Hammerstein's lyrics project warmth, sincere optimism, and occasional corniness. Ĭomparisons between Rodgers and Hart and the successor team of Rodgers and Hammerstein are inevitable. "They had always considered the integration of story and music a crucial factor in a successful show." They used dance significantly in their work, using the ballets of George Balanchine. Thus, A Connecticut Yankee (1927) was based on Mark Twain's novel, and The Boys From Syracuse (1938) on William Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. Still, just as their songs were a cut above, so did the team try to raise the standard of the musical form in general. Their shows belong to the era when musicals were revue-like and librettos were not much more than excuses for comic turns and music cues. "His ability to write cleverly and to come up with unexpected, polysyllabic rhymes was something of a trademark, but he also had the even rarer ability to write with utmost simplicity and deep emotion." Rodgers, as a creator of melodies, ranks with Jerome Kern and Irving Berlin. Hart's lyrics, facile, vernacular, dazzling, sometimes playful, sometimes melancholic, raised the standard for Broadway songwriting. Andrea Marcovicci based one of her cabaret acts entirely on Rodgers and Hart songs. For example, Ella Fitzgerald recorded their songbook. Their songs have long been favorites of cabaret singers and jazz artists. The article also noted the "spirit of adventure." "As Rodgers and Hart see it, what was killing musicomedy was its sameness, its tameness, its eternal rhyming of June with moon." They wrote that their success "rests on a commercial instinct that most of their rivals have apparently ignored". Time Magazine devoted a cover story to Rodgers and Hart (September 26, 1938). Atkinson, reviewing the revival, wrote that "it renews confidence in the professionalism of the theatre." Analysis The new production had a considerably longer run than the original and was now considered a classic by critics. So unflinching was the portrait that critic Brooks Atkinson famously asked in his review "Although it is expertly done, how can you draw sweet water from a foul well?" When the show was revived in 1952, audiences had learned to accept darker material (thanks in large part to Rodgers' work with Oscar Hammerstein II). O'Hara adapted his own short stories for the show, which featured a title character who is a heel. Pal Joey (1940), termed their "masterpiece", has a book by The New Yorker writer John O'Hara. Many of their stage musicals from the late 1930s were made into films, such as On Your Toes (1936) and Babes in Arms (1937), though rarely with their scores intact. From 1935 to Hart's death in 1943, they wrote a string of highly regarded Broadway musicals, most of which were hits. In the early 1930s they moved to Hollywood, where they created several popular songs for film, such as " Isn't It Romantic?" and " Lover", before returning to Broadway in 1935 with Billy Rose's Jumbo. They quickly became among the most popular songwriters in America, and from 1925 to 1931 had fifteen scores featured on Broadway.
#Rodgers and hart songbook utube series
After writing together for several years, they produced their first successful Broadway musical, The Garrick Gaieties, in 1925, which introduced their hit song " Manhattan" and led to a series of successful musicals and films. Their first collaboration together was at Columbia, and resulted in the 1920 Varsity Show, Fly With Me, which incidentally also involved Oscar Hammerstein II. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart were introduced in 1919 Rodgers was still in high school while Hart had already graduated from Columbia University. They worked together on 28 stage musicals and more than 500 songs from 1919 until Hart's death in 1943. Rodgers and Hart were an American songwriting partnership between composer Richard Rodgers (1902–1979) and the lyricist Lorenz Hart (1895–1943).
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