Tag: Oxford University

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Stephen Sondheim : A remembrance

“I dim the lights and think about you”

from Losing my Mind

Today, December 8th, Broadway theatres will dim their lights as a mark of respect for the passing of Stephen Sondheim, 91. To celebrate his supreme artistry, influence and legacy across seven decades, here is a reflection written by my late colleague Anthony Field CBE, who knew Sondheim well, and indeed co-presented (together with Richard Pilbrow) the first productions of Sondheim works in the UK in the sixties and seventies. For now, let’s turn the clock back to 1990 and learn about Stephen Sondheim’s time at Oxford and the difference he made.

The establishment of a new Chair of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University, created by Cameron Mackintosh, was further distinguished by the inaugural Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre post being accepted by Stephen Sondheim. Focusing on Musicals in that year, Sondheim assembled perhaps the most distinguished ever range of performers, composers and lyricists. Participants included Patti Lupone, Jonathan Pryce, Julia McKenzie, Arthur Laurents, Tim Rice, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Burt Shevelove, John Weidman, Melvyn Bragg and Mark Steyn – almost all of whom have some input into the discussions outlined in this fascinating digest of some of the sessions. Enjoy the read!

The establishment of a Chair of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University in 1989/90 by Cameron Mackintosh was indeed an historic event. In particular, the appointment of Stephen Sondheim as the inaugural Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre was a first attempt to acknowledge that the musical has finally come of age. It is, after all, half a century since in the United States the Pulitzer prizes recognised Rodgers and Hammerstein alongside Arthur Miller.

A dozen absorbing sessions during this year at St Catherine’s College dealt with such varied subjects as the History of Musical Theatre, Lighting and Stage Design, Orchestration, Musical Direction and Sound Design, Producing in the Musical Theatre, the influence of performers on the writing and construction of musicals, the development of “sung-through” musicals as distinct from book musicals and finally two days of Master Classes presenting excerpts from musicals composed and written by Professor Sondheim’s leading students, sung and acted by members of the casts of LES MISERABLES, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and MISS SAIGON.

One of these musicals was an adaptation by Michael Bland of MEASURE FOR MEASURE which was significant to Jonathan Pryce who, as the lead in MISS SAIGON, had maintained that it was easier to keep a performance fresh and sustain the characterisation in a musical than in straight theatre. “Even after a year, when that orchestra starts it innervates you into a wonderful release of emotions. Whereas in Shakespeare and Chekhov I find myself counting the performances – even half a performance in the interval – in MISS SAIGON I find continually new and exciting things in the song and dance and characterisation. After a month in UNCLE VANYA I need a psychiatrist to stop me going mad and after six months in MISS SAIGON I asked a psychiatrist why I am not going mad”. Apparently, research is being undertaken into the discovery of confined areas of the brain used only for singing. During Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s research into conditions in Vietnam it was indicated that during their worst plight the population there often communicated only in song. Similarly, Nicholas Hytner’s production of GHETTO had illustrated how much past music had emanated from tragedy.

Performers such as Julia McKenzie (FOLLIES), Philip Quast (SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE) and Patti Lupone (LES MISERABLES) explained the problems of appearing in musicals that had not been written for them in the way that Broadway shows had been written for such performers as Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Gertrude Lawrence and Chita Rivera whose vocal ranges and acting capabilities were understood by the composers and conductors so that microphones were not required. Naturally the size and ambiance of theatre auditoria were significant factors in the success or failure of musicals and performers can be greatly affected by the transfer of a successful production from a suitable smaller space to an unsuitable larger one. “Hits are more fragile than flops!”.

The analysis of the writing and construction of musicals, like operas, varied from a composer like Sondheim who delivered a finished product, to Andrew Lloyd Webber who allowed changes by performers just as Ethel Merman had demanded of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter.

Jonathan Pryce admitted he had written a few of the lyrics for MISS SAIGON including four extra lines required during an artist’s change (unfortunately these very lines were quoted by some critics to demonstrate that Alain Boublil’s lyrics were banal!). The most quoted lyrics from CATS were by Richard Stilgoe and not T S Eliot. Three important songs in LES MISERABLES were written at the request of the actors in rehearsal who felt that the through-action was too shallow without musical strengthening at those moments (STARS, BRING HIM HOME, and DOG EATS DOG).

