Stories, Songs, and STRIKE!

In the 1920s, operetta remained supreme and American audiences were in love with Gilbert and Sullivan – the Gershwins included. Their score for Strike Up the Band paid homage while creating songs that were sui generis and utterly American. Listen as McWhorter and Maestro John Mauceri – who, at the behest of Mrs. Ira Gershwin, conducted complete recordings of the show’s 1927 and 1930 scores – go deep on orchestration, figuration, and the miracle of the Gershwin brothers’ collaboration. 

Also discussed:

• the story of the Gershwin brothers is a great love story. They were a true union and always had each others' back.

• differences between orchestrations for operetta, jazz, and musical theater

• more strings means less seats!• a brief primer on figurations

• songwriters v composers

JOHN MCWHORTER teaches linguistics at Columbia University, as well as Western Civilization and music history. He has written extensively on issues related to linguistics, race, and other topics for Time, the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic and elsewhere, and has been a Contributing Editor at The
Atlantic. He is the author of The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, and other books, including Nine Nasty Words and Woke Racism, both of which were New York Times bestsellers. He hosts the Lexicon Valley language podcast, and has written a weekly newsletter for the New York Times since August 2021.

JOHN MAUCERI has a distinguished and extraordinary career that has brought him to the world’s greatest opera companies and symphony orchestras, the most prestigious halls of academia, and the musical stages of Broadway and Hollywood. He has taken the lead in the restoration and performance of many kinds of music and is an internationally published author. With over 70 albums to his name, he has
been entrusted with editing and restoring works controlled by the families and estates of Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Harold Arlen, Leonard Bernstein, and others. For sixteen seasons, Maestro Mauceri led the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. johnmauceri.com

SHOW NOTES/REFERENCES

• Buy tickets to MasterVoices' Strike Up the Band at Carnegie Hall on Tuesday October 29, 2024 

Music

• Hanging Around With You
• Strike Up the Band
• If I Became the President
• Homeward Bound

The MasterVoices Podcast is a project of the New York City nonprofit MasterVoices (previously The Collegiate Chorale), whose mission is using the human voice to connect, inspire, and unite. Founded in 1941 by Robert Shaw, the Chorale was one of the first integrated choruses in the United States.

Learn more at www.mastervoices.org.

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Master Voices podcast, where we invite a diverse range of masterful voices to explore subjects ranging from music and language to history and culture. This pod is a project of the New York City non-profit Master Voices, formerly known as the Collegiate Chorale, which, then as now, is dedicated to the unique power of the human voice to connect, unite and inspire. In the next three episodes, linguist New York Times writer and Gershwin enthusiast, john McCorder, delves into the world of the Gershwin and Kaufman musical Strike Up the Band. You'll hear from theater historian Lawrence Maslin, new Yorker cartoonist and editor Bob Mankoff, maestro John Malceri and Master Voice's own maestro and artistic director, ted Sperling, as they unpack the many unique facets of the wholly unique Strike Up the Band. And now, without further ado, sit back and enjoy the Master Voices podcast.

Speaker 3 1:18

Hello everybody. I am John McWhorter, I teach linguistics at Columbia and I write for the New York Times, and I have the honor of hosting this podcast about the magnificent 1927-1930 musical Strike Up the Band, with my guest, not to mention good friend, maestro John Moucheri. Maestro John Moucheri, who had the privilege about three decades ago of conducting a recording, a reconstruction of the musical, right down to full orchestrations and period style performance, and Strike Up the Band flopped in Philadelphia in 1927, and then was a success in New York in 1930. And so there are two editions. But it was, as you probably know, one of a string of dandy musicals that George and Ira Gershwin put together.

Speaker 3 2:17

In this era it was a 20s concoction. The original book was by George S Kaufman and then the 1930 book was a revision or kind of a revisal of that by Maury Riskin, and John, who I have here, can tell us about the music. We've talked about the history in one podcast, we've talked about satire in general, of which this musical was an example, in another, and now we can talk about the score. John, what do you remember about conducting these two editions of this magnificent musical?

Speaker 1 2:51

Well, you know, talking about the music is a little bit of a challenge, only because George and Ira wrote together all the time.

Speaker 1 3:05

So, taking the music out of this, taking everything else out of it and talking about the music is a little bit unfair, because, you know, lenore Gershwin said to me that she would go to bed at night and her husband and her brother-in-law would be downstairs with a card table next to the piano and they'd be up until all hours of the night writing songs. So really the lyrics and the music are kind of forged together. It's not iron, it's steel, it's that. So you kind of have to look at this achievement of these brothers and I've always been astounded at the love of these two brothers and I've always thought what a great two-character play or what a great thing to.

