W
orking with Oscar
Hammerstein, Richard
Rodgers became a
different composer. With Larry
Hart, Rodgers always took the
lead. He would write a tune, then
Hart would fit words to it. Most
of these tunes followed the “hit
song” pattern of the day — usually
32 bars long, built in four 8-bar
phrases.
But Hammerstein liked to write
lyrics first, often creating long
scenes of dramatic verse that told a
story in unexpected ways. Without
the tight constraints of the hit song
straitjacket, he had the freedom
to explore themes dear to his
heart. Oscar wrote slowly — he
would sometimes spend weeks
finding just the right words to say
what was in his heart.
This freer verse prompted Rodgers
to alter his compositional style,
leaving behind the short pop song
forms he had excelled at in the ’20s
and ’30s. Now his music found
longer lines and unusual colors to
match Oscar’s far-ranging stories.
A Rodgers & Hammerstein show
might be set on the western frontier,
in a fishing village in Maine, on
an island in the South Pacific, in the
19th-century court of the King of
Siam, in a fairy tale kingdom or
in contemporary San Francisco’s
Chinatown.
Oscar knew that lyrics aren’t
exactly poetry. You can read a poem
over and over until you puzzle out
the author’s meaning. But a lyric
arrives at the pace and rhythm of
music — each word has only a brief
moment to deliver its message.
Hammerstein learned to create
vivid images in the listener’s
mind, images that
would quickly translate into
personality, emotion, and plot.
And being a lover of nature, many
of his images were drawn from the
natural world.
Think of Maria’s opening
song, “The Sound of Music.”
Hammerstein wants us to know that
she loves music, and that she often
seeks comfort and spiritual strength
in the mountains outside the Abbey.
All the sounds of the earth are like music
“Wild geese that fly with the
moon on their wings.”
“How do you hold a
moonbeam in your hand?”
“Blossom of snow, may you
bloom and grow forever.”
“The hills are alive with
the sound of music.”
“To laugh like a brook
as it trips and falls.”
“Snowflakes that stay on
my nose and eyelashes.”
“Climb ev’ry mountain,
ford ev’ry stream, follow
ev’ry rainbow, till you
find your dream.”
“To sing through the night,
like a lark who is learning
to pray.”
Here are just a few of the nature images Oscar Hammerstein embeds in the song “The Sound of Music” and others in the musical.
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WEDNESDAY,
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