Robert L. McLaughlin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496808554
- eISBN:
- 9781496808592
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496808554.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
This chapter establishes the overlapping contexts of the exhaustion of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical and postmodernism and places Sondheim’s work within them. It begins by offering a ...
More
This chapter establishes the overlapping contexts of the exhaustion of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical and postmodernism and places Sondheim’s work within them. It begins by offering a definition of postmodernism, focusing on self-referentiality, intertextuality, and performativity. It then provides an aesthetic overview of the American musical with special attention to the musical-comedy era and the Rodgers and Hammerstein era. In the musical comedy, narrative is simultaneously central and irrelevant, a contradictory aesthetic communicated by proto-postmodern characteristics. In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! the songs are justified by the narrative and the characters. The musical comedy’s proto-postmodern characteristics are repressed in favor of realism. This chapter then offers a brief biographical sketch of Sondheim, showing his mentoring by Oscar Hammerstein and examines two of his works from this period: Do I Hear a Waltz? and Evening Primrose.Less
This chapter establishes the overlapping contexts of the exhaustion of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical and postmodernism and places Sondheim’s work within them. It begins by offering a definition of postmodernism, focusing on self-referentiality, intertextuality, and performativity. It then provides an aesthetic overview of the American musical with special attention to the musical-comedy era and the Rodgers and Hammerstein era. In the musical comedy, narrative is simultaneously central and irrelevant, a contradictory aesthetic communicated by proto-postmodern characteristics. In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! the songs are justified by the narrative and the characters. The musical comedy’s proto-postmodern characteristics are repressed in favor of realism. This chapter then offers a brief biographical sketch of Sondheim, showing his mentoring by Oscar Hammerstein and examines two of his works from this period: Do I Hear a Waltz? and Evening Primrose.
Robert L. McLaughlin
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496808554
- eISBN:
- 9781496808592
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496808554.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Popular
From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of the American musical theater and expanded the ...
More
From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of the American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim’s musicals in two contexts: the exhaustion of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical play that flourished after World War II; and the postmodernism that by the 1960s influenced all the U.S. arts. Sondheim’s musicals are central to the transition from the musical play that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical, one that reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge, the fragmentation of identity, and the problematization of representation. Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, bridges the span between the musical play and the postmodern musical and, in his most recent work, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim’s musicals; examines their dialogue, lyrics, musical themes, and structures; and finds in them their critiques of the operations of power, their questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and their explorations of contemporary identity.Less
From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of the American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim’s musicals in two contexts: the exhaustion of the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical play that flourished after World War II; and the postmodernism that by the 1960s influenced all the U.S. arts. Sondheim’s musicals are central to the transition from the musical play that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical, one that reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge, the fragmentation of identity, and the problematization of representation. Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, bridges the span between the musical play and the postmodern musical and, in his most recent work, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim’s musicals; examines their dialogue, lyrics, musical themes, and structures; and finds in them their critiques of the operations of power, their questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and their explorations of contemporary identity.
Matthew Lockitt
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199997152
- eISBN:
- 9780199348572
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199997152.003.0006
- Subject:
- Music, Popular, Dance
Michael John LaChiusa utilizes the musical theater’s two primary song forms, the book and the diegetic song, in his 2006 musical Bernarda Alba. Song and dance are purported to be functional elements ...
More
Michael John LaChiusa utilizes the musical theater’s two primary song forms, the book and the diegetic song, in his 2006 musical Bernarda Alba. Song and dance are purported to be functional elements that further plot and develop character in a musical. However, recent scholarship challenges this integrated ideal suggesting the inherent repetitions of song structure create a state of suspension pausing the progression of plot. This chapter addresses these conflicting ideas and asserts that song and dance are gestures of active-suspension. Applying the liminal structures of Social Drama and the Liminoid, as defined by Victor Turner, to these numbers within Bernarda Alba we can better understand the differences in the dramatic and performative function of both song types. Within this hermeneutic schema the book song becomes an obligatory action in which a character must engage, while the diegetic is a song one chooses to sing.Less
Michael John LaChiusa utilizes the musical theater’s two primary song forms, the book and the diegetic song, in his 2006 musical Bernarda Alba. Song and dance are purported to be functional elements that further plot and develop character in a musical. However, recent scholarship challenges this integrated ideal suggesting the inherent repetitions of song structure create a state of suspension pausing the progression of plot. This chapter addresses these conflicting ideas and asserts that song and dance are gestures of active-suspension. Applying the liminal structures of Social Drama and the Liminoid, as defined by Victor Turner, to these numbers within Bernarda Alba we can better understand the differences in the dramatic and performative function of both song types. Within this hermeneutic schema the book song becomes an obligatory action in which a character must engage, while the diegetic is a song one chooses to sing.
Kirsten Harvey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049298
- eISBN:
- 9780813050119
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049298.003.0021
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Since the early 1920s, Broadway choreographers such as Albertina Rausch have been finding ways to entertain audiences with dance. Jazz dance, in particular, has evolved every decade to suit the ...