Speaker 1 3:54

You know, love stories we never tell that kind of love story right Of siblings, these two guys who loved each other other, who would do anything for each other. And then when george died, you know, so tragically and surprisingly, ira had to pull himself together because he lived a normal lifespan and so and you know how did he, how does he cope with that? He doesn't travel, he waits a long time and then works with court, vial and and you know, and and other things.

Speaker 1 4:27

You know, but he was never really the same yeah, no, no, of course not because he lost half of his mind and body and creativity. They were one thing. So when we talk about strike up the band, the first thing that comes to mind is the fecundity of inspiration. I mean, every number is brilliant. There isn't a dud in that score, in either score. And I believe, well, I understand that what we're going to see at Carnegie Hall and here is fundamentally 1927.

Speaker 1 5:02

The choice was made to build it on the 27 script and the 27 score and there are a lot of good reasons for that. As you said, it was a flop. But yes, and what is what do we mean by flop anymore? Because we kind of think flop means it didn't make its money. So, yes, so Porgy and Bess is a flop. You know what I mean, right? And then we have to look at the larger picture as we get so much further away from that period.

Speaker 1 5:30

The reviews for the 1927 Strike of the Band were really wonderful. They were astounded at this. The audience didn't want to come. That's all that happened. It's, you know, the closing when the audience won't come. As Irving writes, there's no business like show business. That's right, there's no business like it. And so what makes this so exciting for the audience to experience? Because George S Kaufman is coming off of Coconuts for the Marx Brothers, coming off of coconuts for the Marx Brothers, and so I think when people see it and hear it, they're going to see characters that are very familiar to them, even if they don't know the show, because there's the Margaret Dumont character, there's the Groucho character, even a Zeppo character, so you can just see that they could have. You know, I'm not the first to point this out, but the Marx Brothers could have made quite a movie of you know as opposed to you know duck soup, which is an anti-war um you know or strike up.

Speaker 3 6:31

The band had run longer. The way shows run now, they could have kept audiences coming by having margaret dumont and a couple of the marx brothers actually in the show.

Speaker 1 6:38

So so now we're talking about a show. Um owes a lot to Gilbert and Sullivan and I, and I think that that's also something that we can talk about when we talk about the music, right, About the relationship of America and Broadway to Gilbert and Sullivan. Whereas George Gershwin really hated the European operetta, so he, he, he really had no respect for Zygmunt Romberg and for, you know, he once said that Zygmunt Romberg writes shows where the audience is whistling the tunes when they walk into the theater, meaning that he's stolen all of them, as opposed to people whistling the very Broadway thing. One of the reasons why Gilbert and Sullivan was produced so many times I mean, the statistics of Gilbert and Sullivan on Broadway are pretty awesome was that at the time of Gilbert and Sullivan there was no copyright deal, so it was public domain.

Speaker 1 7:38

How many Mikados, how many HMS Pinafores, how many Pirates of Penzance's were there on Broadway? So, unlike the parody of politics in the words, there's no parody of Gilbert and Sullivan. The Gilbert and Sullivan, the American Gilbert and Sullivan of George and Ira Gershwin, is a love letter to them. I mean there's no sense that this is stupid when the answer is this is just the way you tell a story, exactly, yeah, it's not in quotation marks.

Speaker 1 8:08

No, that's right. So Fletcher's American Cheese Choral Society is very funny. It's as funny as we Are Gentlemen from Japan, or opening choruses of any Gilbert and Sullivan.

Speaker 3 8:19

John, do you feel, as I do, that it's actually better than Gilbert and Sullivan, because the music is rather richer than what Sullivan often wrote? I feel like for me, gilbert and Sullivan doesn't work until it's Strike Up the Band and Of Thee I Sing, because I'm just waiting for more chords.

Speaker 1 8:37

Oh yeah, no, I kind of love what I think they are. They, in their own way, were a little bit like the Gershwins, because I think any more complexity and there's plenty of tunes that we love I mean Tidwillow or Wandering, minstrel Eye, or, you know, I'm Called Little Buttercup this is just part of the canon of popular songs and I think the concept that they developed of a chorus responding as a you know, my favorite one being the japanese equivalent of here, yeah, yeah, which is one of the funniest things from mercado the japanese equivalent of here, here, here. Um, so I think what makes the, the gershwin part of this so interesting is that, of course, they're using American musical form in the sense of, of, of the rhythms and stuff. But I wonder if you said to the average person, what does George Gershwin sound like? They will go to Rhapsody in Blue, they will go to a certain aspect of Gershwin without thinking about the law blue notes and yeah, exactly yeah, and black inspired white guy writing right.

