A Tribute to Jerry BOck

A TRIBUTE TO JERRY BOCK

When I heard the brilliant composer Jerry Bock had died last week, I made my own private listening memorial: I programmed a play list of his songs on my iPod -- “I Love A Cop,” “Politics and Poker,” “What Makes Me Love Him?” “Will He Like Me?” “Vanilla Ice Cream” and course the entire score to Fiddler. What joy he gave me, and I know he will continue to give me long into the future.

Fiddler was the first complete Vocal Score my parents bought me; I must have been about eight years old. I was so excited to have the entire score and not just the pathetic-published-for-the-non-professional-vocal-selections, I couldn’t possibly go to school the day the score arrived. I didn’t even have to fake my temperature by sticking the thermometer in the lamp. I was so emotionally overwrought, I ran a fever. I needed to play through the entire show, including I Just Heard, not learn long division.

With no personal stories to tell about Bock, I choose here instead to concentrate on his music; and not just on any song, but one of the great theater songs of all time, “If I Were a Rich Man.” Some may argue that a poor dairyman would never use the subjunctive tense, and it should be, wrong according to grammarians, but correct according to character: “If I Was A Rich Man,” like “If Mamma Was Married.” But I think it’s perfect the way it is, and I know the brilliant lyricist Sheldon Harnick could easily explain his choice.

On to the music, and what glorious music it is:

The melody, on the words “If I were a rich man,” outlines a falling fifth: the “if” down to a “man.” A fifth is the distance of five steps from a C to a G going up; to hear it your head, think of the opening statement of the Star Wars theme. That fifth goes up, but this fifth goes down. Instead of hurling towards outer space, this falling fifth bears the weight of the world, the falling world, the tired world of a dairyman as he sings.

Then comes the quasi-Hasidic Jewish riff, the Daidle-deedle section. Zero Mostel, and most subsequent Teveys, have had great fun playing around with this section, but what I find wonderful is that after the tired, world-weary falling fifth, the music starts to climb upwards. Slowly, cautiously, but ever upward to heaven. Yet, the journey is not a pleasant one. Just before the melody would reach its destination, it falls into a bluesy note called a seventh. That gives the whole melodic line its color, and because it’s only a seventh and not the eighth, which would be an octave and feel resolved, the listeners feels the yearning. Bernstein used that interval of a seventh to great success (as did Beethoven!) in the song “Somewhere.” That “a” in the lyric “There’s a place for us” is set on the seventh, the note of the blues, the note of pain.

A note about the accompaniment, or the harmony: the song starts out in a lilting Broadway “four” feel, everything major, sunny, just a poor dairyman dreaming his little dream. But then five bars in, instead of coming back to the jaunty major, Bock slips into a minor mode (“All day long I’d biddy-biddy-bum”). Everything about the harmony suggests we should simply return to the major mode, but no, this is where the master composer shines: he surprises us. It is, as Bernstein used to say, completely surprising and yet, completely inevitable.

But quick as you can say, “Sounds crazy, no?” we’re back to major, the second “A” section, the repeat of the tune with the lyric, “Wouldn’t have to work hard.” All sunny again. As if nothing just happened. But of course, at the end of the phrase, Bock slips back to the minor; but then the music instanteously “rights” itself and goes back to the major. Major, minor, major, minor. Unsettling to say the least. How strange the change from major to minor, indeed.

Now we arrive at the bridge, or the release; the part of the song that’s a contrasting part to the first statement of the song. Lo and behold, the minor mode wasn’t a little hiccup at all. This release section is about as minor as it gets. What I like even more about the harmony here is the melody. Tevye wants his dream so badly and sees it so clearly, there is virtually no movement in the melody at all! It’s as if he has parked himself firmly in the future and not even a Pogrom can pry him from his place. “Big tall house with rooms by the dozen” and “Right in the middle of the town,” are virtually only two pitches with some embellishments. That’s a far cry (and a sublime aural relief) from the falling fifth and the outlined seventh of the opening.

So, here we have this minor-sounding section and then he repeats it, three times. But the third time -- wait for it -- miracle of miracles, it’s in major! “I’d fill my yard with ducks and turkeys and geese, etc., is the same minor release turned on its head by being major. Is it because Tevye is taking his fantasy even further, this dream of wealth becoming more and more a reality in his mind and thus more and more major?

