"Who Wrote Bach's Music?"

by Professor Martin Jarvis 

[uncovering a mystery: Why do the six suites for unaccompanied cello, historically attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), sound so different from the sonatas and partitas for solo violin also linked to the German composer?  New evidence shows that Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena Bach (née Wilcke, 1701-60; m. 1721), may have composed the cello suites.  The score of the Cello Suite No. 1 from the historical edition is in Anna Magdalena’s own handwriting.

[Martin Jarvis’s “Who Wrote Bach’s Music?” first appeared in the March 2013 issue (113.3) of Allegro, the magazine of the New York City musicians’ union (AFM Local 802).  ALERT: Readers should be aware that since this article’s appearance, several musicologists, musicians, and Bach scholars have disputed Jarvis’s findings.  I’ve appended sections from two Wikipedia pages below which address this controversy.]

Were some of J. S. Bach’s compositions actually composed by his wife, Anna Magdalena? In this exclusive story for Allegro, Professor Martin Jarvis [b. 1951], from Charles Darwin University in Australia, shares with us the intriguing results of his research, just in time for Women’s History Month (and also Bach’s 328th birthday!)

Johann Sebastian Bach is often referred to as the father of Western music. And as a composer, Bach looms large in the minds of just about every musician I have ever met. Therefore, any suggestion that things might not actually be the way we have come to understand them is not likely to be greeted with great enthusiasm!

But it may be time for a serious upheaval in our understanding of who composed Bach’s works. In my book “Written by Mrs. Bach,” (HarperCollins/ABC Books, [2011;] see www.bit.ly/BachBook), I describe my attempt to uncover the origins of the six cello suites and other works long attributed to Bach.

My search for the truth has taken me on a great and rewarding adventure, including a deep foray into a field of scientific investigation called forensic document examination, which is the study of documents and handwriting for the purpose of demonstrating authenticity. The results are astonishing.

Because space is limited, what I have written here is merely a summary of the journey from my early suspicions that all was not right, to how I reached my conclusions.

My first experience of playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach was when I began studying Bach’s A-minor violin concerto in my early teens. Later, I won a scholarship to study at the Welsh College of Music in Cardiff with Garfield Phillips, the concertmaster of the BBC Welsh Orchestra. I still remember my lessons with Professor Phillips, where we worked on Bach’s unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas [a term Bach used as a label for collections of musical pieces, a synonym for suite]. He marked up my music with a green ink fountain pen – a very unusual habit!

In 1971, I won a place at the Royal Academy of Music, where I studied violin with the highly respected violinist and teacher Clarence Myerscough. At the same time I also studied viola with Winifred Copperwheat. Professor Copperwheat was only four feet ten inches tall, and I am six feet one inch tall, so I literally towered over this wonderfully insightful and very great musician.

Immediately after I began my studies with Professor Copperwheat, she instructed me to obtain a copy of the six cello suites of Bach, arranged for viola. She was very specific about the edition I was to purchase; she wanted me to get the Lifschey edition, not the Svenky.

What I was not aware of at the time was that in the case of the cello suites, there was a very significant reason for Winifred’s insistence. I was to learn soon that there was no manuscript of the cello suites in Bach’s own hand, and so every editor of the suites (whether for viola or cello) has made decisions about the bowings, and indeed even some of the notes to be played.

These changes were necessary, Winifred informed me, because the only complete manuscript of the suites was in the hand of Bach’s second wife, Anna Magdalena, and it was, according to tradition, full of inaccuracies and all but illegible.

It is important to know that the matter of the differing editions is very significant indeed. Cellist Dimitry Markevitch, editor of a 1964 edition of the suites and discoverer of the so-called Westphal manuscripts, claimed that he had 61 editions of the six cello suites in his library and stated that there have appeared, since the first printed edition, some 93 editions or versions of the suites.

It must be stressed that these different editions vary substantially one from another. The cellist Uzi Wiesel says that this caused a veritable mishmash of stylistic interpretations when he attended a series of performances in Paris in the 1990s. Further, Wiesel was most critical of those who played the suites using only Anna Magdalena’s manuscript as the source.

This begs a very interesting question: why does Anna Magdalena’s manuscript, as Wiesel says in his review, sound “strange to my ears”?

It is worth pointing out that the chamber music of Bach was not published during his lifetime, and it has been said that it was composed for domestic consumption or performance. So the cello suites are most likely to have been written for someone within the household, rather than an outsider – which is the traditional view, of course.

As well as the undated Anna Magdalena version, there are two anonymous handwritten copies of the suites from the later 18th century, plus a version written out by Johann Peter Kellner [1705-72], one of Bach’s most important copyists, with a suggested date of 1726.

Let’s return to my early lessons at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The following week, I duly turned up to my viola class with the Lifschey edition. As soon as I began to play the prelude, I was struck by the vast differences between the two sets of music I was studying: the unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas on the one hand, and the cello suites on the other.

Visually, the violin works appear complex and intellectually very challenging. By comparison, the prelude of the first suite appears to be rather simple, at least on the surface.

I immediately became certain that I what I was playing was not written by the same person. However, I tried very hard to believe that J. S. Bach was, in fact, the composer. As I practiced the suite, I diligently applied all my knowledge and prior experience of Bach as I worked away at the music. But try as I might I could not feel at ease.

Despite the fact that over the ensuing four years I studied all the movements of some of the cello suites and some movements from others, the thought would not go away. There was something wrong with the sound and the structure of the music, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

When I raised my concerns about the suites with Professor Copperwheat, she told me the story of Pablo Casals’ experience with the cello suites and his long journey to first performing them. The suites were, apparently, “rediscovered” by Casals in 1890 when he was around 14 years old. He and his father, it is said, came across a copy in a music shop. Later, according to a biography by Robert Baldock, “…Casals discovered that, if they were played at all, the Bach suites had been used as academic, technical exercises… For the next twelve years he worked on them in seclusion…at the beginning of his career he began to introduce them into his recital programmes…he performed them on many hundreds of occasions, he never approached them without reverence, humility – and even fear.”

I took heart from that story. Winifred also explained to me that the suites were not performed much, if at all, in concert during the 19th century. As I found out much later, this may be because when they were first published in Paris in 1824, they went under the title “Six Sonates ou Etudes Pour Le Violoncelle Solo” – technical studies for cello! The idea that they were etudes would undoubtedly have led to the perception that they were lesser music.

Even the great 19th-century composer Robert Schumann [1810-56] considered them to be musically incomplete, so he added a piano accompaniment!

Finally, Philipp Spitta [1841-94], the most significant 19th-century biographer of Bach, acknowledged the very different character and proportions of the cello suites, but attributed the difference to what he considered the cello’s limited expressive quality.

