Opening Doors

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert L. McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
American Dream ◽  
West Side ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
Anyone Can Whistle ◽  
Rodgers And Hammerstein ◽  
Structure Of Knowledge

This chapter examines Sondheim’s musicals from West Side Story to Company. West Side Story and Gypsy mark both an apotheosis of the Rodgers and Hammerstein aesthetic and an introduction of postmodern styles and ideas into the musical. West Side Story is concerned with the operations of power and the reproduction of ideology. Gypsy presents a theatricalization of the American Dream, turning it into a series of images without substance. In Forum a trickster protagonist generates multiple, clashing realities. Anyone Can Whistle examines the problem of identity construction. Company dispenses with plot and thus examines narrative as a structure of knowledge and identity. The play’s drama is generated by the tension between its own cyclical structure and the goal-driven linear narrative implied by marriage.

Sondheim's ‘Sweeney Todd’—The Case for the Defence

Tempo ◽  
1984 ◽  
pp. 19-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carey Blyton
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
Stephen Sondheim ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
Anyone Can Whistle ◽  
The Way

As both lyricist and composer, Stephen Sondheim has proved to be the most original and innovative force on Broadway since the late 1950's, when he first attracted attention as the lyricist for some of the songs in Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957), including ‘Maria’ and ‘Tonight’. Few composers for the musical stage have such a record of success as Sondheim. In addition to these lyrics for Bernstein, he also wrote all the lyrics for Jule Styne's Gypsy (1959); then, as composer as well as lyricist, he wrote a number of musicals over the next two decades: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Pacific Overtures (1976), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Merrily We Roll Along (1981).

WEST SIDE STORY 1981

1981 ◽  
Vol 36 (7-8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Weber
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
West Side Story

Historical Sound-Film Presentation and the Closed-Curtain Roadshow Overture

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Ben Winters
Keyword(s):  
Gone With The Wind ◽  
West Side ◽  
Sound Film ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
Film Presentation ◽  
Historically Informed Performance ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines historical presentational practices of sound film and, specifically, the extra music added to roadshow versions of films between the 1930s and 1960s—including Gone with the Wind, West Side Story, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It argues that such added music—which included overtures, intermission, entr’acte, and exit music—when combined with controlled theatrical lighting and use of the curtain, might have prompted a number of different cinematic listening experiences among audiences. It suggests that an understanding of these historical presentational practices might call into question comfortable assumptions about the nature of sound-film ontology and the relationship between cinema as “Text” and cinema as “Event”—issues that resonate with the discourse surrounding historically informed performance (HIP) practice in musicology.

West Side Story

On Sondheim ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 37-43
Author(s):  
Ethan Mordden
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
West Side Story

The Maestro Pivots

Dearest Lenny ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 56-60
Author(s):  
Mari Yoshihara
Keyword(s):  
Music Industry ◽  
American Music ◽  
European Market ◽  
Wide Audience ◽  
West Side ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
West Side Story ◽  
New Phase

With the arrival of Harry Kraut, Leonard Bernstein’s company Amberson entered a new phase of corporate enterprises that extended the maestro’s reach even further across the globe. Ironically, the enormous commercial success of West Side Story, the most American of Bernstein’s works, began to cause problems with some stakeholders, and Bernstein began to gradually pivot to the European market for publishing, recording, and films and videos. Bernstein joined the roster of the recording artists of Deutsche Grammophon upon the end of the contract with Columbia Records. The pivot exemplified the changes in the American music industry in the 1970s which made it increasingly challenging even for a musician of Bernstein’s caliber to conduct business in a way that was true to his artistic goals, economically sustainable, and culturally meaningful to a wide audience.

West Side Story

2017 ◽  
pp. 125-140
Author(s):  
Loïc Wacquant
Keyword(s):  
West Side ◽  
West Side Story
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