent part of American music culture – everybody knows and loves this show and its singing, snapping, dancing gangs. When Leonard Bernstein wrote the music to this show, he had just been appointed music director of the New York Philharmonic. The fact that the conductor of one of the world’s finest orchestras was also writing for music theater showed the depth and breadth of Bernstein’s abilities.
This week I’m playing trombone in a pit orchestra for a community theater production of Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Jesus Christ Superstar. I was introduced to this show as a teenager and immediately fell in love with it. When I was 16 I played it on piano for a professional theater, and often sang it with friends karaoke-style. However, this was 20 years ago.
The music has been on my mind this week, and not just because I’m actively participating in it. It’s kind of like visiting your old high school or hometown. It might look the same, or maybe it’s completely different. Maybe the visit fills you with nostalgia, or perhaps with hatred, love, confusion, or maybe even a oceanic connection to the past and future. But let’s not get carried away here.
The question I want to pose here is, why do we find this overture easy to swallow (musically speaking) whereas John Adams‘ Dr. Atomic symphony (a post from last week) is much more difficult?
I’m not sure I’m ready to give an answer, but here are some of the questions I’m ponderings and my thoughts:
Is JCS “Art Music” or “Consumer Music?”
Are my personal feelings (of nostalgia) clouding my judgment of this music (IE am I giving this piece more credit than is due because I loved it as a teenager) ?
Am I giving Dr.A more credit than is due because my conservatory education says I should like it?
Both pieces use highly accented pitch clusters in a rhythmic landscape, and are either atonal or have tonality ambiguity.
JCS uses a lot more percussion – the familiar drum patterns make it easy to follow the shape of the piece, perhaps making the “ugly” pitch clusters more acceptable
JCS also uses short, motivic melodic fragments that are later sung to words. Does the word-association with the motifs help us to accept them, even if they are discordant?
Does the lack of a “rock” drumset in Dr.A make it “highbrow” and the inclusion of one in JCS make it “lowbrow”
Both pieces are actually very similar in my mind. I find much to like in each, though I can also identify their shortcomings. Dr. A is much more interesting, with a wider variation of material and broader palette of musical colors and styles. JCS is beautifully concise and balanced, and the melodic fragments are bite-sized, not overdone – which is a great virtue.
Your thoughts are welcome – listen to the JCS overture, and then the first 4 minutes (or more) of the Dr. Atomic Symphony:
Yes, you know this song. It’s part of the American landscape now, having been recorded over 25,000 times. It is, of course, by George Gershwin, from his opera Porgy and Bess. The 1935 performance featured an all African-American cast, and received poor reception due to the color of the cast as well as the racial themes of the work. Since then, the opera (especially “Summertime”) has exploded in popularity and is one of the most-performed operas today.
Gershwin himself called this a “folk opera”; it lies in that funny “crossover” place between a Broadway Musical and an Opera. The song form of “Summertime” is quite simple – the phrases would be analyzed as A,A’,A,B – like a folk song or a Broadway number. Most people know it as a jazz standard or a popular song, where the vocals tend to be in a much lower tessitura, giving it a sensual, sultry sound. This makes the music sound like a sexy love song that could be sung to your lover over a cigarette and a martini on a sweaty summer night. However, the original idea of the composer, though, was a sweet lullaby that a high, floaty soprano sings to her baby.
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