Speaker 1 9:47

Having studied with the stride pianists and those those people.

Speaker 3 9:50

But and there's only some of that in strike up the band in either score, yeah very little actually right and it's not appropriate.

Speaker 1 9:56

I mean, you know if, if gershwin lived longer and wrote the dibbock, it wouldn't sound anything like porgy and bess? No, he was writing Porgy and Bess with that sound to replicate what he imagined. Catfish Row and a black community in South Carolina would be appropriate to what Right?

Broadway Musical Critique and Analysis

Speaker 3 10:16

I'm thinking about Yankee Doodle rhythm, for example. Or I was thinking of say, hanging Around With you, you may tell me, you're a saint, but listen to my complaint what's the use of hanging around with you? You may tell me you're a saint, but listen to my complaint. What's the use of hanging around with you, hanging around with you, hanging around with you? Those have that kind of blues snap, that's kind of 20s, but those are just uh, yeah, I get that.

Speaker 1 10:39

I mean the, the syncopation, yeah, that that taking a little element and then repeating it against the basic pulse, exactly Is yes, that gives it its kind of pep, as George would say. The word pep I love the fact that he liked the word P-E-P, which we never use anymore, but there's lots of pep in this score. Um, I I do think that I think one of the reasons why this is so important, I think, for people to hear right now um, it's a little bit like it astounds me that no one's doing the cradle will rock right now, because this is, these are, these are really important. Um, musicals that talk about political statements from the left.

Speaker 1 11:30

You and I, as you know the people listening to this won't know this, but we're writing a book together on the Broadway musical and about the whole civil rights movement and the Broadway musical, and that has a lot to do with assimilation as well as activism. Now, when you sing it, when you tell that story and you sing it, you can get away with a lot. You can get away with a lot. And what is so wonderful about Strike Up the Band is that it never points its finger at the audience. We're all in on the joke. It assumes the audience is against the book. It assumes that the audience thinks that a tariff, a 50% tariff on Swiss cheese, is a really good thing if you run an American cheese factory.

Speaker 1 12:09

Right Right now we have a situation where Donald Trump wants to be the president of tariffs. He says you know, and sometimes 10%, sometimes it's 100% and it's 200%, you know, and so it absolutely is of its own moment. And in fact, in one discussion they're talking about banning books that have anything positive to say about Switzerland, because we're obviously going to have a war with Switzerland. The Swiss want the war in their country because they've got a better tourist industry right. So all the idea of it is so funny. So at one point the suggestion is that William Tell can no longer be a book that anyone can read because it's pro-Swiss, and that Swiss family Robinson should become something called, I think, the American family Robinson, which does a freedom prize. Right, exactly Right. So I think the wackiness of Kaufman is going to be wonderful and I think also buying the presidency. I rarely quote Fidel Castro, but I do quote him here when he said America has the best government that money can buy.

Speaker 3 13:19

Oh, and what's the line in the title song, in the verse about not knowing what the war was for the last time?

Speaker 1 13:22

There's a cute rhyme. It's really great not knowing what the war was for the last time there's a cute line. It's really great.

Speaker 2 13:27

We fought in 1917. Rum-ta-da-dum-tum-tum. And drove the tyrant from the scene. Rum-ta-da-dum-tum-tum, we're in a bigger, better war for your patriotic pastime. We don't know what we're fighting for but we didn't know the last time.

Speaker 1 13:46

We fought, in 1917, rum-ta-da-tum-tum-tum, and drove the tyrant from the scene. Rum-ta-da-tum-tum-tum, we're in a bigger, better war for your patriotic pastime. We don't know what we're fighting for, but we didn't know the last time I love that, and that's a musical in 1927.

Speaker 3 14:08

This is not the sort of thing that was typical back then of musicals.

Speaker 1 14:10

Well, not only was it not atypical, but the audience didn't want it. Mostly, I think, they ignored that part, because when the drums roll out and they strike up the band, that's the tune. But I remember when I first conducted this I said, oh my God, I didn't realize that that was part of the lyric Right. It's making fun of patriotism as an excuse for waging wars, exactly, anyway. So we wanted to talk about the music. The thing that Ted Sperling is doing is that the score will be built around the 27 version and he's made a couple of 1930s additions, which I think is really good.