The sessions with Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Tim Rice, John Weidman, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim and Melvyn Bragg were particularly illuminating. Kurt Weill had maintained that audiences don’t want to hear “Would you like a glass of white wine?” sung, and yet Mark Steyn pointed out that more drinks were poured in the libretto of ASPECTS OF LOVE than in the bars in the interval. It was generally agreed that there was a problem of having to sing basic information although there appears to be a current vogue whereby the public are flocking to musicals without dialogue (LES MISERABLES, MISS SAIGON). Schönberg and Boublil agreed about the benefit of not having been nurtured with an upbringing in musicals which were not a tradition in France. Thus, they had to create their own style whereby there is a perfect synthesis of all the elements – music, word, direction and design. They had evolved a personal method of working as an integral whole, so much so that if they agreed to change one bar they needed almost to change the whole libretto.

In contrast, Tim Rice, whilst expressing admiration for the unified writing of Schönberg and Boublil, found it difficult to sit down with a composer and write with a blank page in front of them. He required the restriction of eight musical notes- the strict boundary within which he had to find the few words to convey what had to be said. He suggested that while composers needed to be able to “wander off”, lyricists needed discipline. Sondheim insisted that content dictates form and considered that to sing the banalities of exposition was like an endless chocolate sauce smothering a scene. Tim Rice agreed that it was easier to sing “give me another country” (EVITA) than “pass me the salt” (ASPECTS OF LOVE). Arthur Laurents confirmed that alternating scenes without music and scenes with music helped to pace the action. Sondheim suggested that a composer wrote musical fragments on and on until sometimes a song developed as in WOZZECK, in contrast to CARMEN where songs alternated with other songs. He did not consider this was the same with SWEENEY TODD where he kept the under-scoring going continuously to prevent the plot from appearing silly. His next musical is ASSASSINS with a book by John Weidman (PACIFIC OVERTURES) and would require a drop in tension achieved by contrasting speech and song. He cited WEST SIDE STORY as being much more effective than if the street gangs had sung all the time. Burt Shevelove had pointed out the wisdom of Plautus in writing one-hour long farces because longer ones become wearisome. Hence the songs in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM give you time to catch your breath since the action accumulates and becomes so fast that songs are demanded by the text.

The enormous craftsmanship required in the creation of a musical was constantly evoked. GYPSY had made enormous demands on the creative team. Originally Ethel Merman had insisted on stopping the show with ROSE’S TURN to take a bow since it was clear that audiences wanted to applaud her. However, in giving them the opportunity to release themselves they did not give proper attention to the important last scene. Accordingly, when Angela Lansbury played it in London it was arranged by Arthur Laurents for Rose to continue taking bows in a spotlight until the applause finished and the spot died and then she would go on taking bows in silence again and again so that it dawned on the audience that she was having a nervous breakdown and the daughter then became the mother, and the mother the daughter.

All the composers and lyricists insisted that they simply wrote what they themselves liked. Only time would tell if any of the works would out-live them. The great operas of previous centuries were largely forgotten and the present repertoire of opera houses was composed of the few survivors. In Beethoven’s time, Ludwig Spohr was the most popular composer – the public flocked to his FAUST (1818) and JESSONDA (1823) both of which have completely disappeared, but not Beethoven.

Within a week of Professor Sondheim’s Master Classes, John Maucieri, the Musical Director of Scottish Opera, delivered a superb speech in Glasgow to the International Society of Professional Arts Administrators in which he referred to Britain’s “hardening of the categories”. He maintained that LES MISERABLES was the popular opera of the 1990s just as Puccini’s works were a century ago. Similarly, Professor Sondheim saw no difference between PORGY AND BESS, PARSIFAL and WEST SIDE STORY. Ricordi had marketed Puccini’s operas with ice-cream boys on bicycles whistling the popular arias, just as disc jockeys now play the songs of MISS SAIGON. The great composers we revere today were, in their time, writing to audience demand like craftsmen.

What is of great concern is that the University academics have not yet indicated that they are prepared to enter into serious debate about musicals with composers and conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, John Maucieri and Stephen Sondheim. They owe it to this new Chair to be ready to assess musicals using the same criteria as for other art forms.