But no. At “squawking just as noisily as they can,” the song returns to minor and the first complete section of the song finishes in a minor mode.

Now two questions arise: can the lay audience hear this the first time, or even the 100th time they hear the song? Of course not. But it’s all there in the music and adds to the depth, the breadth and the genius of the piece, a reason why Bock’s music appeals to both the lay audience and the sophisticated listener. Question two: did Bock put all this in, or was it an unconscious accident? Answer: it doesn’t matter. It’s there, and as Freud said, “There are no accidents.” Although he probably wasn’t talking about Musical Theater.

The next part of the song proceeds as one might expect, a direct repeat of the two “A” sections and the release, but of course, with additional verses of brilliant Harnick lyrics. A bit of an aside about Broadway lyricists and style: I would say that in 90% of the operas written between 1600 and 1800, when the “song” style operas were in fashion, if there was a musical repeat of whole sections, and there often were, the lyric would also repeat. The melody would be ornamented but the same words would be sung, which led to a stagnant dramatic line, no matter how gorgeous the tune. It’s a particular Broadway invention to change the lyric the second time, thankfully, and move the plot forward to keep the audience interested even as the music repeats. (Another aside: I’ve worked with a few play directors who are attempting their first musicals. Every one of them insists upon trying to cut out second “A” sections of songs, even WITH a new lyric. It’s epidemic. Play directors can’t understand the value of the repeated chorus. As Yenta would say, “Oy!”)

On to my favorite part of the song:

We’ve heard two very complete sections. The song could end here. It would be fine as is, or maybe Bock could have added a coda. But nothing in the previous sections prepares the audience for what happens now.

Suddenly, the entire rhythm of the song breaks down. No more jaunty, Broadway lilting four, no more subtle playing with major, minor, or falling fifths. There’s a completely new section. It’s almost as if the music (and Tevye) is falling prostrate on the floor, begging God to listen.

This is an out-and-out operatic recitative in the middle of a Broadway “want” song. Only Tevye, with his relationship to God, could command this kind of music. And only a great composer like Bock could write it. First we get two measures of stentorian eight notes with a little trill added at the end, Tevye walking into the center of town holding court. Now, listen to the bass line after “fawn on me.” With every chord the bass line plummets another step, like Tevye’s power is filtering through every corner of his little shtetl. Another little Kelzmeric cadenza tops off this section. This writing is truly amazing, a combination of Mozart recitative and Richard Strauss harmonies.

Just when we’re exhausted from the ingenuity, and we figure we’re about to return to the beginning sections, there is another surprise. With “And it won’t make one bit of difference” we are not at the expected first bit of the song but smack-dab back in the release, the third section of the release at that, the major section. Surprising but inevitable. As Tevye sings about his great wish to sit in the “synagogue and pray,” the music is the gorgeous section of the release in the major mode.

What is next? Well, finally, we are back to home base, back to where we’ve started. The music returns to the opening statement, falling fifth and cantorial chant. In four minutes or so we’ve explored every aspect of Tevye’s character. And all through music. No wonder this song is such a joy for performer and audience alike.

Of course, given Bock’s brilliance, he has one more trick up his sleeve. Instead of ending the song, he takes the penultimate phrase of the song, “Lord, who made the lion and the lamb,” and repeats it. Three times. A final prayer, perhaps? A final nod to the minor mode? But this time, the minor is really hitting home because it’s so aggressively repetitive. The rhythm stops, the chords sustain, Tevye insists, cajoles, pleads. What’s next?

Why, a jaunty, Broadway refrain in major for the final note and ride-out. The major mode has triumphed, Tevye has had his apotheosis and we’re right back to where we started. But upon what a journey Mr. Bock and Mr. Harnick have taken us. Gratias.

Glen Roven, four-time Emmy Winner, recently had his show Pandora’s Box produced at NYMF. He will make his third appearance at Carnegie Hall this Spring accompanying Bass-Baritone Daniel Okulitch who is singing Roven’s classical music.

The Bunny and I in the Times

Spare Times: For Children
By LAUREL GRAEBER


THE PREMIERE OF ‘GOODNIGHT MOON,' WITH ‘THE RUNAWAY BUNNY'

A beloved bedtime story for generations of children, "Goodnight Moon" unfolds in "a great green room." So it seems fitting that the tale will come to life on Sunday in a place New Yorkers might consider the greatest, greenest room of all: Central Park.