All of these reasons may have contributed to the fact that cellists apparently abandoned the suites at that time and why they were not considered an important part of the cellists’ repertoire.

After leaving the Academy in 1975, I first worked as a freelance player with the London Mozart Players and other London-based orchestras before taking up a position with the Halle Orchestra in Manchester. This group was very busy performing all over the world, so there was plenty of time to talk with colleagues about many musical issues, including the cello suites.

The cellists I spoke with had various opinions on the subject. Some believed that the suites were difficult to interpret because there had not been a continuous history of performance, unlike the violin sonatas and partitas. Others believed it was because the suites were not composed by a cellist. Some thought that they were written much earlier than the violin works by a very young J. S. Bach, and this was why they are musically simpler.

But no one could really say conclusively what it was about the cello suites that makes them, as the great Yo-Yo Ma [b. 1955] put it “…considered by many to be the most challenging of the solo repertoire.”

A powerful question kept rattling around in my brain. Was it possible that the cello suites were not actually composed by J. S. Bach?

In 2000, Bärenreiter published a new edition of the suites as part the commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death. The edition included a facsimile of the Anna Magdalena manuscript of the suites. I was quite stunned by what I saw. The music calligraphy was very beautiful, precise and elegant, and not at all hard to read.

I immediately became convinced as I looked at Anna Magdalena Bach’s supposed “copy” of the cello suites that this was not a copy of someone else’s music – but her own. This was mainly because the music calligraphy appeared to flow easily and to be very self-assured, which is consistent with someone writing out material with which they are very familiar. At the same time it lacked any sense of the slowness of execution that would be consistent with someone working to accurately copy from another source, especially if they are trying to mimic the music calligraphy of the original.

I began the slow process of comparing the cello suites with the violin sonatas and partitas. This involved painstakingly deconstructing both sets of music by analyzing the harmonies used.

I examined the movement structures of the suites and aligned them with the movement structures of the violin partitas. The first thing that stood out to me was the apparent symmetry of the suites, when compared to the very non-symmetrical partitas. Was this just a coincidence, or an exception – or was this something important? I needed to find out.

By the end of 2002 my structural and musical analysis of the cello suites had revealed 17 reasons why they did not musically match any other work of J. S. Bach’s in the same genre. But it was the use of the science of forensic document examination that eventually enabled me to identify Anna Magdalena’s own handwriting and music calligraphy in manuscripts dating back to 1713 – seven years prior to the usually accepted date when Anna Magdalena and J. S. Bach first met. I realized finally that Anna Magdalena’s involvement was much deeper than usually believed.

Finally, if we look at one of the earliest copies of the cello suites from 1727 or 1728, we see the words of the chamber musician Georg Heinrich Ludwig Schwanenberger [1696-1774] on the title page. It says, in French, (“ecrite par Madame Bachen Son Epouse”), “Written by Mrs Bach His Wife.” That convinced me that Anna Magdalena was probably the composer.

So who exactly was Anna Magdalena Bach? The evidence strongly suggests that she was a composition student of J. S. Bach. It is known that she was a trained musician, and that when she was employed at the Cöthen Court at the age of 20 she was the second most highly paid musician. [Anhalt-Köthen was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire; Köthen is now the capital of the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt.] Only Bach was paid more. This begs a number of questions, including why was she paid so highly and why has she not been recognized as a composer before?

I hope I’ve left you with a tantalizing first course. Readers who wish to know more about Anna Magdalena will find answers to these and many more questions in my book.

One postscript. When the early findings of my research were first published in the very early 2000s I had no support from any of my colleagues, except the principal cellist of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra, Rebecca Harris. But over the ensuing years many cellists and other musicians have contacted me to welcome my findings. For example, one cellist wrote to me, “I have become convinced, at least on an emotional level, that the [cello] suites are indeed not by the same composer [as the violin sonatas and partitas] … I do feel somewhat heretical and have not said much of my thoughts on this subject except to my wife!”

[Professor Martin W. B. Jarvis is professor of music and head of the School of Creative Arts and Humanities at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. There he teaches viola, violin and conducting. Professor Jarvis also served as artistic director of the Darwin Symphony Orchestra for 20 years.]

*  *  *  *

[When I first read Martin Jarvis’s “Who Wrote Bach’s Music” in Allegro seven years ago, I found it interesting in the same way that reading the arguments theater and literary scholars use to support claims that William Shakespeare didn’t write his plays and advocating for other claimants to The Bard’s achievement. 

[I know far less about music, let alone Bach, than I do about theater and Shakespeare, but I felt that Jarvis’s “evidence,” as he lays it out in the brief article (I haven’t read Written By Mrs Bach) was largely his impressions and feelings, not to mention his musical intuition.  Since I don’t know Jarvis, even by reputation, I don’t have any idea how much I can rely on that—it’s entirely subjective.

[Since the publication of both Jarvis’s book and the Allegro article, there have been a number of critical responses to his contention that Anna Magdalena Bach was the composer of the cello suites traditionally attributed to Johann Sebastian.  Below, I’m appending two excerpts from the Wikipedia entries on, first, Jarvis, himself (Martin Jarvis (conductor) - Wikipedia), and, second, Anna Magdalena Bach (Anna Magdalena Bach - Wikipedia).] 

From: “Martin Jarvis (conductor)”
Wikipedia 

Research into Anna Magdalena Bach

During his studies at the Royal Academy of Music, his viola teacher Winifred Copperwheat [1905-76] made him aware of problems with the published editions of the six suites for unaccompanied cello commonly attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. After research of his own, Jarvis has controversially postulated, using handwriting analysis heuristics, that the suites were composed by Bach’s wife Anna Magdalena [Lindy Kerin, “Bach’s wife believed to have penned cello works,” The Australian [Surry Hills, Australia] 28 Apr. 2006; Barbie Dutter and Roya Nikkha, “Bach works were written by his second wife, claims academic,” Daily Telegraph [London] 23 Apr. 2006]. Other academics such as Stephen Rose have responded that, while Anna Magdalena may have contributed to the labours on his manuscripts, “there is not enough evidence to show that she single-handedly composed the Cello Suites” [Dutter and Nikkha].

