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Review
Swain's valuable survey contains a great deal of perceptive musical and dramatic criticism and analysis. -- Geoffrey Block Swain's study should convince even the sceptic that the musical can be seriously and usefully analysed!.an essential book for those concerned with drama, song and popular arts. Popular Music Swain's study should convince even the skeptic that the musical can be seriously and usefully analysed...an essential book for those concerned with drama, song, and popular arts...Swain has not only advanced the critical analysis of the Broadway musical, but has developed techniques that will enable the great composers of musicals to be given appropriate critical recognition. London Times Literary Supplement
Product Description
To see a Broadway musical is to experience how a drama, using melody, harmony, and rhythm, evokes the emotion needed to perpetuate a story line. Without music, many of these plays would not succeed, failing to convey the intended message. This new edition of Swain's classic text, winner of the 1991 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, reveals how a musical drama achieves plot movement, character development and conflict through strategic placement of song and music in 20 musical plays. Unlike critical literature that has simply explored theatrical style and production histories, this survey focuses mainly on the power of music. Illustrated with more than 150 musical excerpts and essays, Swain includes the latest research and viewpoints of contemporary critics, offering insight into dramatic expression and how renowned composers including Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Jerry Bock, Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber influenced the Broadway musical. This provides insights into the many impressive musicals to hit the stage between the years of 1927 and 1987, illuminating how specific revisions to productions such as Showboat and, Oklahoma! forever changed their popularity. Learn how music is used as a symbol for psychological or emotional action from Shakespearean drama's such as Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story, to more current dramas including Godspell, A Chorus Line, and Jesus Christ Superstar. Replete with a never seen before essay on Les Miserables, this edition also includes an expanded epilogue highlighting the phenomena behind Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera, "megamusicals" that changed the direction of the Broadway tradition. For professors of dramatic arts and people interested in Broadway musicals, theater, popular music and opera.
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2 reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Indispensible
20 April 2004
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is one of the best books on musicals that I know of. It's serious about book, lyrics and music alike, and full of insight.
The heart of the book is a series of studies of important musicals, one by each of a series of important writing teams (Kern/Hammerstein, Sondheim, Kander/Ebb, Rice/Lloyd Webber, Bock/Harnick -- Rodgers and Hammerstein get two chapters because of their importance). For each show, we get some interesting historical background, an outline of the plot, and detailed analysis of the music. The analysis is quite technical, but readable, and anyone can learn from it. Most importantly, it's not a dry analysis. The question Swain asks throughout is the question all musical writers should be asking themselves: how does the music help the show tell the story it wants to tell?
He's not afraid to make strong judgements, either. He praises Jesus Christ Superstar for its eclectism and atmosphere, but considers that the reuse of tunes in different contexts in Evita robs them of narrative power; on this basis, he judges Evita a (relative) failure. His review of A Chorus Line is so hostile that the authors, uniquely for the shows under review in this book, refused him permission to use extracts from the score. Yet even in this review there's insight and sympathy.
Read this book. It will educate your ears. You'll approach all musicals more intelligently after reading it.
0 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Showboat & Porgy and Bess by Gershwin
27 Aug 2006
Format:Paperback
Joseph Swain was a professor of music at Colgate University. He is an authority on Broadway shows and the music which carries them to success. He wrote" The influence of 'Showboat' was subliminal or subconscious, but there is no doubt that members of the younger generation of stage composers, especially George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers, were impressed by the play. It established a new set of dramatic ideals only approximated in the 1930s, but realized again and again thereafter." When George Gershwin labored to produce the folk-opera, 'Porgy and Bess' he was unjustly criticized as an outsider because the American Negro in 1935 coudl speak for himself. Things haven't changed in the past seventy years for some people; Essie Johnson declared at the KTA meeting that "we have NOT overcome." She is a product of the Gem Theater theatrics of that prohibition era, singing and dancing herself into the sidelines of local politics. And she's still not satisfied, but still holding old grudges. George Gershwin's 'Porgy and Bess' is a complicated case owing to its intensity of ethnic setting and expression. The main dramas of Porgy's loneliness and Bess' weakness remain an extreme but typical case of ethnic usage.
As did Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's 'Oklahoma' based on the play "Green Grow the Lilacs." Both of these musicals had beautiful songs intermingled with the story line. Who will ever forget "Old Man River." In 'The King and I' there is "Shall We Dance," and in 'Flower Drum Song, "You Are Beautiful" and "I Enjoy Being a Girl." 'Kiss Me Kate' is based on Shakespeare's drama. 'Fiddler On the Roof' has the most beautiful music throughout of all the musicals.
All the great composers like Jerome Kern, Frank Loesser, Lerner and Lowe, and Leonard Berstein with those mentioned above are included in this concise book about Broadway Musicals. They are good but, since I have yet to go to New York, I enjoy the movie versions, especially Richard Harris in "Camelot." He was a great King Arthur, the best there is, by far greater than Richard Burton on stage. I could go on and on about this fabulous music and the men who wrote it, but there comes a time for a conclusion so I hope that the English teacher at Grainger County High will not be too critical of my feeble renderings.
As did Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein's 'Oklahoma' based on the play "Green Grow the Lilacs." Both of these musicals had beautiful songs intermingled with the story line. Who will ever forget "Old Man River." In 'The King and I' there is "Shall We Dance," and in 'Flower Drum Song, "You Are Beautiful" and "I Enjoy Being a Girl." 'Kiss Me Kate' is based on Shakespeare's drama. 'Fiddler On the Roof' has the most beautiful music throughout of all the musicals.
All the great composers like Jerome Kern, Frank Loesser, Lerner and Lowe, and Leonard Berstein with those mentioned above are included in this concise book about Broadway Musicals. They are good but, since I have yet to go to New York, I enjoy the movie versions, especially Richard Harris in "Camelot." He was a great King Arthur, the best there is, by far greater than Richard Burton on stage. I could go on and on about this fabulous music and the men who wrote it, but there comes a time for a conclusion so I hope that the English teacher at Grainger County High will not be too critical of my feeble renderings.
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