Speaker 1 14:51

You know, the thirties version is a very different show. Maury Riskin, and there's a dream sequence, you know, somebody falls asleep and that becomes a kind of a go-to. We can solve everything by having somebody either hit on the head whether that's dorothy gail in in the wizard of oz, you know. So the right of the mgm version of the wizard of oz is her kind of dream sequence right and doesn't exist, which is so it pulls the punch. So, yeah, yeah, so dubarry was a lady, right, exactly, you know, yeah, just go through that, you know. And then, and then you know it kinds it comes to a different version when Laurie, you know, takes a sniff of the laudanum and has her dream sequence at the end of Act One of Oklahoma 1943. But my, my favorite I'm so glad, first of all, that I've got a crush on you is added to the score from 1930, but which has just got that again, that I mean that's when pounding on tin right, absolutely.

Speaker 1 15:55

The other one is if I became the president. Now, this is a song again about buying the presidency and and and I think, when you consider what's going on right now, um, with you know, elon musk and whatever money, the money that is going in to to telling us what we should think about when we vote for president, which is, you know, a really sad situation. I mean, I'm not here to to fault elon musk. He's got, he's the richest man in the world. He's got his opinion, he wants his opinion, you know, he wants the public to support his opinion. So he's spending all this money.

Speaker 1 16:34

So there's a moment in the dialogue from, you know, from 1930, which is that you know where this idea that the Margaret Dumont character says you know what would happen if you became president I would be the president's wife. And he says do you think I'd be any good at it being president? She says what's that got to do with it? So my favorite of all the lyrics of Ira Gershwin, you know know, was sitting there next to George at the, at the piano sitting there. You know, I I always picture this, ever since I met Lenore Gershwin and I got to play George's piano, um of this, this card table right just to the, just to the right of the little of the high notes, and I'm there smoking a cigar, and George, whatever it is, into the night. So this is where I come down as the best of these lyrics.

Speaker 1 17:34

If I became the president and I were the president's wife, you'd flood the Senate with your oratory. I'd make each politician prohibition. A hundred billion drinkers would be free. Right, I'd grow this is the place. I'd grow a beard. I'm thinking you'd be as great as Lincoln and Mr Hearst would surely print your life, but I'd never go so far afield as Tyler, polk or Garfield.

Speaker 3 18:03

If I became the president and I were the president's wife, I'd grow a beard, I'm thinking you'd be as great as Lincoln and Mr Hearst would surely print your life. But I'd never go so far afield as Tyler Pokorafield if I became the president and I'm on the president's side.

Speaker 1 18:26

I've always loved this song. It's such a good song, so that's going to be part of the text that people will hear. The one that I found from 27, which was the most surprising and moving. It wasn't the man I Love and it wasn't some of the other songs. It's a song called Homeward Bound. Homeward Bound, sung by a tenor who really has no other function in the show. Sweet boy who is coming home hopes to find, you know, the love of his life, and George writes that homeward bound. The home comes before the beat. Each gesture is before the beat Homeward bound on the way Homeward bound.

Speaker 2 19:17

hold your stay.

Speaker 1 19:18

I found it to be such a moving song and that's part of the key of George Gershwin. He can turn from making you laugh with the music or the relationship with his brother's words, but he can also break your heart.

Speaker 3 19:33

It's funny, homeward Down took me a few listens. I remember when I first listened to the album I found it dull at first and then I realized, no, you have to listen more closely to get the genius of that one. And here it is in this. Yeah, it's beautiful.

Speaker 1 19:46

Yeah, so the show is about a lot of things that have a lot to do with the world we live in and I think, um, I think we're in for I mean a real treat to hear it now. Again, what will be here? What will the orchestra be playing now?

Speaker 3 20:02

tommy kraska, whose name has not yet been mentioned here, is the actual genius I was going to ask you all of the things we're talking about how was this thing brought to life from what had become just basically some yellowed pages that were moldering?

Speaker 1 20:17

Tommy is one of the great heroes for all of us who care about American musical theater and he knows more than anybody. He's done more, he understands. You know, in 1983, when I was a co-producer of on your toes, um, that was the first time that a show from that period, from 1936, was produced on broadway without new orchestrations, without new dance arrangements, because up until that point every show that got revived or revised would have.

Speaker 3 20:54

you know, we'll get new orchestrations and dance routines like no, no, nanette, where it's, you know? Wonderful, but practically a different show than the original in 1970.

Speaker 1 21:02

That's right that's right, you listen to well every show. I mean even boys from syracuse, you know that ran for a long time, but again it was reorchestrated. So the idea that I had and this, this I can take credit for, this part I can take credit for, but the rest of it is absolutely tummy was I was working for Roger Stevens at the Kennedy Center as his advisor for music theater. And how did I get that job?