More
Since the early 1920s, Broadway choreographers such as Albertina Rausch have been finding ways to entertain audiences with dance. Jazz dance, in particular, has evolved every decade to suit the commercial needs and desires of the Broadway choreographer. Jack Cole, Katherine Dunham, and Agnes de Mille were leading artists in the 1930s and 40s and initiated new dance styles and hybrids. Choreographers such as George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Bob Fosse changed the face of Broadway dance forever by incorporating challenging technical skills, multi-genre movements and vocabulary, as well as integration of plot, character, and style, as in Robbins’ West Side Story. More recently, Twyla Tharp, Garth Fagan, and Susan Stroman have contributed new ways of using dance in a musical theater context, notably Tharp’s use of dance without dialogue in Movin’ Out.Less
Since the early 1920s, Broadway choreographers such as Albertina Rausch have been finding ways to entertain audiences with dance. Jazz dance, in particular, has evolved every decade to suit the commercial needs and desires of the Broadway choreographer. Jack Cole, Katherine Dunham, and Agnes de Mille were leading artists in the 1930s and 40s and initiated new dance styles and hybrids. Choreographers such as George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and Bob Fosse changed the face of Broadway dance forever by incorporating challenging technical skills, multi-genre movements and vocabulary, as well as integration of plot, character, and style, as in Robbins’ West Side Story. More recently, Twyla Tharp, Garth Fagan, and Susan Stroman have contributed new ways of using dance in a musical theater context, notably Tharp’s use of dance without dialogue in Movin’ Out.
Michael G. Ankerich
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813136905
- eISBN:
- 9780813141381
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136905.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter brings the reader into the new century and follows Mae Murray as she set about making her dreams come true. She is introduced to the likes of Vernon Castle, Julian Mitchell, and Florenz ...
More
This chapter brings the reader into the new century and follows Mae Murray as she set about making her dreams come true. She is introduced to the likes of Vernon Castle, Julian Mitchell, and Florenz Ziegfeld, all powerhouses in the world of musical theatre. The chapter examines her early stage work on Broadway, such plays as About Town, Fascinating Flora, and The Hoyden.Less
This chapter brings the reader into the new century and follows Mae Murray as she set about making her dreams come true. She is introduced to the likes of Vernon Castle, Julian Mitchell, and Florenz Ziegfeld, all powerhouses in the world of musical theatre. The chapter examines her early stage work on Broadway, such plays as About Town, Fascinating Flora, and The Hoyden.
Paige A. McGinley
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780813060699
- eISBN:
- 9780813050928
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813060699.003.0010
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter discusses the 1934 black-cast opera Four Saints in Three Acts, composed by Virgil Thomson with a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Employing Stein’s landscape dramaturgy as an interpretive ...
More
This chapter discusses the 1934 black-cast opera Four Saints in Three Acts, composed by Virgil Thomson with a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Employing Stein’s landscape dramaturgy as an interpretive lens, this chapter explores the staging of an imagined South in a modernist opera that, lyrically or musically, seemed to have nothing to do with blackness. The Spanish setting of a black-cast opera reveals a matrix of global southern relations and exchanges; through a dizzying set of equivalences and substitutions, Four Saints in Three Acts put the global South on a modernist stage. The opera, the chapter concludes, not only staged transatlantic modernism but also theatrically echoed the pastoral South of the hit black-cast musical The Green Pastures.Less
This chapter discusses the 1934 black-cast opera Four Saints in Three Acts, composed by Virgil Thomson with a libretto by Gertrude Stein. Employing Stein’s landscape dramaturgy as an interpretive lens, this chapter explores the staging of an imagined South in a modernist opera that, lyrically or musically, seemed to have nothing to do with blackness. The Spanish setting of a black-cast opera reveals a matrix of global southern relations and exchanges; through a dizzying set of equivalences and substitutions, Four Saints in Three Acts put the global South on a modernist stage. The opera, the chapter concludes, not only staged transatlantic modernism but also theatrically echoed the pastoral South of the hit black-cast musical The Green Pastures.
Lindsay Guarino and Wendy Oliver (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049298
- eISBN:
- 9780813050119
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049298.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This multi-author textbook provides an in-depth look at the rich and varied history of jazz dance, from its African roots in early American society until today. The book is divided into six main ...
More
This multi-author textbook provides an in-depth look at the rich and varied history of jazz dance, from its African roots in early American society until today. The book is divided into six main parts, each addressing a different aspect of jazz dance. The opening section explores the nature of jazz dance from the perspective of four different authors, and is capped by descriptions of the many different styles of jazz dance. The second section focuses on jazz dance history, giving an expansive overview beginning with African dance, through the jazz era of the 1920s-40s, the immense diversification of the late 20th century, and up to the present. The third part looks at master teachers and choreographers who shaped the way jazz dance was codified and performed from 1930-1980. The fourth section discusses dance genres which are closely related to jazz dance, including tap dance, musical theater dance, African-American concert dance, hip-hop dance, and dance in pop culture. Education and training is the focus of the fifth part, including an examination of jazz dance in colleges and universities, as well as private dance studios. Lastly, the sixth section looks at current topics in the jazz dance world including race, jazz dance in France, England, and Japan, and jazz dance aesthetics. The sum of these many parts is both a broader and deeper understanding of a uniquely American dance form, with its African roots and multiple permutations that have evolved as it has mixed with other dance forms and styles.Less
This multi-author textbook provides an in-depth look at the rich and varied history of jazz dance, from its African roots in early American society until today. The book is divided into six main parts, each addressing a different aspect of jazz dance. The opening section explores the nature of jazz dance from the perspective of four different authors, and is capped by descriptions of the many different styles of jazz dance. The second section focuses on jazz dance history, giving an expansive overview beginning with African dance, through the jazz era of the 1920s-40s, the immense diversification of the late 20th century, and up to the present. The third part looks at master teachers and choreographers who shaped the way jazz dance was codified and performed from 1930-1980. The fourth section discusses dance genres which are closely related to jazz dance, including tap dance, musical theater dance, African-American concert dance, hip-hop dance, and dance in pop culture. Education and training is the focus of the fifth part, including an examination of jazz dance in colleges and universities, as well as private dance studios. Lastly, the sixth section looks at current topics in the jazz dance world including race, jazz dance in France, England, and Japan, and jazz dance aesthetics. The sum of these many parts is both a broader and deeper understanding of a uniquely American dance form, with its African roots and multiple permutations that have evolved as it has mixed with other dance forms and styles.