Jarvis was awarded a PhD from Charles Darwin University based on his research [“Wife behind Bach’s cello suites,” The Australian 31 October 2007], and presented his findings at an October 2008 meeting of the International Symposium on the Forensic Sciences in Melbourne [Anna Salleh, “Bach’s wife ‘may have been composer,’” ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] News 4 Oct. 2008; Liz Porter, “The missus was the maestro,” Sydney [Australia] Morning Herald 5 Oct. 2008]. Regarding the generally-accepted portrayal of Anna Magdalena Bach’s role in music history and his own differing views, Jarvis himself has acknowledged, “My conclusions may not be wholly accurate, but the way in which tradition has put Anna Magdalena into this pathetic role [as merely the copyist] ... is rubbish” [Salleh]. Jarvis published the book Written by Mrs Bach in 2011; it was made into a documentary film in 2014 [LOOKSfilm, Written by Mrs Bach, wr. Robert Beedham, Martin Jarvis, and Pamela Kaufman; dir. Alex McCall and Irini Vachlioti; prod. Robert Beedham, Ramona Bergmann, et al.].

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From: “Anna Magdalena Bach”
Wikipedia 

Dismissed claim of composership

Recently, it has been suggested that Anna Magdalena Bach composed several musical pieces bearing her husband’s name: Professor Martin Jarvis of the School of Music at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia, claims that she composed the famed six cello suites (BWV 1007-1012) and was involved with the composition of the aria from the Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) [1741] and the opening prelude of The Well-Tempered Clavier [1722, 1742]. These ideas were also made into a TV documentary Written by Mrs Bach (BBC, 2018).

These claims have been virtually unanimously dismissed by Bach scholars and performers. Christoph Wolff [b. 1940] said:

When I served as director of the Leipzig Bach Archive from 2001 to 2013, I and my colleagues there extensively refuted the basic premises of the thesis, on grounds of documents, manuscript sources, and musical grounds. There is not a shred of evidence, but Jarvis doesn’t give up despite the fact that several years ago, at a Bach conference in Oxford, a room full of serious Bach scholars gave him an embarrassing showdown [Tim Cavanaugh, “Bogus Bach Theory Gets Media Singing,” National Review [New York] 29 Oct. 2014].

Writing in The Guardian, cellist Steven Isserlis [b. 1958] said, “I’m afraid that his theory is pure rubbish,” and continued, “How can anybody take this shoddy material seriously” [Steven Isserlis, “Suite scandal: why Bach’s wife cannot take credit for his cello masterwork,” Guardian [London] 29 Oct. 2014]?

Bach scholar Ruth Tatlow [b. 1956] has written a refutation at length, centred on the TV documentary, in the journal Understanding Bach, where she calls Jarvis’s claims “flawed and untenable” [Ruth Tatlow, “A Missed Opportunity: Reflections on Written by Mrs Bach,” Understanding Bach [Bach Network; Oxford, UK] 10 (2015); www.bachnetwork.co.uk/understanding-bach].

 

The Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program

[On Rick On Theater, I’ve written about movicals (20 September 2013, with a supplemental post, “More on Movicals,” on 21 February 2014), the adaptations of films to stage musicals  such as Carnival! (1961), 42nd Street (1980), Moulin Rouge! (2019), and Mrs. Doubtfire (2020).

[I’ve never covered opera at all on this blog, however—because it’s not a topic on which I’m competent—much less operas derived from straight plays.  So now I find an article on that very topic in the Winter 2020 issue (number 75) of the Lincoln Center Theater Review (published on 25 February) and I’m presenting it here—with some supplemental material from the same magazine.

[LCTR, a publication of the Lincoln Center Theater, devotes each issue to one production at LTC.  This one was on Lynn Nottage’s 2003 play Intimate Apparel (produced Off-Broadway at the Roundabout Theatre in 2004) which LTC was presenting with the Metropolitan Opera in its operatic adaptation at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.  (The opera of Intimate Apparel, composed by Ricky Ian Gordon. was in previews when the theaters all closed on 12 March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.  It’s scheduled to reopen in Spring 2021.)

[In 2006, the project that became the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program was launched to develop new operas through a collaboration between a playwright and a composer, a pairing set up by the New Works Program.  The plan’s first real success was Two Boys, composed by Nico Muhly with a libretto by playwright Craig Lucas.  The opera was staged at the Met in October and November 2013 by Bartlett Sher (who’s also directing Intimate Apparel).] 

“A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR”

by Alexis Gargagliano 

Collaboration makes theater possible. There is a special electricity that emerges when a multitude of artists, and ideas, come together to tell a story. They create a whole world that the audience can see, hear, and believe. The opera of Intimate Apparel embodies that collaborative magic. Even its conception was the result of bridge-building—the opera bloomed out of the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program, a groundbreaking enterprise between two constituents here at Lincoln Center Plaza. It champions the creation of new operas by pairing playwrights and composers. The first flower of this collaboration, Nico Muhly’s Two Boys, with a libretto by the playwright Craig Lucas, premiered at the Met in 2011. [This appears to be an error; the opera premièred at London’s English National Opera in 2011, but débuted at the Met on Monday, 21 October 2013.] The next collaboration will be seen at Lincoln Center Theater. Intimate Apparel [began previews on 27 February 2020 and was scheduled to open on 23 March], like the earlier Two Boys, is directed by Bartlett Sher, Lincoln Center Theater’s resident director, and features music by the celebrated composer Ricky Ian Gordon and a libretto by Lynn Nottage, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright [twice: in 2009 for Ruined and 2017 for Sweat] whose acclaimed play has been transformed into a mesmerizing opera.

All the characters of Intimate Apparel experience desire and longing, and each of them has dreams much bigger than the world around them can sustain. In this edition [of LCTR], we sought to explore their longings, their limitations, and the world they must navigate. Lynn Nottage sat down with the writer and historian Paula Giddings to discuss the creation of the opera and the necessity of telling the stories of people who would otherwise remain anonymous [“Remember Me”; articles in Issue 75 on LCTR can be read at https://issuu.com/lctheater/docs/lctr_intimateapparel_singlepages_022420]. Ricky Ian Gordon shared stories about his unusual childhood and his creative process [“Lush Sounds”]. A poem by the poet laureate Natasha Trethewey takes us inside the dreams of an elevator operator, a working-class African-American woman like the heroine of Intimate Apparel [“2. Speculation, 1939”]. The historian Annelise Orleck paints a picture of the Lower East Side and the many communities that called it home in the early 1900s [“The Young Immigrants”]. The fashion writer Constance White illuminates the work of black female designers [“Stepping Into the Spotlight”]. André Bishop, the producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater; Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager; and Paul Cremo, its dramaturg, spoke to us about starting the program, their passion for fostering new work, the germination of Intimate Apparel as opera, and the extraordinary collaboration and vision that bring opera and theater to life [“Something New”; see below]. Finally, this issue also features the art of Ellen Gallagher, Sanford Biggers, and Titus Kaphar, which invites us to see the world and our history anew.

 *  *  *  *

“SOMETHING NEW”

An Interview with André Bishop, Paul Cremo, and Peter Gelb

Our editor, Alexis Gargagliano, spoke with André Bishop, the producing artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater [since 2013; artistic director since 1992]; Peter Gelb, the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager [since 2006]; and Paul Cremo, its dramaturg and the director of the opera-commissioning program [since 2007]. In Gelb’s handsomely appointed office, they discussed the creation of the opera Intimate Apparel, the Metropolitan Opera/Lincoln Center Theater New Works Program, and the burgeoning of contemporary operas in the United States.

ALEXIS GARGAGLIANO How was the New Works Program started?

ANDRÉ BISHOP It was Peter’s idea. He was interested in developing new work—the Met could bring many musical forces to the table, and Lincoln Center Theater could bring accomplished playwrights. That was the beginning. 

PETER GELB Shortly after I was appointed as head of the Metropolitan Opera, we met for the first time to discuss this idea. I wanted to develop a whole program of ways to reenergize the Met. One avenue was to create new work. We were intrigued by the idea of developing work with librettists from the world of theater and bringing stage directors into the development process from the onset. André and I both felt that we could help improve the odds for success with new works by nurturing these collaborations at a very early stage.

AG Had you seen something at Lincoln Center Theater that sparked this idea?

PG Seeing things like Contact [a “dance play” developed by Susan Stroman and John Weidman which ran at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center in 1999 and then moved to the Vivian Beaumont Theater in 2000; in 2000, it won the Tony Award for Best Musical, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Broadway Musical, the Drama League Award for Outstanding New Broadway Musical, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Musical] made me realize that André was encouraging the creation of work outside traditional bounds.

AB We had done a couple of sung-through musicals [e.g.: Hello Again (1994), A New Brain (1998), Falsettos (2016)]. So doing something sung through with no dialogue, or hardly any dialogue, was not new to us or to our audience

AG Had there been much crosspollination among the institutions at Lincoln Center?

[Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, houses 12 resident arts organizations.  In addition to the Lincoln Center Theater (Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Broadway house; Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, the Off-Broadway theater; Claire Tow Theater, for experimental productions) and the Metropolitan Opera, these include the New York Philharmonic (David Geffen Hall) and the New York City Ballet (David H. Koch Theater), among other, smaller performing arts organizations and facilities. The Juilliard School and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts are also part of Lincoln Center.]

AB There has been very little collaboration, and certainly not like this. We wanted to show that companies on this campus could actually work together and learn from one another.

PG The key ingredient in the collaboration was the arrival of Paul Cremo, our dramaturg. He’s been the field general of this whole project.

PAUL CREMO I think your initial conversations happened in 2005, and I came on board in 2007. You decided not to give commissions with a guaranteed premiere date; instead, it was a more theatrical model, where the end result of the program is the workshop. This allows the pieces to develop freely, without the pressures of a production looming.

AG How did you begin?

AB Once we had raised the money, we matched ten composers with librettists. Some fell away and we added a few more. The other rule we created was not to decide whether a work was appropriate for Lincoln Center Theater or for the Metropolitan Opera until after the workshop.

 

PG At the workshop, each piece is performed with a piano and singers. If we’re going to do a full production, we collectively decide whether it’s a chamber-sized work or a grand opera-sized work. One of the challenges that we face all the time, when I talk to directors who are working here, is how do you connect the audience to the stage? That problem doesn’t exist with the Mitzi. The audience and the stage are one. [The Newhouse is a small amphitheater.  It seats 299 theatergoers in seven semicircular rows.]

AB It’s because it’s small—there are only 290 seats—and it has a thrust stage, which means the last row is only seven rows back. If a director and a designer know how to use that configuration, it’s a wonderful thing. On a larger scale, this is true in the Beaumont as well. That’s why I think these musicals we’ve done in the Beaumont seem so refreshed. Part of it is that the productions, if I can say this, are good productions, but part of it is that the audience is suddenly seeing South Pacific [2008-10] or My Fair Lady [2018-19] on a stage, in a pattern of movement and scenery they’ve never seen before—and the last seat is only thirteen rows back. [The Beaumont, a larger amphitheater, seats 1200 patrons in 13 rows, including a loge.]

PG André is too modest to say it himself, but if not for him the Beaumont would never have been successfully harnessed theatrically. It wasn’t until you took over that the possibility of its really being successfully utilized was achieved.

AB When Jerry Zaks was resident director [1986-90], he did some very good shows there before my time. But when I arrived we put in the orchestra pit, because I very badly wanted to do musicals.

PG The directors who staged these wonderfully successful musicals, particularly someone like Bartlett Sher, have become masters of moving action around in a way that the audience can appreciate from all sides.

When Bart made his debut at the Met with The Barber of Seville [2006] we didn’t have a thrust stage to offer him, so he did the next best thing—he created a passerelle [a semicircular ramp or catwalk that extends from the stage of a theater around the orchestra pit], which brought the action of the stage around and beyond the orchestra pit and literally into the audience.

AG Were there writers creating new works, too, or was it all adaptation, like Intimate Apparel?  

PG It varied. The young composer Matthew Aucoin wanted to write an opera based on the Orpheus myth. André suggested that we pair him with Sarah Ruhl, who had written one of the great plays based on the Orpheus legend, Eurydice [2003]. Matt and Sarah hit it off amazingly well. The opera [also entitled Eurydice] will have its premiere this season at the L.A. Opera [premièred 1 February]. They joined us as a commissioning partner once we went beyond the workshop stage, and it will play at the Met two seasons from now. On the other hand, the opera Two Boys, which Nico Muhly composed, had an original libretto by Craig Lucas, and Bart Sher directed.

AB Craig had written the book to The Light in the Piazza [2003 in Seattle], which was the first show Bart did at the Beaumont [2005].

AG How did the Intimate Apparel conversation start?

PC I had been speaking with Ricky Ian Gordon about possible writers to work with. I suggested Lynn, and Ricky said, “I’ll read her stuff.” We initially planned to have Lynn write something original, but after Ricky read Intimate Apparel he fell in love with it, and Lynn agreed to adapt it.

AG André, what did Lynn tell you about her original conception of Intimate Apparel?

AB My memory is of her telling me that she had originally thought of Intimate Apparel as a musical or an opera, but that she was unknown then and it would have been a bigger, more expensive production and she was afraid that nobody would produce it. So she wrote it as a play.

PC Her father had loved opera. In Lynn’s play Ruined [2008; 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama], there are monologues that are like arias. We talked about ways to sort of expand the play a bit, adding a chorus, ensembles. Lynn’s an avid student, and read a bunch of librettos. Ricky talked her through what he needed. He started writing the first notes in April 2012.

PG The development of an opera or a musical is much longer than that of a play. There are more moving parts and it requires more development, more workshops—Intimate Apparel had four. The first workshop was in 2015.

AG How did it change?

PG It got better. (Laughter)

PC The basic bones and the structure were always there because the play existed. But Bart, for instance, after the first workshop said that the boundaries between scenes could blur a little and be more fluid. The opening of the piece also changed. We were trying to get the main character, the seamstress Esther, and her situation clearly established up front. And, in terms of the music, there has been some tightening, shortening, making things more efficient. In the third workshop, Ricky discovered the possibilities of the chorus and started using them in different ways, almost like underscoring.

PG When a composer hears his or her work performed, it’s different from just looking at the notes. It inspires him or her to do more.

AG Does that also change the conversation between the librettist and the composer?

PC They work hand in hand. Their collaboration is the key to it all.

AB Some of the better pieces that have come out of our program so far have been good not only because the composer is good—and it is a world of the composer, really, the opera world—but because the libretto was so strong. In the case of Eurydice and Intimate Apparel, they’re both extremely powerful pieces of writing, adapted by the playwrights from their own plays.

AG What challenges do the playwrights face?

PC Playwrights have a learning curve adapting an existing piece. They first have to throw out nearly half of their text, and that’s challenging (it takes longer to sing something than to say it). This play was very close to Lynn’s heart. She wrote it after her mother died, and she felt that it was a way of communing with her ancestors. She found it really difficult to cut out so much of the great detail that was in the play, but we worked together to isolate the most important text. Then Ricky could show Lynn how the music could tell that story to fill in some of the colors and details that were cut from the text. It’s hard, I think, for any writer. In the theater world, the playwright rules; in the opera world, the composer rules. So the playwright has to step back a bit and hand it over and let the composer run with it.

PG There’s also a technical aspect of a playwright’s learning to write a libretto, of writing words that can be sung. Not only does there have to be fewer of them; they also have to be fit, in the right way, into a singer’s voice.

AG I marveled at the libretto—how Lynn could write such a complex play and then distill it into essentially a poem that can be sung.

PC That’s something else that changed. Hearing the workshops, Ricky got to see where singers were struggling with certain things—like particular words on high notes—and he could lower them or change the emphasis in a line to make it sound more natural.

PG Sometimes even experienced composers forget the capabilities of a human voice, and the workshop will remind them of what’s possible and what isn’t.

AG Was there a moment in one of the first workshops where you felt a particular electricity?

PG I thought it had great potential and was excited by it from the very first workshop—I think we all felt it. We knew it was something special.

AG How did you decide that it was going to be at the Mitzi?

AB I had assumed this would be for the Beaumont, with a full orchestra. It wasn’t until the third workshop that Bart said, “I think we should do it in the Mitzi Newhouse with two pianos.” He was right. In the Mitzi, the words and the music are just right there. You don’t have to strain. We have these incredible singers in this relatively small theater. It’s going to blow the roof off it.

AG How often are new operas produced?

PC Well, during the thirteen years that this program has been in existence there’s been an explosion of contemporary opera in the U.S. Back then, maybe between two and five new operas premiered in a year.  At the Met, prior to this program, there would be years between the premieres of original operas. But in 2018 over forty new operas premiered in the U.S.

Opera was seen as this sort of far-off, grand thing, and too conservative. But younger composers have seen what’s possible. They don’t have to compromise their musical style or values, and they see that new dramatic subjects can be embraced. And opera companies have been inspired by the idea that new operas can bring in new audiences.

AG What are your hopes for the program in the future?

PG There are a couple of projects still in the pipeline that are coming along really nicely. And André and I have been in discussion on adding composers, and Paul’s been vetting them.

*  *  *  *

 “SAID & SUNG” 

There is a long history of plays being adapted into operas. Plays by Pierre Beaumarchais were adapted by Mozart (Le Nozze di Figaro) and by Gioachino Rossini (Il Barbiere di Siviglia). Friedrich Schiller [plays were adapted] by [Gioachino] Rossini (Guillaume Tell), Gaetano Donizetti (Maria Stuarda), and Giuseppe Verdi (Don Carlos)—who also adapted plays by Victor Hugo (Ernani, Rigoletto) and others. Notable operas were based on plays by Victorien Sardou ([Giacomo] Puccini’s Tosca), Eugéne Scribe and Ernest Legouvé ([Francesco] Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur); and Pierre Corneille’s Pertharite, roi des Lombards formed the basis for George Frideric Handel’s Rodelinda. Other notable adaptations include plays by David Belasco (Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and La Fanciulla del West), Alexandre Soumet ([Vincenzo] Bellini’s Norma), and Oscar Wilde ([Richard] Strauss’s Salome). Shakespeare has been the most frequent theatrical source, with his plays A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Macbeth, Falstaff [The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV], Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet among those adapted as operas by [Henry] Purcell, Verdi, [Charles] Gounod, Bellini, [Ambroise] Thomas, and others. In the past century alone, there has been a wide variety of operatic adaptations of well-known plays.

*  *  *  *

“A SELECTION OF OPERAS FROM THE PAST HUNDRED YEARS BASED ON PLAYS”

[LCTR provided the list below, but I can’t duplicate the format on Rick On Theater, so I’ve had to devise a different presentation for the same information.  I’m afraid it’s not as easy to read, for which I apologize to ROTters.  I’ve added the dates of the source plays in brackets and an occasional additional detail.]

PLAY: Woyzeck by Georg Büchner [1836] – OPERA: Wozzeck by Alban Berg – DATE OF PREMIERE: 1925

Porgy by Dorothy & DuBose Heyward [1927] – Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin – 1935

Lulu by Frank Wedekind [Earth Spirit (1895) & Pandora’s Box (1904)] – Lulu by Alban Berg – 1937 (incomplete); 1979 (complete)

Le Viol de Lucrèce by André Obey [1931] – The Rape of Lucretia by Benjamin Britten – 1946

The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman [1939] – Regina by Marc Blitzstein ­– 1949

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare [1595/96] – A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten – 1960

The Crucible by Arthur Miller [1953] – The Crucible by Robert Ward – 1961

A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller [1955] – Uno sguardo dal ponte by Renzo Rossellini – 1961

Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare [c. 1607] – Antony and Cleopatra by Samuel Barber – 1966

Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams [1948] – Summer and Smoke by Lee Hoiby – 1971

La Balade du Grand Macabre by Michel De Ghelderode [1934] – Le Grand Macabre by György Ligeti – 1978

The Ghost Sonata by August Strindberg [1907] – Die Gespenstersonate by Aribert Reimann – 1984

Greek by Steven Berkoff (based on Oedipus Rex by Sophocles) [1980] – Greek by Mark-Anthony Turnage – 1988

La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother) by Pierre Beaumarchais [1792] – The Ghosts of Versailles by John Corigliano – 1991

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams [1947] – A Streetcar Named Desire by André Previn – 1995

A View from the Bridge by Arthur Miller [1955] – A View from the Bridge by William Bolcom – 1999

The Tempest by William Shakespeare [1610-11] – The Tempest by Thomas Adès – 2004

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe [1589-92] – Faustus, the Last Night by Pascal Dusapin – 2006

Caligula by Albert Camus [1938] – Caligula by Detlev Glanert – 2006

Our Town by Thornton Wilder [1938] – Our Town by Ned Rorem – 2006

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde [1895] – The Importance of Being Earnest by Gerald Barry – 2011

Doubt by John Patrick Shanley [2004] – Doubt by Douglas J. Cuomo – 2013

4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane [2000] – 4.48 Psychosis by Philip Venables – 2016

Compleat Female Stage Beauty by Jeffrey Hatcher [1999] – Prince of Players by Carlisle Floyd – 2016

Angels in America by Tony Kushner [1991 (Part 1); 1992 (Part 2)] – Angels in America by Peter Eötvös & Mari Mezei – 2017

Hamlet by William Shakespeare [1599-1601] – Hamlet by Brett Deane – 2017

Endgame by Samuel Beckett [1957] – Fin de Partie by György Kurtág – 2018

[In the name of completeness, I think it’d be nice to identify the plays from which the opera adaptations in “Said & Sung” were derived.  So, following my format for the list above, here they are:

La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (1784) by Pierre Beaumarchais – Le Nozze di Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – 1786

Le Barbier de Séville (1775) by Pierre Beaumarchais – Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Gioachino Rossini – 1816

Wilhelm Tell  by Friedrich Schiller (1804) – Guillaume Tell by Gioachino Rossini – 1829

Maria Stuart by Friedrich Schiller (1800) – Maria Stuarda by Gaetano Donizetti – 1835

Don Karlos, Infant von Spanien by Friedrich Schiller (1783-87) – Don Carlos Giuseppe Verdi – 1867

Hernani by Victor Hugo (1830) – Ernani by Giuseppe Verdi – 1844  

Le roi s'amuse (The King Amuses Himself) by Victor Hugo (1832) – Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi – 1851

La Tosca by Victorien Sardou (1887) – Tosca by Giacomo Puccini – 1900

Adrienne Lecouvreur by Eugéne Scribe & Ernest Legouvé (1849) – Adriana Lecouvreur by Francesco Cilea – 1902

Pertharite, roi des Lombards (Pertharites, King of the Lombards) by Pierre Corneille (1651) – Rodelinda , regina de' Longobardi by George Frideric Handel –.1725

Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan (from the 1898 short story "Madame Butterfly" by John Luther Long) by David Belasco (1900) – Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini – 1904

The Girl of the Golden West by David Belasco (1900) – La Fanciulla del West by Giacomo Puccini – 1910

Norma, ou L'infanticide (Norma, or The Infanticide) by Alexandre Soumet (1831) – Norma by Vincenzo Bellini – 1831

Salome by Oscar Wilde (1891) – Salome by Richard Strauss – 1905.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (1595/96) –  The Fairy-Queen by Henry Purcell – 1692

Othello by William Shakespeare (1603) – Otello by Giuseppe Verdi – 1887

Macbeth by William Shakespeare (1606) – Macbeth by Giuseppe Verdi – 1847

The Merry Wives of Windsor (1597) and Henry IV (1596-99) by William Shakespeare – Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi – 1893

Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599-1601) –  Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas – 1868

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1591-95) – Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod – ­­­1867

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare (1591-95) –I Capuleti e i Montecchi (The Capulets and the Montagues) by Vincenzo Bellini – 1830

[Some opera libretti are entirely original, the complete invention of the librettist.  Most operatic plots, however, are based on some source material such as a myth, a work of literature, a historical event, or some other inspiration.  The same was true for decades for the musical play. 

[Like the stage musical, the favorite source for most opera librettists was and is the straight (that is, non-musical) play.  As we can see from the lists above, Shakespeare has been by far the most popular foundation for an opera plot; some of the Bard’s plays formed the basis for multiple operas, from the classic period right up to contemporary operas.

[Even some strikingly modern (and post-modern) scripts have been adapted into operas—not just Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, but Alfred Jarry and Samuel Beckett.  If the Met/LTC New Works Program succeeds, there may be even more operas based on experimental dramas. 

[It remains to be seen, of course, how readily the operatic audiences will take to new operas.  Sixty-five years ago, when Tennessee Williams tried to experiment with the dramatic form, he was rejected (Camino Real, 1953) and Beckett’s absurdist masterpiece Waiting for Godot (1953, Paris; 1955, London; January 1956, Miami; April 1956, New York) largely confused audiences and critics alike.  I wonder if opera will fare better in the 21st century.]

Stephen Schwartz

by Kirk Woodward

[Soon after I got out of the army in 1974 and moved to New York City, I started trying to catch up on theater.  After almost five years of active duty, including 2½ in West Berlin, Germany, I was woefully behind.  I had one advantage when I got to New York: my family was connected to a business headquartered here—just a few blocks up 5th Avenue from where I ended up living—that had a ticket broker on retainer and allowed members of the owners’ families to take advantage of this perk (intended for sales reps to entertain buyers) on the company.  I decided I’d go to as many shows as I could manage—and, when I started classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, I treated my classmates with a freebie, too. 

[I started making my way through the ABC’s in the New York Times, crossing off shows as I saw them.  I started with productions that had been running for a while, feeling that I ought to get to them before newer show in case they closed soon.  I think the first Broadway play I went to was the musical Raisin and I went on to such productions as Scapino, Thieves, Clarence Darrow, and Equus, as well as musicals like The Wiz and Candide, and each of them offered some special impression and a lasting memory.  But one I remember particularly well was Stephen Schwartz and Roger O. Hirson’s musical play Pippin, which had opened in 1972 under Bob Fosse’s direction and was still running when I got to the city.  Everything about Pippin attracted me—the characteristic Fosse choreography, Tony Walton’s abstract expressionist scenic design, Patricia Zipprodt’s mod-inspired “medieval” costumes, Hanson’s smart-ass, hip book (enhanced by Fosse’s uncredited assistance), and, most of all, Schwartz’s wonderful, fanciful, knowing, and delightful songs.  I loved the characters, including Pippin and Berthe, his wise—and wise-ass—grandmother, and the amazing idea of the non-representational Leading Player.  (I can’t recall whom  I saw in all those roles, and I seem to have misplaced my Broadway Pippin program, but I'm pretty sure Ben Vereen had left the show by then, as had Irene Ryan.  I think John Rubenstein was still doing Pippin because I had never liked him much, but revised my opinion on the basis of this performance—so I must have seen him.)  