Speaker 1 21:25

Because I had lunch with him and I said you know, mr Stevens, there is this huge corpus of American music that is written for a small orchestra of about 20 or so 24, and no one can play it, whether it's Anything Goes or Showboat or Girl Crazy. And I said, listen. I said, and he, of course, being a Broadway producer, thought this was like the most astounding thing he'd heard forever. And by the end of the day I was hired as his music advisor. And and the kennedy center has a small theater called the terrace theater which seats 500, and we we thought we were going to start in that theater, but then the finances didn't work. I mean, really, broadway needs a bigger theater than 500 paris t-e-r-r-i-s norma terrace of no no there is in the top of the.

Speaker 3 22:12

You know I actually oh, terrace, oh okay, okay, go ahead.

Speaker 1 22:17

Not Norma Terrace's theater. I really thought it was her. It's a pink little theater designed by Philip Johnson and actually, you know I'm one of the few people who actually conducted a Barber Seville in that little theater 500, which is the size of the theater where it had its world premiere in Rome 500 seat theater, so you can imagine what Figaro and what those voices were like and the impact. So, anyway, the bottom line was that I reached out, in fact, to Ira Gershwin to see if he would give me permission to do Girl Crazy. He wrote back and said you can do the songs but you can't do the book Cause I he really didn't. You know, he was afraid he would be exposed, the book would be exposed because it would, because the book is silly or because the book has a I don't know a goofy.

Speaker 1 23:02

Jewish caricature oh well, yeah, slick, yeah, right. Yeah, there's that. You know, a goldfarb. That's on, that's I am.

Speaker 1 23:11

I don't know whether that I I, it's hard to know, but the bottom line was that Ethel Merman and Ginger Rogers were both I'd asked them both to reprise their roles from 1930, right, I didn't know that. Oh yeah, and Ethel was all ready. I mean, she was ready to wear her original costume. She was ready. Ginger, on the other hand, wanted her name above Ethel's because she was a movie star, which I think is probably Ginger's way of saying no, but making a demand. And Ethel said I bet she wants her name above mine, right? So I had to say to Ginger Rogers I'm sorry, miss Rogers, your name was not above the title or above Miss Merman's in 1930. She was a teenager, right? No one knew who Ginger Rogers was. And she survived being fired because George thought she couldn't sing. And I said are you kidding? She's so beautiful, all those college boys are going to adore her.

Speaker 1 24:05

So history was made and in fact, the first time that Fred Astaire had anything to do with Ginger Rogers was he came in at rehearsals and staged one of the numbers, right, exactly. So I was doing Girl Crazy with a published score because that, unlike Strike Up, the Band had a published score with parts. There were mistakes in it, but I was able to do it with the Boston Pops and I had a recording of it which I brought to Lenore Gershwin. In addition, I made a version of of uh Lady in the Dark, which we did with the Scottish Opera at the Edinburgh Festival. So once she heard them, that's part of how she got the idea that she would underwrite recordings of all the shows that her husband wrote the lyrics to, and that's where this all started. Tommy krasker was one of my students at yale. He's one of the. He's the kind of student and you know, because you teach, there's always a student there who raises his or her hand and says no, no, that was 1927 or no, no, that was opus 15.

Speaker 1 25:05

You know I go, thank you, I know that that guy, you know that person right, sometimes I was that guy yeah, and so tommy then did a scholar of the house project with me to restore regina and he just, he's just like blitzstein's opera right yeah, and and then he was a producer of a lot of my records at the hollywood bowl orchestra and there's no greater joy than when your children are the ones who then become the ones who are your boss, as it were.

Speaker 1 25:30

You know that they, they, everything you've given, whatever that might be or inspire, comes back at you 25%. So Tommy understood that if we were going to record any of these shows, we would do our damnedest to try to replicate what it sounded like. Right, and of course this is really hard because most people don't understand that when a show is a mess right, I mean writing a show is a mess. You know the thing they said. You know making laws and sausage should never be seen right, that Bismarck comment. But also added to that, creating a Broadway musical, because songs come in, they go out. You got an orchestrator and of course at those times orchestrators' names were not even being given credit, they were just workers, right? I remember Hans Bialik, the great Hans, who orchestrated so much later of Gershwin but also of Porter I mean, he was just and Rogers and Hart. He said, johnny, the first time I got credit I was listed between the asparagus and the shoes.

