The Giants of Broadway

". . .so I flew to Britain to meet Andrew, and he played me the songs he'd written for a new musical. I realized that any lyrics I created would hardly be relevant; those melodies stood on their own. Well, our collaboration didn't work out, but the pieces I'd heard later made their way into Phantom of the Opera. He just transplanted and reused them all!"

I got this anecdote straight from Richard Maltby as I sat across from him yesterday in his apartment on the Upper East Side. And yes, the Andrew he mentioned is none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber--that polarizing pop king of melody. Now that I've worked with both Charles and Richard for a few months, I forget sometimes that they've been at the very heart of the Broadway scene for years, and that they've mingled with all the greats. They just seem like normal people to me--very talented, a little quirky, but normal.

Every morning, I see Charles shuffle by in his bathrobe on his way to the kitchen for breakfast. "Good morning!" he says. Then he eats his cereal, tinkers around on the piano, and sits through a few informal meetings. I think of him as my very-accomplished grandpa. Sometimes it takes walking into his modest composition studio and seeing the show advertisements papering his walls to remember what a legend he is. (It's good to know that even giants are just people.)

Like Charles, Richard has framed playbills from past successes hanging on his walls. I'm sitting in his apartment, running through fragments of new songs for North and South--the latest Strouse/Maltby collaboration. I've become the middle woman in this project--taking the bits of melody and harmony that Charles hands me and, under the direction of Maltby, shaping them into something whole and cohesive. Maltby admits that he has no musical training and has never touched a piano, but he has a good ear, and he's been in the business long enough to know what works and what doesn't.

As we discuss a number that Charles still needs to compose, Maltby hums me a "dummy melody" that he's written himself. "I'm no composer, but I think this captures the spirit of the song. Transcribe it, throw some chords in, and we'll see what Charles thinks." I've never heard of a dummy melody before.

"Have you written lyrics for this?" I ask.

"Not yet."

"Will Charles set the melody?"

"Not necessarily. I just want him to hear what I'm hearing in terms of style and mood."

The melody sounds pretty good to me--kind of folksy and Copland-esque. I express a hesitant concern, though, about stepping so boldly into what seems like Charles' exclusive domain as composer.

"This happens all the time," Maltby reassures me. "I write lyrics; Charles changes them; I change them again. Charles writes music; I change it; he changes again. Hammerstein used to hand Rodgers dummy melodies all the time. It keeps the collaborators on the same page."

I ask if, in the Maltby-Strouse collaboration, music or lyrics come first.

"Lyrics never come before music," Maltby says. "I think that, when the melody is strong and each musical gesture fits the character and climate of the scene, the words should just support. When the drama is contained in the music itself, the words enhance the music--not the other way around."

He describes listening to an early recording of Claude-Michel Schönberg playing the piano and singing the songs from Les Miserables. "The man was a terrible singer," says Maltby, grinning, "and he was singing in French! But although I didn't understand a word, I understood the story. I even understood the characters. Every nuance was contained in the music itself."

He tells me that he listened to the two demo tracks that I sent him from my own musical, The Weaver of Raveloe. Nervously, I ask him for his general impressions. He takes in some air and lets it out, his face growing thoughtful. "You know, I liked them. I think they're quite good. The writing is solid, and the rhymes are clever. I just feel like the lyrics upstage the music a little. Each character sings his bit of the song, and it's very nice, but I don't sense enough contrast between characters and moods. It feels old-fashioned."

"Well, it is an old-fashioned story. . ."

"Yes, but I don't mean that the story is old-fashioned. I mean that the music is written as it was back in the day when composers were the docile servants of the the book-writers. All that changed when the Brits came along with their bang-you-over-the-head melodies. Andrew's the master of that. Now audiences need quicker change, contrast, emotion. If you're the composer and the lyricist, be like Sondheim, and let the music do exactly what you want it to. Don't lock it in place with meter. Let it take you to interesting and unexpected places."

I never expected Richard Maltby, a well-known writer and self-proclaimed non-musician, to praise my writing and criticize my music, but there you have it! I think he's right; my theater music tends to stay conservatively locked in one place. When I compose classically, I usually have the reverse problem: I leap around too much! Now why can't I flip-flop the two or at least strike a balance? It's something to consider.

Speaking of Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, I'm going to see Bernadette Peters in Sondheim's Follies tonight. The production is supposed to be big and classy and splashy. I can't wait! Then, on Monday, I've decided to give the longest-running Broadway show a try--a show that has been around as long as I've been alive: Phantom of the Opera! I'll let you know what I think.

I'm really starting to enjoy waiting in these early lines for student rush tickets. Apparently Rent was the first show to offer an early-morning rush line, and the venture was so successful in generating an enthusiastic theater-going public that most shows since have jumped on the bandwagon. There is a definite energy among those stalwart souls who wake with the sun to vie for discount and lottery tickets. I got to know all the people in line for Sister Act tickets so well that, even though I only ordered a single ticket for myself, I felt like I was watching the show with a bunch of friends when I returned that night. As for the production itself, there were parts that felt a little sacrilegious, but on the whole, it ended up being sweeter, more heartfelt, and more uplifting than I'd expected. The last few scenes brought tears to my eyes, and the manic energy of the final number made me grin through those tears! And once again, Alan Menken (composer of all the greatest Disney musicals) has produced another hit score. (This works FAR better as a musical than as a movie, by the way. I liked this version much more than the 1991 movie.)

And the race to see every major Broadway show before I leave town continues. . .