The park is the setting for the premiere of Glen Roven's "Goodnight Moon, a Lullaby for Piano and Orchestra," his musical reimagining of Margaret Wise Brown's 1947 book in which everything from a tiny mouse to the distant stars receives its own affectionate evening farewell. The young musicians of the Interschool Symphony, the most advanced division of the InterSchool Orchestras of New York, will play the 10-minute piece, part of a Mother's Day concert also featuring "The Runaway Bunny: A Concerto for Reader, Violin and Orchestra," Mr. Roven's 20-minute interpretation of a 1942Brown book. (The program, lasting slightly over an hour, will include a "play-along" of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"; audience members are encouraged to bring their own instruments.)

Mr. Roven structured his pieces differently because " ‘Goodnight Moon' is really a direct narrative between a parent and a child," he said. "I really wanted the parent to sing the child to sleep." He conceived "The Runaway Bunny" as more like "Peter and the Wolf." "I thought I'd have the bunny's adventures musicalized," he said, choosing episodes in which the bunny announces its intentions to flee - as a fish, as a mountain rock, as a trapeze artist.

For "Goodnight Moon," "I set every word," he said, "all 300 of them," using his orchestral writing to mimic the tale's atmosphere. At the end, he said, "the house disappears, and the kid's kind of floating in the universe, talking to the clouds and the air."

The stories' allure has attracted adult luminaries: the soprano Lauren Flanigan, for whom "Goodnight Moon" was written, will sing it, and the actress Kate Mulgrew will read "The Runaway Bunny." The absent star is Brown herself (1910-52), whose brief life Mr. Roven will commemorate by releasing a live recording of the park performances on his new GPR record label on May 23, her 100th birthday. (Above, Adrian Benepe, the city parks commissioner, introducing last year's InterSchool concert.)

Those who miss "Goodnight Moon" in Central Park can hear it on May 19 under very different circumstances: Mark Stone will sing it in Carnegie Hall. "This has to be for daddies too," Mr. Roven said. "So I have a baritone version."

(Instrument "petting zoo" at 2:30 p.m.; concert at 3:30; the Bandshell, midpark at 70th Street, 212-410-0370, isorch.org; free.) LAUREL GRAEBER

AMAY-ZING MAY

This May could be the best month ever for me.

It's really kind of amazing, all these projects.

I'm writing this for myself.

A friend of mine said to remember all this next time I want to jump out the window. I told him, "It's your job to remind me. Ha!"

I think I have to say that May started on Friday at 9:30 AM with an interview with the NY Times about the RunBun and GOODNIGHT MOON concert in the Park. The writer really knew about the concert and my thoughts about the piece, etc. But it was the times. Amazing, actually. I thought for sure that the Times would do a piece on Poetic License. But I'm grateful for the Run Bun push.

Saturday was the Poly Prep auction. It took 30 years but I'm finally popular in High School.

Today was a rehearsal with Kate Mulgrew. She was wonderful. She was pleased that it was rather easy to learn. Naturally she knows and loves the book. Kate is booked on NBC Sunday and Lauren is booked on ABC Sunday. Wow. Kate's show wanted some B roll so we shot the rehearsal and after she left we edited a great minute piece. Then I made a scratch track for Lauren to rehearse to. Ray is out in LA making the Orch track.

Tomorrow I go down to Philly to do my Concert with Mark Stone. Very exciting. The program says THE PHILADELPHIA OPERA presents ... Nice again. This is our pre-Carnegie Show that we're using as a rehearsal. Our last rehearsal went well. I think it's finally coming.

I come back Wed PM to hear the ISO play the pieces for the first time. Sam told me i was going very well and he particularly liked the Goodnight Moon orchestration. Whew. I can't wait to hear it. I'm nervous! But everyone has said it's sounding good.


Thursday is a private presentation of POETIC LICENSE the Stage Version. I'm VERY excited. Joanna Gleason and Chris Sarandon as well as Donald Corren are doing it. What can I say. Hallie and Andrew are singing 10 Songs from the Underground. This actually could work!

Saturday the 8th is the Final Dress of RunBun GNM but we're going to be recording it. I hope we can get it nice and clean at rehearsal. Today, we also recorded Kate's lines very cleanly so if we need to re can lay in all her dialogue.

And SUNDAY is the CONCERT IN THE PARK. With all the Publicity, there could be a HUGE turnout! I hope so!