Speaker 1 26:42

John Moucheri, folks actually knew Hans Bialik, who created a lot of what we think of as the Broadway sound. I should mention Absolutely, absolutely. It's a direct line from Gustav Mahler where he sang as a boy soprano, but that's another story for another podcast. Anyway. So we demonstrated in 1983, where Hans's orchestrations were restored on Broadway you know, with the show that won Tony's and all that thing and got produced on the West End that if you do a legitimate restoration of the sound of Broadway from 1936, it adds a kind of verisimilitude, a kind of a this is what it is. You don't wink and nod at the audience, you actually play the show honestly and truly and as George Abbott who directed it On your Toes in 1983, and he was 96 years old at the time. His point was the situation may be unnatural, but the response and the acting is totally natural. That's where the humor is. You don't comment on the situation, you're in, play it for real and the audience finds that to be hysterically funny. So, by demonstrating that using Hans's orchestrations and dance arrangements. So that meant that Donald Sadler had to choreograph two pre-existing dance arrangements. Right, you know, he had to look at it like he's doing the ballet from Aida. No one says, oh, throw out that ballet, right, we need a new ballet, right, right. So with that respect, we demonstrated this was possible.

Speaker 1 28:08

So, in a funny way, the series of Gershwin recordings, that Roxbury music for which, in fact, tommy was really in charge artistically, was to restore the sound. Now this becomes really hard when you get into the 20s, right, because there's no published score. You find. One song maybe has an orchestration, you find. So he was using his amazing imagination to create a verisimilitude. Amazing imagination to create a verisimilitude. Like what would this have sounded like? Reading the reviews, descriptions of stuff, things from from programs or or a stage manager's script. So we managed with girl crazy. That was a kind of an easy one. That was the first one we did. Uh, and again, tommy came up with the idea of Lorna Luft singing the Ethel Merman role. So there you have Judy Garland's daughter singing that rhythm.

Speaker 3 28:57

Right, and by the way-, john, I don't know if this is going to make it in, but I was under the impression for that recording. Folks, this will not go on too long, don't worry. Lorna Luft was a last minute because it was kind of she had to have the keys changed, et cetera.

Speaker 1 29:20

Wasn't it that somebody else was originally going to do it and she was brought in. No, okay, here's, here's. I'll answer that question to you. Ethel merman's money note c she could bet up to a c. Judy garland's money note was a b flat, which is a whole tone lower right, as lor said. Mama always said that her money note was B flat. So I Got Rhythm is in C in 1930 for Ethel and I, what Ethel would say, and I would just belt out that high C. And of course, for those of us who are opera people, that's no high C, that's lower than a high C Right or belter, that's a high note.

Speaker 3 29:51

Yeah, that's the M the moment.

Speaker 1 29:52

So when we recorded, I got rhythm. We made that compromise that it was in b flat, um, so she belts out a high b flat, but there's some things about what that lorna does there, uh, where there's a moment where she sometimes sounds like carl and you go holy mackerel, this is really. You know, this is history. So back to the story.

Speaker 1 30:11

Striking the band was far more complicated because there are two scores and the Gershwins threw out so much of what they wrote in 27 for 1930. So we were able to record, complete both scores, and Tommy brought in the greatest orchestrators, the ones who had the imagination and the experience to bring back the 20s sound, and sometimes you had to imagine what the number would be like. You know, and and this is where you know Tommy, I have such admiration for what he's done and the legacy that he's left behind us, and that is in fact what Ted Sperlingling will be conducting. And so this is and and the people who orchestrated for him most of them now have passed away so we this becomes a treasured moment in the restoration of the broadway musical amazing the.

Speaker 3 31:07

Um. What would you say, john, is your favorite thing in strike up band, your favorite number?

Exploring Gershwin's Musical Orchestrations

Speaker 1 31:14

oh, my favorite number? Hmm, that you know I I have to. It's very hard to answer that question because I see these scores as totalities. As george moves into the 30s you start to get the sense that he's not just writing songs but he's writing a total score. You know, some people like Irving Berlin or Cole Porter were really songwriters, but George Gershwin's aspiration was to be a composer, a songwriter. Richard Rogers said to me once that the reason he he went into songwriting um was because of what Jerry he called him Jerry Kern could do in a song. He found it so inspirational that that's what he wanted to emulate. Then Rogers moved further toward operatic, larger structures but never really went there. He got close to that ish in Carousel, but really he was a songwriter and he wrote scores as a series of songs. Now when you get to a Cole Porter show you know that people plunk in friendship in the middle of anything. It's all about songs and it doesn't seem to matter.

Speaker 1 32:34

No, so by the time you get to Kiss Me, kate Cole Porter's writing a score Right, he snaps into it quickly. You can't put something in can-can from another show. No Stockings, again, it's silk stockings. So Gershwin in 27 is writing a score and forever goes in and out. It's impossible to say what do I like the most? There's no question that Strike Up the Band is one of the most extraordinary songs because the beginning of it in the minor is a very kind of Jewish-y sound so wonderful in that way.

Speaker 3 33:12

yeah, you would never know what's coming from that verse, you wouldn't right?

