January 2008
"Play A Simple Melody"
This month I'm delving into
the most highly argued issue in modern musical theater… the presence (or
absence) of melody in modern songwriting.
This debate has raged for
decades, but lately I've heard more and more people lament the dearth of
hummable, melodic show songs in modern composition.
But this argument is an old
one.
Composer Irving Berlin plays for film stars Fred Astaire,
Ann Miller and Peter Lawford in this 1948 publicity shot.
Everett Collection
Source:
nytimes.com |
Way back in 1914 Irving
Berlin wrote the song “Play A Simple Melody” for the musical WATCH YOUR STEP, a
song that longs for the good old days of simple melodies “like my mother sang to
me”:
Won't you Play A Simple
Melody
Like my mother sang to me?
One with good old fashioned harmony
Play A Simple Melody
Counterpoint:
Musical demon, set your honey a'dreamin'
Won't you play me some rag?
Just change that classical nag
To some sweet beautiful drag
If you will play from a
copy of a tune that is choppy
You'll get all my applause
And that is simply because
I wanna listen to rag
The punchline of the song,
of course, is the syncopated counterpoint that wakes up the number and gives it
its' zing. To see that Mr. Berlin was lamenting the good old days of melody back
at the start of the golden age of the American musical theater shows that this
argument is indeed an old one.
Has melody disappeared from
musical theater writing? Or is there a more logical explanation…
Most people throw composers
into a category, placing writers like Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Jule Styne and
Richard Rodgers into the “hummable” category while placing writers like Weill,
Bernstein, Sondheim and Guettel into the complex, dissonant or non-melodic
category.
Michael Cerveris & Donna Murphy in the 2007 Broadway
musical "Lovemusik," based on the real-life love story of composer Kurt
Weill and his wife and muse, Lotte Lenya.
Photo by Sara Krulnick
Source:
nytimes.com |
But if I asked you to hum a
bit of Mack the Knife, Send In The Clowns or September Song you
probably could with ease, challenging the argument right at the start. All of
the aforementioned writers were/are talented men, all with the capability of
creating tunes both simple and complex.
So how did this notion that
melody is dead get started? Is it a truth or merely a slight distortion?
When teaching my musical
theater courses for older adults, someone always raises their hand and states
“nobody writes hummable songs anymore, not like in the old days”.
To this I always bring up
several examples to the contrary, starting with a few observations from the
number one target himself, Stephen Sondheim.
In one of his lectures
Sondheim explains that often it's the way that musicals are written today that
has changed their “hummability”. And to this he gives two arguments.
First, he argues that unlike
Rodgers and others from the Golden Age, many modern composers fall into the trap
of creating a clever underscore first, then throwing a melody on top, therefore
negating the importance of the melody in exchange for a clever chord structure.
This arbitrary creation of melody severely lessens the chance of it being
memorable in a Richard Rodgers / Jerome Kern kind of way.
Second, he explains that
modern musical show structure has nearly eliminated the Overture, Entr'acte,
Reprise mentality that helped make tunes memorable in the first place. Think
of almost any “Golden Age” musical and during the course of the evening you'll
have heard the top tunes at least four or five times, insuring their firm
inclusion in your memory. (Of course, the songs have to melodic to be memorable
in the first place, but hearing them again and again certain gets you humming
them on the way home.)
Anyone who attends a
production of HELLO, DOLLY! will hear the title tune at least four times (actual
song/tag/Horace reprise/curtain call) with a chance of two more times if the
optional Overture and Entr'actes are used. That's six times in just under 3
hours, enough to permanently burn the tune into your memory, whether you want it
there or not.
Now, add to this the overall
popularity of musical theater songs in the first half of the 20th century and
you'd have a real saturation of these songs, both on the radio, pop recordings
and later on TV. Even as show tunes were waning in the 1960's, Louis Armstrong
made a Number One hit with his rendition of Hello, Dolly!, unseating the
Beatle's Can't Buy Me Love and becoming a phenomenon before the show even
reached New York!
These songs got a lot of
airplay, unlike today. A song like Hey There from Ross & Adler's score to
THE PAJAMA GAME would be represented in the following places:
-
Live on Broadway Stage
(1954)
-
Pop Cover versions by
artists like Rosemary Clooney (1954)
-
Original Broadway Cast
Recording (1954)
-
TV Appearances by Cast &
Pop Stars
-
Studio versions of the
Broadway score
- Onscreen Film Version
(1957)
- Film soundtrack LP
(1957)
Eddie Foy Jr, John Raitt and the seamstresses of the
Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory in a scene from the original Broadway production
of THE PAJAMA GAME
Source:
theatremania.com |
That's a lot of exposure
for this song, but not uncommon for music in this time when Broadway music and
Pop music were often one and the same. It wasn't until the explosive arrival of
Rock & Roll that show tunes toppled from the pedestal of pop music and became
harder to find in the popular culture.
So is there a real lack
of melody in musical theater today? Or is it merely circumstantial?
When I think of melodic
modern writers I think of Flaherty & Ahrens, Marc Shaiman, Jonathan Larson,
Jeanine Tesori and others too numerous to mention. All have created memorable
scores for musical theater audiences. Other modern writers like Michael John
LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, and Jason Robert Brown may be thought to be “less”
melodic on the surface than their forefathers in musical theater, but take a
closer look at any of their ballads and you'll see otherwise.
So, while the field has
definitely changed and the accompaniments have certainly evolved, the old
fashioned concept of melody has never gone away from the musical stage. Listen
to LaChuisa's The One I Love from HELLO, AGAIN or If I Didn't Believe
in You in Brown's THE LAST FIVE YEARS and you're hearing first class
writing, just infused with modern sensibility.
In closing, we'll go back
to 1981 and a favorite score of mine when Sondheim spoofed his own accusations
of being non-melodic in MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, in which the character of
Producer “Joe Josephson” tells them:
There's not a tune you
can hum.
There's not a tune you go bum-bum-bum-di-dum.
You need a tune you can bum-bum-bum-di-dum -
Give me a melody!
Why can't you throw 'em
a crumb?
What's wrong with letting 'em tap their toes a bit?
I'll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit -
Give me some melody!
Oh sure, I know,
It's not that kind of show.
But can't you have a score
That's sort of in between?
Look, play a little more,
I'll show you what I mean …
Listen, boys,
Maybe it's me,
But that's just not a hum-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-mable melody!
Write more, work hard -
Leave your name with the girl.
Less avant-garde -
Leave your name with the girl.
Just write a plain old melodee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee …
Dee-dee-dee-dee-dee-dee …
(The last dee dee's
sung to the tune of Some Enchanted Evening, of course!)