The next day we start at Sound Associates mixing and mastering. The art work is at the printers, it's available to be pre-ordered on AM. I hope to ship the masters to the printers on Tuesday. We can then have them on the 17th and available to be reviewed and played on the air. Max, who is doing an amazing job with Poetic License, thinks we'll do very well with this. He's also getting tons of air play for the sony cd on mother's day.

Then I can practice practice practice and get to Carnegie Hall on May 19th. That's another career highlight. All my own music at Carnegie. Amazing.

And 5 days later, we do a PANDORA reading. WE FINALLY GOT THE RIGHTS. Kirk Douglas is coming, George and Jolene are coming. Kerry and Cady are doing it as well as James Patrick.

So that's the month. Best month of my life career wise? Maybe.

The Bunny, the Moon and Me

Sadly, for space, I had to cut my own article from the liner notes of the new CD of Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny. Tant pis. Never mind, they will appear in the program for the concert. Hopefully other places. But here it is:

The Bunny, The Moon and Me

By Glen Roven


Sadly, I did not grow up with The Runaway Bunny or Goodnight Moon. I’m sure I’d be a happier, more well adjusted person now had I read Margaret Wise Brown’s masterpieces as a toddler—but then I might not have embraced these two books with the fervor I did, discovering them in my middle age.

The first time I heard of The Runaway Bunny was when I watched the movie Wit. In the film, Emma Thompson, a brilliant academician consumed with cancer, lies dying in her hospital bed when her kindly first-grade teacher pays her a visit. The teacher has brought The Runaway Bunny, and although Thompson is deep in a coma, the teacher nevertheless begins to read: “Once there was little bunny who wanted to run away.”

I listened. And I was hooked.

As a composer, I keep my ears poised, always alert to any inspiration, and it took about a second to realize that here was a story to investigate further. By the next day, I’d read the book—it only takes a couple of minutes, after all—and by the time the Mother Bunny offered her famous carrot, I knew I had my piece. In fact, the music was swirling through my mind even as I closed the cover.

I knew instantly that a violin soloist would portray the Bunny, with his violin-like impulse to “hop,” “jump,” “misbehave,” and certainly “run away.” I also knew that though I was intrigued by the notion of a female narrator, the primary adventures would be developed entirely in musical terms—so that, for example, when my bunny swims as a trout in the stream, it would be courtesy of the woodwinds and harp, as well as, of course, that solo violin. In this way, my notion of a simple composition for orchestra, voice and solo violin quickly evolved into one of music’s most noble and flexible forms: the violin concerto.

Undoubtedly the greatest pleasure I’ve gotten from this piece is having the children in the audience tell me what the Bunny is up to. For example, as the composer I was surprised to learn that in the Circus segment, the bunny rides in one of those cars packed with clowns and the bunny is the last out of the door. I find this a profound and moving observation. Even the most sophisticated computer cannot make the leap from a violin melody to envisioning a bunny in a car full of clowns. But kids do this as a matter of course! There is no greater reward for a composer: having an audience respond.

***

My selection of Goodnight Moon was more circuitous. After my first encounter with Margaret Wise Brown, I turned, of course, to her many other books. My violin concerto was already enjoying a bit of success; it was recorded by SONY and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra with Brooke Shields narrating, and for the American premiere at Carnegie Hall, I conducted, with Glenn Close providing the narration. Symphonies around the country were asking for a companion piece.

The obvious choice was Goodnight Moon. But there was a problem. I didn’t understand it. Here I was, an adult man, with no comprehension of a book every nursery child could recite from memory. I had no idea why it was so successful, nor why it spoke so passionately and deeply to children the world over, and in my desperation, I shared this with my sister, a new mother, who whispered in some embarrassment, “I don’t get it either.” (Clearly, she did not want such blasphemy to banish her from the 76th Street playground). Nevertheless, my nephew Myles loved it. Like every other pre-schooler, Myles demanded it be read each night like clockwork, and not only once; Goodnight Moon had to be read over and over and over until he fell blissfully asleep, dreaming, no doubt, of that bowl full of mush. Hush!

Still, I couldn’t write what I didn’t know, understand, or even like. So I read hundreds of other children’s books, hoping to find that same spark that had inspired my concerto. Nothing.