Speaker 1 33:16

And you're brought into this thing and then you get this amazing, amazing melody and harmony. So you'd have to go there. But the man I Love Again, again, that is such an extraordinary song. No, they're just one after another, the famous ones and the ones who are not famous. They're all of the same quality. So I think the audience is going to have a really extraordinary time and to explore Gershwin that they don't know because they still think. It's that opening clarinet, glissando, that starts Rhapsody in Blue, which actually George didn't write. You know it was. It was played by the clarinetist, um, I like that, ross gorman. Right, let's put that in. Um, and so much of rhapsody in blue is a response to the new haven railroad, where he forgot he was supposed to write it and so he wrote it on the train on the way to austin. So therefore, yeah, the rhythm right.

Speaker 3 34:10

Yeah, next but the thing about strike up the band also is that you have to listen somewhat closely. It's not work, you know it's not like sitting through the complete Hamlet or something like that. But there are a lot of words and they're wonderful words. My favorite in terms of wordiness is Unofficial Spokesman, one of the Gilbert and Sullivan moments where just every line is delightful. Everything scans perfectly. It's still genuinely funny. I recommend that one. But it is a magnificent score and it's very much a score, and Gershwin was doing that earlier than most of his peers. As John is saying, it's not just a bunch of dandy little songs. This is a piece of work, it's a whole work and it's worthy of this kind of evening. John, before we finish, how big is the orchestra for this Do?

Speaker 1 34:56

you remember? Well, it would be about 24. Again, when people ask that question, they're looking for a total number, but, as you very well know, the basic organico, as the Italians call it, will be the woodwinds and the brass and percussion. There's one percussionist, um, and is there a harp? Or is there a piano? Are there two pianos, which was very popular at that time and right into the 1930s? Um, and usually it's a choice, is the orchestration based on the operetta model or on jazz band model, right? So, for example, in in girl crazy, that was red nichols, that was a jazz band in the pit, even though robert russell bennett orchestrated it. But you're gonna have, you're gonna have, you know, gene krupa on the drums, right?

Speaker 3 35:49

right, whereas with this, with this one, it's kind of in between, isn't it? Because at times it's Romberg.

Speaker 1 35:54

It's basically more operetta than that, because we're not talking about saxophones and the jazz thing. We're talking about an operetta orchestration in the sense that it is, you know, flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horns, strings and a harp. Now, I'm not sure whether 27 had the harp in it, but certainly 30 had the harp in it and again, this will be a choice that will be made at the performance we're going to see. So the answer to the question you asked is how big is the orchestra? It will have to do with whether you double the strings or not. You know, orchestra pit in Broadway are small. They've never been big. It's always an issue.

Speaker 1 36:37

Yeah, there was a big change in 45 when Rogers took out rows of seats for Carousel because he wanted more strings. Right, he could do that, he was a rich man and you know he could do that by them, right, yeah, yeah, and then when it went on tour, they, you know they pulled it back down. But you know there was a bass clarinet part as opposed to a bassoon part and you know that threw that one out when it went on tour, just to, you know, keep it so that it could make some money and continue the tour. So basically, you know, those shows had 24 in them and and, and, by the way, importantly acoustically orchestrated. No microphones, no amplification. They had to know what to do, what the voice could do, and some of those voices were small, you know, these were not operatic voices, which is, of course, the difference from really an operetta, because you had people who could really sing, they were trained operatic voices, right, whereas gershwin was not necessarily writing for that kind of voice. So, again, the what we tried to do, and certainly what tommy did, and you know when I conducted it, but a lot of that, of course, is mixed, certainly what Tommy did, and you know when I conducted it, but a lot of that, of course, is mixed is is that we were restoring the natural relationship between the size of a voice and the orchestral accompaniment. And when people hear it, I think one of the things, that is, there's a word called figurations. I mean, this is the word that Hans used to use. What is a figuration? You know, hans had his figurations and Russell Bennett had his figurations.

Speaker 1 38:13

Every time a singer sings, there's going to be a moment where the singer has to breathe, because we, you know, we breathe and not like a pipe organ. And so when the singer breathes is when the orchestrator can add information to fill in that breath, and that's configuration. So again, you, you, when they're singing, the orchestra goes down. Maybe it's doubling the voice. That's, that's possible, and sometimes that happened. Um, in the case of the man I love, the strings all double the tune. That's the original orchestration on our recording and I'm sure that you'll hear that in Carnegie Hall. However, when you have these moments where the person stops singing to breathe, that's when the commentary can go in.