What we need to do is to analyse why a certain formation of notes (B, G, B, G, A, F, G, D, G, D, F) which make up “Un bel di, vedremo levarsi un fil de fumo” is regarded as great art whereas a similar group of notes which form “The Last Night of the World” is “just a musical”. Why is the libretto of MADAME BUTTERFLY (“One fine day we’ll notice a thread of smoke arising”) part of operatic history to be studied at Oxford but the libretto of MISS SAIGON (“A cry that tells us love goes on and on”) simply part of a West End “show”? If academics maintain one cannot dissect an opera in this way and it is the composite whole that matters, what about the composite whole of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at the National Theatre?

John Maucieri laid a great deal of the blame for the present situation in music education and the gulf between art and society at the door of critics, particularly those who ignore popular concerts and those who side with the composer against the listener. Perhaps, he wondered, they are popular because no critics were there to tell you whether to like it or not. They followed Arnold Schoenberg’s definition “If it’s popular it isn’t art”. Yet the visual arts have never split into “popular” and “classical”. The British music categorisations never cease to make one wonder: “Mainly for pleasure”, Music in our Time”, “Classics for Pleasure” (as distinct, no doubt, from “Classics for Pain”?). Further, music critics do not cover the enormous range of music constantly composed for films and television. Bernard Hermann’s score for Hitchcock’s PSYCHO went to the very essence of the film, and similarly Elizabeth Parker’s score for David Attenborough’s THE WORLD AROUND US.

Only rarely do critics acknowledge film scores such as the Sir Arthur Bliss music for THINGS TO COME or the WEST SIDE STORY dances by Leonard Bernstein. Certainly the music of Michel Legrand and Henry Mancini is ignored and, furthermore, prejudicial terminology splits even more the popular field: Ragtime, Jazz, Swing, Bebop, Hillbilly, Blues, Rock, Country, Folk and so on. Try looking for various works in major shops. Apart from Rock and Classics nearly everything else is under “Easy Listening” or “Orchestral (Miscellaneous)”!

Finally, if time is a factor in that TOSCA has been around long enough to have become “great art”, does this mean that OKLAHOMA! only has to wait 100 years for similar recognition? One is bound to recall that the first performance of MADAME BUTTERFLY at La Scala Milan on February 17th 1904 was “a complete failure – one of the great fiascos of operatic history” according to Kobbe.

Next year (1990/91) the Cameron Mackintosh Chair of Contemporary Theatre turns its attention to Drama when the Visiting Professor will be Ian McKellen.

Article reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of Anthony Field.

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Time to Remember: Sir Ian McKellen at Oxford – an appreciation by Anthony Field

While our live theatre scene is gearing up, here is the next in a series which aims to fill the gap. It delves into the past to remind us of interesting and memorable events. In this month of LGBTQ+ PRIDE celebrations, this seemed a great time to feature SIR IAN McKELLEN, who is always worth our attention, so here he is. Enjoy!

Sir Ian McKellen. Photo courtesy of BBC website – uncredited.

Here’s an article from 1991, in which ANTHONY FIELD looks back at the Oxford University address given by Sir Ian McKellen, the second Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre, a role created through the generosity of Sir Cameron Mackintosh.

With his inaugural lecture at St Catherine’s College at Oxford University, Sir Ian McKellen launched his year as Professor of Contemporary Theatre. This follows on from Stephen Sondheim’s brilliant attempt to establish the musical as an art form to be accepted by the Oxford academics as something to be seriously assessed. [This was covered in the first of this series, see here]

Larry Backmann’s introduction of Cameron Mackintosh to the University, magnificent and benevolent as it is, still needs some years to become acknowledged as a mature contribution to the academic development of Oxford. One could sense the Dons bristle as Sir Ian stood up in the packed-to-capacity hall without any visible notes. “He hasn’t prepared anything!” they nudged each other – only to be stunned and dazzled by a non-stop hour and a half performance which held his audience in the palm of his hand. I feel totally inadequate in having to describe properly the wonderful balance of intelligent insight and superb delivery that made the occasion unforgettable.