Because of my concerto, I met Leonard Marcus, who is not only one of the world’s great authorities on children’s literature (see his liner notes), but also the author of Awakened by the Moon, The Biography of Margaret Wise Brown. In that book he devotes over thirty pages to Goodnight Moon, a story of barely 300 words, placing the narrative in the context of the progressive Bank Street School where Ms. Brown trained as a teacher—and where the school’s youngest students formed her very first audience. It was this explanation that opened my eyes:

“Goodnight Moon is a here-and-now story, but one supercharged with emotion, with a freewheeling sense of the fantastic as an aspect of the everyday.”

After reading Leonard’s book, I got it. This was a book told from the point of view of a child: a child who discovers new things every day, a child who marvels at a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of a cow jumping over the moon. And it all takes place in the child’s own universe. Which happens to be a “Great Green Room.”

Finally I heard music in my head. I knew I could create that great green room in the orchestra: a magnificent comforting space where a child feels blissfully safe and warm. I would create the kittens, the mittens and the quiet old lady (who is pictorially, of course, the Mother Bunny). And I would create the explosive moment when the great green room bursts open and every grown or young listener wishes goodnight to the stars and goodnight to the air and goodnight to noises everywhere.

Among my many scores, songs and orchestral compositions, these are my two favorites, the pieces of which I am most proud. Just like the cow, I am over the moon to have the great Lauren Flanigan sing the world premiere of Goodnight Moon. I’m thrilled to have legendary Kate Mulgrew lend her husky contralto to the concerto and give voice to The Runaway Bunny. But most of all, I’m ecstatic to join the world’s community of children in appreciating—at last!—the great Margaret Wise Brown. Happy Birthday!

Dylan Thomas and Geraint Wyn Davies

GPR Records finished recording most of its second album: In My Craft or Sullen Art: Poems and Stories by Dylan Thomas Read by Geraint Wyn Davies.

He was magnificent. What a performer. And what poetry.
We recorded the album in about 6 hours.

The poetry is beautiful. Some of it incredibly dense. But Ger made beautiful sense out of it. One of the densest, Authors Prologue, while almost impossible to decipher on the page, reads like Mary Had a Little Lamb when Ger read it. So Lovely.

I can't wait to get two woman to read two poems. And then add some music. And then we'll release.

And another one bites the dust.

Great Press from Best American Poetry

March 31, 2010

So That's How it Should Sound!

Hearing trained actors read poetry is a great pleasure. Actors approach the poems as scripts, and understand how to deliver the lines so that even if they don't make logical sense, they sound beautiful. Listening to an actor read a beloved poem can be like encountering it for the first time. Hearing an unfamiliar poem read beautifully can make one want to find the poem on the page. For the CD Poetic License, Glen Roven enlisted 100 performers to read 100 poems. You'll find some glorious old chestnuts on the disc, and there are surprises, too. See if you can match the actor with his or her poem:

1. Michael Cerveris 1. New Yorkers, by Edward Field
2. Kathleen Turner 2. Love looks not with the eyes by Shakespeare
3. JoBeth Williams 3. Correspondence, by Ariel Dorfman
4. Christine Baranski 4. Tommy by Rudyard Kipling
5. Michael York 5. When I have fears that I may cease to be by Keats
6. Paige Davis 6. The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje

You can hear the correct pairings and more on Poetic License. Buy it here. Now.

Boston Globe Poetry Review

THEATER
Hot couple of the week
E-mail|Link|Comments (0)Posted by Louise Kennedy March 24, 2010 11:17 AM
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OK, I admit it: The first thing that hooked me on a forthcoming recording, "Poetic License: 100 Poems by 100 Performers," was the short list of said performers in the press release: "Patti LuPone, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Tyne Daly, Christine Baranski, Jason Alexander, Charles Busch, Florence Henderson..." Just seeing Busch and Henderson in the same sentence made my day. But then I looked at the list of poems and got excited -- besides the usual suspects (Shakespeare, Auden, Donne) there's a Cavafy, a Pinsky, and Kathleen Turner reading Ariel Dorfman. The 3-CD set is due out April 2 (just in time for National Poetry Month) on Amazon and iTunes, but if you can't wait, here's Jason Alexander reading "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll, apparently with the help of a whole shelf of accent tapes.
01 THE WALRUS and the CARPENTER.m4a
And here's Kathleen herself waxing throatily poetic.
02 Kathleen Turner Interview.m4a
Oh, and Busch? He reads the brilliantly theatrical "My Last Duchess" by Robert Browning. Perf