[When I started taking voice lessons some years later, I chose to work on “Corner of the Sky” as a potential audition piece.  It seemed to describe me—or my view of myself.  (Remember, I was still just around 30 at the time—though moving up fast!)  I also saw several other Pippin productions, including one directed in 1983 by my friend Kirk Woodward—who just happens to be the author of this article for Rick On Theater based on his recent reading of Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked, a “creative biography” of the composer-lyricist by Carol de Giere.  Kirk’s better situated to tell you about a musical artist and his work, so I’ll just let him take over from here.  ~Rick]

In 1972 or ’73 I went to Ford’s Theatre, in Washington, DC, to see a matinee performance of what I believe was the first national company production of the musical Godspell (which had opened in New York City in 1971), about which I’d heard good things.

Those reports underestimated the effect of the show on me: I was amazed, overwhelmed, thrilled by the audacious theatricality of the piece, by its commitment to the ideals of love and community, and by the fact that as a piece of theater it seemed to succeed in actually reinforcing those ideals – something I wasn’t certain that theater could do.

The cast of that production spoke a few months later to the drama department at Catholic University in Washington, where I was then enrolled. The Jesus in that production was Dean Pitchford (b. 1951), who later became a successful songwriter. I remember the obvious camaraderie of the cast – being in Godspell often seems to create that effect. Since those days I have both directed and musically directed the show myself.

In 1972, the musical Pippin opened in New York City, directed by the outstanding choreographer Bob Fosse (1927-1987), and I remember hearing a professor at Catholic University say that Fosse had told him, during the Washington out-of-town tryout for Pippin, that he was scratching his head trying to think of staging ideas for some of the songs in the show.

Pippin became “my show” in New York City, where I was living by that time – I saw the original cast and the first replacements perhaps a dozen times. I couldn’t get enough of – well, its audacious theatricality.

The link between these two shows, Godspell and Pippin, is, of course, that both musicals included scores written (or mostly written, in the case of Godspell) by the songwriter Stephen Schwartz (b. 1948). Schwartz was brought in to write a replacement score for the original production of Godspell; Pippin was conceived by Schwartz and a classmate, Rob Strauss, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and Schwartz nursed it along all the way to Broadway.

I learned those facts, and many others, from a used copy I picked up recently of an excellent “creative biography” of Stephen Schwartz titled Defying Gravity, written by Carol de Giere and published by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books in 2008.

Carol de Giere is an admirer of Schwartz’s work – she has edited a “fanzine” about him – and the tone of the book can occasionally be a little breathless. However, the book is not a hagiography; she keeps it at the level of the factual and the objective.

A list of Schwartz’s musical theater work includes Godspell (1971), Pippin (1972), The Magic Show (1974), The Baker’s Wife (1976), Working (1978), Rags (lyrics only, 1986), Children of Eden (1991), and Wicked (2003), among other shows.

Of those listed, three had initial runs of over nineteen hundred performances each on Broadway (Pippin, The Magic Show, and Wicked), and Godspell had a similarly long run Off Broadway. Over time Schwartz has reworked many of these shows, which have gone on to be produced frequently around the country, internationally, and again on Broadway.

Wicked, still thriving on Broadway, has so far achieved overall earnings of over three billion dollars, illustrating the maxim of the playwright George Axelrod (1922-2003) that on Broadway you can’t make a living, but you can make a killing.

Schwartz has also written the lyrics for songs in the movies Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Enchanted (2007), and music and lyrics for the film The Prince of Egypt (1998). In addition, he collaborated with Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) on Bernstein’s Mass (1971). He has won Tony, Academy, and Grammy Awards for his work.

Schwartz cooperated on the book Defying Gravity, with the proviso that it be about his creative, rather than his personal life, so we only meet his wife, Carol, as an intelligent and supportive voice, and his son Steve as a successful director. Some basic themes emerge from the book:

Schwartz is a definite “personality.” He comes across in the book as focused, knowledgeable, opinionated, and sometimes, for those reasons, a real pain to work with.

As I mentioned above, the book is called a “creative biography,” which means that its focus is on the process of building a musical, rather than on the personalities involved. Still, personalities can’t be avoided. A musical is very much a group endeavor, which means there is always potential for conflict between song writers and book writers, the producer, director, choreographer, musical director, scenic designer, and so on.

With such dynamic tensions, and with a great deal of money at stake (Wicked’s initial cost was estimated at $14,000,000), two things are likely to happen: most of those involved in a show are likely to have to take subordinate roles, and some – usually one – is likely to be the dominant voice, or, as William Goldman labels it in his great book on Broadway The Season, “the muscle.”

Carol de Giere makes it clear that Schwartz was always prepared to be “the muscle” in his shows; however, this did not always happen. The trait can be traced to Schwartz’s childhood:

There was one language-based trait Schwartz seemed to be born with that sometimes got him in trouble: he spoke his mind. His mother reports on problems at school related to her son’s willful expressions. “He would speak out of turn, and maybe want to talk without giving other people a turn. He didn’t do anything seriously delinquent in any way, but he was not a docile little boy in class.”

Carol de Giere describes how this trait worked out in adult life (in this case with Wicked):

Schwartz’s inner game was perfectionism – something he found hard to release even in those stressful times. When the fussing over changes got out of hand, it could drive cast members a little crazy. “For the most part, we all respected Stephen a great deal,” says [performer] Robin Lamont. “And if we worked hard, he worked three times as hard. We would leave at midnight, come in the next day at nine in the morning to rehearse after having done a show the night before. And he would have been up half the night. He was always, always, always working.”

“We had terrible fights. I remember feelings running very high. There was frustration. We’d ask ourselves, ‘Why isn’t this playing as well as it should?’ We’d come in and Stephen would say, ‘I want to try this; I want to try that.’ I think sometimes there was the feeling that, ‘We’re sick of this, we don’t want to try it one more way. We want to go home and sleep.’”

And this was for a musical where the working process went fairly smoothly! By contrast, when Bob Fosse (1927-1987) was hired as director and choreographer for Pippin, Roger Hirson (b. 1926), who wrote the book for the musical, told Schwartz, “This is our last happy day on this show.“

Schwartz had worked on Pippin from the beginning; it was “his baby.” But Fosse was by this point “the muscle” in any show he worked on. Carol de Giere writes that

Bob Fosse may have believed he was doing Broadway beginner Schwartz a favor by directing his show. [David] Spangler [a friend of Schwartz’s] suggests, “Fosse was truly interested in keeping current with trends that were beginning to happen, like rock music, which was starting to enter the vocabulary of Broadway. He just thought he’d whip Stephen into shape.”

Between Fosse’s ego and Schwartz’s, a collision was bound to occur, and it did. Interestingly, years later Schwartz commented that for the amateur version of the show, he and Roger Hirson had removed a number of the additions that Fosse had made to the script, and

In recent years, I’ve come to feel that the show is better with them, and we’ve put the majority of them back in. It’s ironic that I’ve become the champion of Bob’s vision. When asked about the revisions I sometimes joke, “I know somewhere Bob is looking up and laughing.”

I would guess, then, that at a minimum Schwartz is no pushover in the case of a difference of opinion, and that this characteristic can make him a formidable force to reckon with. He is aware of this:

If someone says to you that a song isn’t working, you think, well, maybe they’re right. So when do you stand up and believe in yourself? When do you say, “I don’t care what you’re saying, I know this is right” – when is it stubbornness or arrogance, and when is it [appropriate] conviction? It’s a tricky thing.

The impression of Schwartz’s potential for “digging in” is reinforced by another major theme of de Giere’s book:

Schwartz has plenty of technique to help him in his work. He is a conscious, thoughtful, and fundamentally methodical worker, so there is no need for him to feel insecure or self-conscious about his ideas.

As I said above, de Giere calls her book a “creative biography,” and much of the book describes in detail how Schwartz puts together his scores.  For me, there are few subjects more interesting than how an artist goes about creating her or his work. Schwartz’s processes are fascinating.

I could quote numerous examples, but here are two. Talking about working on the score for the film Pocahontas (lyrics by Schwartz, music by Alan Menkin, b. 1949), Schwartz says:

Because I didn’t think I was good casting as lyricist for the project, I consciously thought about who would have been better casting and then modeled my work on theirs . . . . I decided on Oscar Hammerstein II and Sheldon Harnick [the lyricist for Fiorello, She Loves Me, and Fiddler on the Roof], because they wrote for ethnic people and folk people, and they dealt with issues of prejudice and cultural misunderstanding. And so as I wrote, I consciously tried to assimilate their styles. When I wrote “Colors of the Wind” I thought, “What would Oscar do? What would Sheldon write?” I just recalled their sensibility. It was just a matter of adjusting my mindset to think how they would approach a song. I didn’t steal anything specific from them. I just took in their sensibility and filtered it back out again.

And here is an example about structuring a song from Wicked. Schwartz describes how, in the musical A Chorus Line, there is no “kick line” of dancers until almost at the end of the show, making the audience wait for an obviously obligatory event until the last possible moment.

So I started thinking about this new song, and the fact that we now had Idina Menzel in the cast as Elphaba. People who knew her would be expecting her to come out and do this great big belt. I thought that as long as I was writing this song again [he was writing a replacement for an existing song], what if I saved the big belt until the very end of the song? So I really tailored the song to Idina in that way. Notice that the big belt section comes way late, at the very end of “The Wizard and I.”

Schwartz’s songwriting process is in many respects a highly conscious one. This aspect of his technique brings to mind Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930), who has said that he doesn’t have the instinct to just sit down and write a song – he needs a situation for it to come out of. Schwartz works on a show the same way:

For me, when I am working on a musical number for a show, the story I am trying to tell comes first. It is a little like an acting exercise – I try to become the character, think about what the character’s action is (what he or she is trying to ‘do’ at that moment), and then express myself as that character would.

However, Schwartz may or may not be restricted to that way of working. He has released two very fine solo albums of songs, only three of which were written for shows. (He has co-writers on a number of the songs; collaboration is a frequent aspect of his work.)

The album Reluctant Pilgrim was released in 1997. I don’t know how it sold, but the title of the second album, Uncharted Territory (2005) may be an indication. (Schwartz, incidentally, has a career background as a record producer.)

I mention these albums, full of lovely songs that would make excellent material for cabaret artists, to point out a third aspect of Schwartz’s career:

His musical style has been the biggest obstacle to full acceptance of his work. When the book Defying Gravity was published, in 2008, Schwartz had not yet been inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame (he has now) – this for someone who by that year was clearly one of the most successful Broadway artists of all time.

Why? Largely, I suspect, from an initial impression that he wasn’t really a “Broadway” composer at all but a “popular” composer. He is, of course, both, but many of his primary early influences were pop rather than musical theater – he feels particularly indebted to the singer-songwriter Laura Nyro (1947-1997) and the Motown songs written by the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland (Brian Holland, b. 1941; Lamont Dozier, b. 1941; and Eddie Holland, b. 1939). 

It should be mentioned that another of his childhood listening enthusiasms was opera! However, when composing the score of Godspell, a popular music sensibility was called for. That score has been criticized for its lack of sophistication in comparison with, for example “golden age” Broadway musicals. This criticism ignores the score’s intent – a mix of pop and folk music is what it’s meant to be.

The score for Pippin also is highly pop-influenced (and its cast album, produced by Schwartz and released by Motown Records, was a big seller); the same is true for compositions in subsequent shows, but Schwartz is not limited to one musical style. His reviewers, however, have often been limited to one musical vision.

The battle between “popular” (often meaning “rock”) and “Broadway” music is no longer worth fighting after the success of the rock-oriented musicals Hair (1967) and Rent (1996), and in an era when the most successful musical of our time – Hamilton, which opened in 2015 – is predominantly rap. [See Kirk’s article “Theatrical and Popular Songs,” posted on ROT on 2 October 2011. ~Rick] The times they were a-changin’ – to quote a Bob Dylan song – when Schwartz emerged on the musical theater scene, and they continue to change.

Schwartz contributed to that process, and in addition his work has held up well on its own. For me, his songs are such an integral part of my musical knowledge that I can hardly imagine doing without them.

Defying Gravity is rich in detail; I have only skimmed the surface of a book invaluable for anyone interested in Steven Schwartz, in musical theater, in Broadway lore, and in the writing process. It’s a book worthy of its subjects.

[Kirk  told me that when he received Schwartz’s Defying Gravity from Amazon, he “happened to open the front cover of the book and found that he’d signed it.”  What a nice little lagniappe!

[I told you above how I responded to Schwartz’s Pippin, and you see that Kirk and I essentially agree in our assessments of that ground-breaking musical.  I might add, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I don’t respond to Godspell quite as enthusiastically.  Whenever I’ve attended a performance of Godspell, I always feel like I don’t really belong there—as if I’ve wandered surreptitiously into a church and sooner or later, everyone’ll turn around and point at me and shout: “INTERLOPER!”  (You see, I’m not Christian.  The gospels are someone else’s holy texts, but not mine.)  Jesus Christ Superstar makes me feel similarly uneasy—plus I’ve never been crazy for Andrew Lloyd Webber.)]