Professor McKellen started by questioning his title – “Contemporary to what?” – and suggested it meant “Modern Theatre”. He intended that he and a group of colleagues, including Martin Sherman (playwright) and Deborah Warner (director) should meet regularly and informally with graduates and undergraduates to deal with such questions as “Who runs the British theatre?” for which he is assembling “a distinguished panel of people who think they do- or would like to!”. He is shortly to appear as RICHARD III at the Apollo in Oxford, the Playhouse is soon to be re-opened and the Old Fire Station is to see productions of three of the musicals which emanated from the Stephen Sondheim year as Visiting Professor there. So Oxford will return to being a city to be reckoned with, theatre-wise.

“One could sense the Dons bristle as Sir Ian stood up in the packed-to-capacity hall without any visible notes”

Sir Ian’s lecture commenced with comments on his career at the other St Catherine’s College (at Cambridge!) following his early theatregoing days at the Grand, Bolton and the Opera House Manchester. He was sadly too late to see Donald Wolfit in person, nor Judy Garland, Richard Burton or George Formby….

His attempt to analyse the extraordinary British idiosyncratic taste for theatre was based on a choice of words – such as calling it a “House” – which felt like a place where a family comes together and have a perception expressed as “the magic of theatre”, being “stage-struck” or having “ a love of theatre”. He cited four important ingredients which have lead to theatre today: Pantomime, Pop Music, Music Hall and Repertory. It was noted that the early days of pop music – of Eddie Cochrane, Gene Vincent and Billy Fury – led to the less dull and more developed acts of the Rolling Stones, the Who, Queen and David Bowie, who began to use a plot-line, costumes, props, make up, lights and dry ice. Sadly the days of Music Hall have passed – when Professor McKellen saw Issy Bonn and the five Smith Brothers, the Western Brothers and Josef Locke – all using stage trickery to hold an audience and encourage them to laugh aloud, clap to express themselves and confirm that they are there and are a part of what is going on. He believes that his heart belongs to, and his spirit flows from, the old Grand Theatre in Bolton.

The Arts Council was the main instrument in getting rid of weekly repertory by requiring companies to rehearse for two, three or four weeks, and encouraging the building of such theatres as the Belgrade in Coventry, the first to be built after the 1939-45 war. He applauded the fact that Manchester now has the Library Theatre and the Forum Wythenshawe, the Palace and the Opera House and the most exciting building in the country at the Royal Exchange because the theatres define the city…they cry aloud what the community is really about as no other civic asset can do.

People are all acting every day, deciding what to wear, changing their vocabulary according to whether they are talking to their lover, their employer, or whoever, always showing different aspects of themselves. Professor McKellen considered there was no real professional theatre in Italy where everyone is an actor (and therefore they needed the increased theatricality of opera or church ceremonies) whereas the British don’t emote except when on stage….thus we have an extensive amateur movement. He worried that the National Youth Theatre was a most important company which did not receive subsidy from a local authority because it was “national”, nor from the Department of Education because it was not educational, nor from the Arts Council because it was amateur. Similarly, the company Gay Sweatshop after 15 years’ work is considered an important company and everyone wants it to remain in being, but subsidy had been withdrawn from it. The failure in these cases was the failure of bureaucrats and the incompetence of politicians to find a way of supporting these companies and is not a failure of these companies or the theatre in general.

Further, McKellen remembered his work at the Belgrade Coventry where a company of fifteen people were engaged for a year and learned to work together on different plays with different acting styles, how to learn lines and to pace themselves, how to time a laugh and keep an audience’s attention, how to develop a performance through a run and learn self-confidence on stage. The last is most important in finding how to stop the knees wobbling when one opens one’s heart to reveal one’s emotions. It is impossible to emphasise how much actors need support – a first reading of a new play by experienced actors can be like a “convention of dyslexics” – which is why actors call each other “darling”, “love”, and kiss and cuddle and stick together for the essential support they need. Sir Ian reckoned it took him ten years in repertory to go into any rehearsal and dare….

Regional theatre has to be strong, Sir Ian went on. It is no use saving the National Theatre or the RSC for one further year if the Liverpool Playhouse has to shut. Remove one brick from the edifice and the wind whistles through and starts to bring the building down. In many regional theatres there are no productions of Shakespeare, having been replaced by Alan Ayckbourn; not because he is better but because he is cheaper. Also, the great classics – our dramatic heritage – have been excluded in favour of lighter shows. Soon there will be no ensembles left where actors can hone their craft.