Speaker 1 39:03

Now, the other reason why doubling the voice is such an interesting thing is because in the 20s, why doubling the voice is such an interesting thing is because in the 20s you tended to sing the rhythms as written. This is also where it becomes the operetta meeting the jazz world. The dance world changes. I know Hans said to me that when he orchestrated Pal Joey 1940-41, bewitched, bothered and Bewildered the tune was doubled in the strings. When it was revived in the 50s, vivian Siegel said don't do that anymore. So he took out the doubling so she could, instead of saying I'm wild again, be guiled again. She could go I'm wild again, a little bit of parlando right, well, yeah, and back phrasing. And that all came later, during world war ii era that, but we weren't doing that on broadway in the 20s in 1927.

Speaker 1 39:57

Right because, because so much of what we call jazz, which is really ragtime, is motoric singing. It's the. The only reason why this becomes so peppy is because there is a going. So you go, I've got rhythm. It's completely working as this kind of motoric thing under it I got rhythm that's so flaccid and so impossible. It has nothing to do with what george had in mind. Same thing is true of all those ragtime songs. They're based on a single pulse that never changes and their accents change, which you have to have this, something that is immovable for the thing that is moving to make itself known. So, again, that's why what Tommy and his orchestrators and our orchestrators did was to insist on that kind of history of performance practice, not back phrasing. It's not, you know, it's just not. It didn't exist. It might have existed with, say, helen Morgan singing he's Just my Bill, because she had a pianist. But when there's an orchestra there, no. And, by the way, when the orchestra does come in, when she sings, it again it's strings, it's a halo of strings.

Speaker 3 41:15

I think a great example of this figuration would probably be hanging around with you, where when the person isn't singing, the orchestra does nice things and also you have to stay with the rhythm. You can't mess around with hanging around with you. It to stay with the rhythm. You can't mess around with hanging around with you.

Speaker 1 41:31

It's solid 20s. Yeah, that's its power, and I'm sure that that will be a kind of a revelation for the audience because, again, as I said, I think people don't understand the genius. I mean, they know George Gershwin's name and they know he wrote some hit songs and they probably obviously they know the Rhapsody in Blue and they know Porgygy and Bess and they know some songs, but the genius is his unbelievable flexibility and his constant desire to learn more. I mean, he wanted to study with everyone. He wanted to know more and more and more, whether that was a black musician in Harlem or whether that was Maurice Ravel or whether it was Arnold Schoenberg. He wanted to know more and more, and so the loss is so profound and I always use this as an example that when he died, the eulogy on national radio was delivered by Arnold Schoenberg.

Speaker 3 42:24

He grew more in his final 10 years than I think any of his colleagues can be said to have. Porter did some growing, rogers did some growing, but Gershwin exploded yeah, he did explode.

Speaker 1 42:36

You can argue that later. Kern is the best.

Speaker 3 42:38

Kern, Somewhat exactly. Yeah, he grew too, but not as quickly as George. No, no.

Speaker 1 42:44

If you think about George's first hit and when he died, everything we know of George Gershwin happened within a 20-year period.

Speaker 3 42:52

Imagine what would have happened if he had lived longer.

Speaker 1 42:55

Well, you can't, you know that becomes the sad story of something that you just don't even know what to do with that thought. Where would he have gone? Because the last scores in Hollywood are so 1930s. I mean, strike Up, the Band is a 20s score. By the time you get to the 30s and you get to Girl Crazy and also the second version of this, things are changing. By the time you get to Shall we Dance with Fred and Ginger, that sound of that last ballet which I was at the honor of recording, um, in the gershwins in hollywood, again alien to 1927, exactly we're now.

Speaker 1 43:35

We're now into into a world of curvilinear design, and I mean architecturally. You feed the white walls, you know, as opposed to the dark metropolis of the city of new york, right with with a ribbon. Now you're into something so glorious, so big, so utopian, and managed to capture that in harmony. So where would he have been in the forties or the fifties? So the only thing we can say is we can only look at people like Harold Arlen and those who continued on, you know, from that period and who, blessedly for us, lived way on into our time.

Speaker 3 44:09

Definitely, I think. On that note, so to speak, john, we can leave it here, and I hope that you all listening out there in the dark have gotten a sense of what a musical feast Strike Up the Band is and will be on October 29th when performed by Master Voices under Ted Sperling's supervision.

Speaker 2 44:35

Thank you for listening to the Master Voices podcast. To learn more about Master Voices, visit mastervoicesorg. You can discover our rich history, read chorus member spotlights and buy tickets to upcoming performances. You can go there to support our work by making a tax-deductible donation. Your gift will allow us to continue our mission to spark greater human connections by reimagining what the choral experience can be. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts.