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WEEK 10

THE ENGLISH MUSICAL

INTRODUCTION—READ THIS CAREFULLY BEFORE THE CLASS

This lecture is about one of the most popular and successful branches of English culture: the MUSICAL. The use of the noun “musical” to refer to a particular kind of theatrical work with songs and dances is quite new (early 1900s). Nevertheless, this kind of theatre first emerged in the late 1600s, when it developed both in alliance with, and in competition with, Italian OPERA.

An OPERA is essentially rather like a play, but it is sung (in whole or part). The music is used to develop the story. The music may, for example, emphasize the happiness, the sadness, the violence, or the romance of the story. As individual characters sing, the music helps express the emotions that they are experiencing.

A MUSICAL, by contrast, is rather like a play to which bits of music have been added. Before 1970, most of the most important “action” in a musical was spoken. The songs and choruses sometimes work in the same way as the songs and choruses in an opera; but they are often designed simply to interrupt the story in an enjoyable way. The music is less dramatic and more decorative.

Make sure you understand the following words: satire, highwayman, vice, cockney.

Part One: How it all began

In the late 1500s OPERA was created in Italy, to imitate what Ancient Greek theatre was supposed to have been like. Early opera was based on the idea of recitative, a kind of singing halfway between speech and song. This was broken up with choruses. At this period, English theatre already made some use of music, and many plays included songs and dances.

In 1656 The Siege of Rhodes, the first English opera, was performed in London. It was all-sung, like contemporary Italian opera. However English audiences, who were used to mainly spoken theatre, disliked this style of performance. In the 1660s and 70s English writers and composers developed a sort of compromise theatrical work, where all the most important parts would be spoken (by actors), but in which there were also many songs, choruses, and dances (usually sung and danced by specialized performers). This style became very popular.

Part Two: Competing with the Italians

In the early 1700s Italian operas, sung by Italians, started to be performed in London. These were mostly written by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759). Italian operas generally told stories from ancient Greek and Roman literature, ancient history, or the romance literature of the middle ages. They were performed by highly trained singers and musicians. Italian opera soon became enormously popular with the upper classes in Britain, and became an important part of cultural life in London for the next 200 years.

In response to the popularity of Italian opera, English writers and composers continued to develop a kind of music theatre which combined speech and song, and in which actors would now sing. The first great success in this tradition was The Beggar’s Opera (1728) by John Gay (1685-1732), which has sometimes been called “the first musical.”

It is a satirical story of an unscrupulous highwayman, Macheath, who spends most of his life seducing women, but who is eventually betrayed by his “friends” and sentenced to death. It contained no new music, but Gay wrote new words for many popular English tunes that were designed to be easy to sing by actors without professional musical training. One of these tunes is “Greensleeves.”

George Frideric Handel

Giulio Cesare (1724)

I shall lament my fate,

so cruel and so harsh,

while I have life in my breast.

John Gay

The Beggar’s Opera (1728)

Since Laws were made for every degree,

To curb vice in others, as well as me,

I wonder we han’t better company,

Upon Tyburn Tree!

But Gold from Law can take out the sting;

And if rich men like us were to swing,

’Twould thin the land, such numbers to string

Upon Tyburn Tree!

From the 1720s “musicals” generally told stories set in the modern world that were designed to appeal to the growing middle-class audience.

Part Three: The Relationship with Popular Music

Since the time of The Beggar’s Opera, one of the key questions facing the British (and later the American) musical is: what sort of relationship should the music in a musical have with the popular music of the period in which the musical is created? In the past, many of the most popular songs came from musicals. For example, “Home Sweet Home” from Henry Bishop’s Clari; or, The Maid of Milan (1823) was probably the most popular song of the entire 1800s. More recently, “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita (1976) was another huge international hit. But should a musical simply reproduce the sounds of popular music, or should it aim to offer a higher-level listening experience? Should it be closer to the world of classical music and opera? We’ll look at two very different answers to these questions.

The most successful British musical in the middle 1900s was Me and My Girl (1937) by Noel Gay (1898-1954). By 29 November 1945 it had reached its 5,000th performance, a world record that would last till the 1990s, when it was finally beaten by Cats. In 1957 it was described as “probably the most successful comedy in the history of the British theatre.” Gay developed a popular style of music from the “music hall” entertainments that were mainly popular with the British working class. Me and My Girl tells the story of how a cockney market trader called Bill Snibson is discovered to be the only son of Lord Hareford, an aristocrat. His “new” relations want him to start acting like a “gentleman,” and to break up with his cockney girlfriend, Sally Smith … The show became most popular for its working-class dance routine, “The Lambeth Walk.”

Lambeth—you’ve never seen

The skies ain’t blue

The grass ain’t green
It hasn’t got the Mayfair touch
But that don’t matter very much.
We play a different way,
Not like you

But a bit more gay
When we have a bit of fun—
Oh, Boy!
Any time you’re Lambeth way,
Any evening—any day,
You’ll find us all doin’ the Lambeth Walk.
Ev’ry little Lambeth gal
With her little Lambeth pal,
You’ll find us all doin’ the Lambeth Walk.
Everything free and easy,
Do as you darn well pleasey,
Why don’t you make your way there,
Go there, stay there,
Once you get down Lambeth way,
Every evening, every day,
You’ll find yourself doin’ the Lambeth Walk.

The most successful British musical in the middle 1900s was The Phantom of the Opera (1986) by Andrew Lloyd Webber (1948-). It is the longest-running musical ever in New York and currently the second longest-running in London. Between 2006 and 2014 it was classed as “the most financially successful entertainment event” ever.

The story of The Phantom of the Opera is set in the Paris Opera House in the 1880s, and most of the characters are directly connected to the world of opera. Not surprisingly, then, Lloyd Webber chose to compose this musical in a deliberately “operatic” style, suggestive of a sort of “high culture” experience.