The accountancy firm Coopers & Lybrand had been charged with investigations into arts subsidies in order to find economies. Whereas they normally find a 20% wastage in commercial and industrial companies, they could find no conceivable cuts in National theatre departments of more than 8%. No doubt this is because those working int the theatre meet their customers every night of the week.

Finally, McKellen reminded us that in the theatre, excitement begins in the stomach – not the head or the heart – both for the audiences and the actors. It flowed up through the chest and out through the mouth as the actor’s voice and was expressed by the audience in laughter and cheers. He deplored the use of microphones and considered live theatre did not have the deadening effect of the art forms of cinema, television and radio in which players could not react to live audiences. He emphasised that politicians really worried about subsidy for the arts because the arts impinge on people’s minds – the first things a dictator closes are the airports, the news services and the theatres.

In a dazzling epilogue Sir Ian reminded us that in the beginning was the word – Shakespeare invented modern theatre, not Chekhov or Brecht – he invented the soliloquy (like the aria in an opera or the song in a musical) which in Sir Ian’s hands at the conclusion of his address moved joyously and to great acclaim from HAMLET to COMPANY.

To be, or not to be: That is the question:

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep;

No more; Somebody hold me too close;

Somebody hurt me too deep;

Somebody sit in my chair

And ruin my sleep and make me aware

Of being alive. But alone is alone.

Not alive.

Being alive.

Being alive.

Being alive.

Article published by kind permission of the Estate of Anthony Field

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Time to Remember: Stephen Sondheim at Oxford – an appreciation by Anthony Field

While the live theatre scene is paused, here is the first a series which aims to fill the gap. It delves into the past to remind us of certain interesting or memorable events. And what better way to start than with Stephen Sondheim. You’ll probably have seen that Stephen Sondheim turned 90 today, so a very Happy Birthday to you, Mr S!

Here’s an article from July 1990, in which ANTHONY FIELD looks back at the inaugural Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre – Stephen Sondheim, at the end of the first year of the establishment of a new Chair of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University, created by Cameron Mackintosh.

Focusing on Musicals in that year, Sondheim assembled an incredible range of performers, composers and lyricists. Participants included Patti Lupone, Jonathan Pryce, Julia McKenzie, Arthur Laurents, Tim Rice, Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Burt Shevelove, John Weidman, Melvyn Bragg and Mark Steyn – almost all of whom have some input into the discussions outlined in this fascinating digest of some of the sessions. Enjoy the read!

The establishment of a Chair of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University in 1989/90 by Cameron Mackintosh was indeed an historic event. In particular, the appointment of Stephen Sondheim as the Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre was a first attempt to acknowledge that the musical has finally come of age. It is, after all, half a century since in the United States the Pulitzer prizes recognised Rodgers and Hammerstein alongside Arthur Miller.

A dozen absorbing sessions during this year at St Catherine’s College dealt with such varied subjects as the History of Musical Theatre, Lighting and Stage Design, Orchestration, Musical Direction and Sound Design, Producing in the Musical Theatre, the influence of performers on the writing and construction of musicals, the development of “sung-through” musicals as distinct from book musicals and finally two days of Master Classes presenting excerpts from musicals composed and written by Professor Sondheim’s leading students, sung and acted by members of the casts of LES MISERABLES, PHANTOM OF THE OPERA and MISS SAIGON.

One of these musicals was an adaptation by Michael Bland of MEASURE FOR MEASURE which was significant to Jonathan Pryce who, as the lead in MISS SAIGON, had maintained that it was easier to keep a performance fresh and sustain the characterisation in a musical than in straight theatre. “Even after a year, when that orchestra starts it innervates you into a wonderful release of emotions. Whereas in Shakespeare and Chekhov I find myself counting the performances – even half a performance in the interval – in MISS SAIGON I find continually new and exciting things in the song and dance and characterisation. After a month in UNCLE VANYA I need a psychiatrist to stop me going mad and after six months in MISS SAIGON I asked a psychiatrist why I am not going mad”. Apparently, research is being undertaken into the discovery of confined areas of the brain used only for singing. During Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s research into conditions in Vietnam it was indicated that during their worst plight the population there often communicated only in song. Similarly, Nicholas Hytner’s production of GHETTO had illustrated how much past music had emanated from tragedy.

Performers such as Julia McKenzie (FOLLIES), Philip Quast (SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE) and Patti Lupone (LES MISERABLES) explained the problems of appearing in musicals that had not been written for them in the way that Broadway shows had been written for such performers as Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Gertrude Lawrence and Chita Rivera whose vocal ranges and acting capabilities were understood by the composers and conductors so that microphones were not required. Naturally the size and ambiance of theatre auditoria were significant factors in the success or failure of musicals and performers can be greatly affected by the transfer of a successful production from a suitable smaller space to an unsuitable larger one. “Hits are more fragile than flops!”.

The analysis of the writing and construction of musicals, like operas, varied from a composer like Sondheim who delivered a finished product, to Andrew Lloyd Webber who allowed changes by performers just as Ethel Merman had demanded of Irving Berlin and Cole Porter.

Jonathan Pryce admitted he had written a few of the lyrics for MISS SAIGON including four extra lines required during an artist’s change (unfortunately these very lines were quoted by some critics to demonstrate that Alain Boublil’s lyrics were banal!). The most quoted lyrics from CATS were by Richard Stilgoe and not T S Eliot. Three important songs in LES MISERABLES were written at the request of the actors in rehearsal who felt that the through-action was too shallow without musical strengthening at those moments (STARS, BRING HIM HOME, and DOG EATS DOG).

The sessions with Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Tim Rice, John Weidman, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim and Melvyn Bragg were particularly illuminating. Kurt Weill had maintained that audiences don’t want to hear “Would you like a glass of white wine?” sung, and yet Mark Steyn pointed out that more drinks were poured in the libretto of ASPECTS OF LOVE than in the bars in the interval. It was generally agreed that there was a problem of having to sing basic information although there appears to be a current vogue whereby the public are flocking to musicals without dialogue (LES MISERABLES, MISS SAIGON). Schönberg and Boublil agreed about the benefit of not having been nurtured with an upbringing in musicals which were not a tradition in France. Thus, they had to create their own style whereby there is a perfect synthesis of all the elements – music, word, direction and design. They had evolved a personal method of working as an integral whole, so much so that if they agreed to change one bar they needed almost to change the whole libretto.

In contrast, Tim Rice, whilst expressing admiration for the unified writing of Schönberg and Boublil, found it difficult to sit down with a composer and write with a blank page in front of them. He required the restriction of eight musical notes- the strict boundary within which he had to find the few words to convey what had to be said. He suggested that while composers needed to be able to “wander off”, lyricists needed discipline. Sondheim insisted that content dictates form and considered that to sing the banalities of exposition was like an endless chocolate sauce smothering a scene. Tim Rice agreed that it was easier to sing “give me another country” (EVITA) than “pass me the salt” (ASPECTS OF LOVE). Arthur Laurents confirmed that alternating scenes without music and scenes with music helped to pace the action. Sondheim suggested that a composer wrote musical fragments on and on until sometimes a song developed as in WOZZECK, in contrast to CARMEN where songs alternated with other songs. He did not consider this was the same with SWEENEY TODD where he kept the under-scoring going continuously to prevent the plot from appearing silly. His next musical is ASSASSINS with a book by John Weidman (PACIFIC OVERTURES) and would require a drop in tension achieved by contrasting speech and song. He cited WEST SIDE STORY as being much more effective than if the street gangs had sung all the time. Burt Shevelove had pointed out the wisdom of Plautus in writing one-hour long farces because longer ones become wearisome. Hence the songs in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM give you time to catch your breath since the action accumulates and becomes so fast that songs are demanded by the text.

The enormous craftsmanship required in the creation of a musical was constantly evoked. GYPSY had made enormous demands on the creative team. Originally Ethel Merman had insisted on stopping the show with ROSE’S TURN to take a bow since it was clear that audiences wanted to applaud her. However, in giving them the opportunity to release themselves they did not give proper attention to the important last scene. Accordingly, when Angela Lansbury played it in London it was arranged by Arthur Laurents for Rose to continue taking bows in a spotlight until the applause finished and the spot died and then she would go on taking bows in silence again and again so that it dawned on the audience that she was having a nervous breakdown and the daughter then became the mother, and the mother the daughter.

All the composers and lyricists insisted that they simply wrote what they themselves liked. Only time would tell if any of the works would out-live them. The great operas of previous centuries were largely forgotten and the present repertoire of opera houses was composed of the few survivors. In Beethoven’s time, Ludwig Spohr was the most popular composer – the public flocked to his FAUST (1818) and JESSONDA (1823) both of which have completely disappeared, but not Beethoven.

Within a week of Professor Sondheim’s Master Classes, John Maucieri, the Musical Director of Scottish Opera, delivered a superb speech in Glasgow to the International Society of Professional Arts Administrators in which he referred to Britain’s “hardening of the categories”. He maintained that LES MISERABLES was the popular opera of the 1990s just as Puccini’s works were a century ago. Similarly, Professor Sondheim saw no difference between PORGY AND BESS, PARSIFAL and WEST SIDE STORY. Ricordi had marketed Puccini’s operas with ice-cream boys on bicycles whistling the popular arias, just as disc jockeys now play the songs of MISS SAIGON. The great composers we revere today were, in their time, writing to audience demand like craftsmen.

What is of great concern is that the University academics have not yet indicated that they are prepared to enter into serious debate about musicals with composers and conductors such as Leonard Bernstein, John Maucieri and Stephen Sondheim. They owe it to this new Chair to be ready to assess musicals using the same criteria as for other art forms.

What we need to do is to analyse why a certain formation of notes (B, G, B, G, A, F, G, D, G, D, F) which make up “Un bel di, vedremo levarsi un fil de fumo” is regarded as great art whereas a similar group of notes which form “The Last Night of the World” is “just a musical”. Why is the libretto of MADAME BUTTERFLY (“One fine day we’ll notice a thread of smoke arising”) part of operatic history to be studied at Oxford but the libretto of MISS SAIGON (“A cry that tells us love goes on and on”) simply part of a West End “show”? If academics maintain one cannot dissect an opera in this way and it is the composite whole that matters, what about the composite whole of SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE at the National Theatre?

John Maucieri laid a great deal of the blame for the present situation in music education and the gulf between art and society at the door of critics, particularly those who ignore popular concerts and those who side with the composer against the listener. Perhaps, he wondered, they are popular because no critics were there to tell you whether to like it or not. They followed Arnold Schoenberg’s definition “If it’s popular it isn’t art”. Yet the visual arts have never split into “popular” and “classical”. The British music categorisations never cease to make one wonder: “Mainly for pleasure”, Music in our Time”, “Classics for Pleasure” (as distinct, no doubt, from “Classics for Pain”?). Further, music critics do not cover the enormous range of music constantly composed for films and television. Bernard Hermann’s score for Hitchcock’s PSYCHO went to the very essence of the film, and similarly Elizabeth Parker’s score for David Attenborough’s THE WORLD AROUND US.

Only rarely do critics acknowledge film scores such as the Sir Arthur Bliss music for THINGS TO COME or the WEST SIDE STORY dances by Leonard Bernstein. Certainly the music of Michel Legrand and Henry Mancini is ignored and, furthermore, prejudicial terminology splits even more the popular field: Ragtime, Jazz, Swing, Bebop, Hillbilly, Blues, Rock, Country, Folk and so on. Try looking for various works in major shops. Apart from Rock and Classics nearly everything else is under “Easy Listening” or “Orchestral (Miscellaneous)”!

Finally, if time is a factor in that TOSCA has been around long enough to have become “great art”, does this mean that OKLAHOMA! only has to wait 100 years for similar recognition? One is bound to recall that the first performance of MADAME BUTTERFLY at La Scala Milan on February 17th 1904 was “a complete failure – one of the great fiascos of operatic history” according to Kobbe.

Next year (1990/91) the Cameron Mackintosh Chair of Contemporary Theatre turns its attention to Drama when the Visiting Professor will be Ian McKellen.

Article reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of Anthony Field.