Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) by McHugh, Dominic (best ereader for pc .TXT) 📗

sheet from the Warner-Chappell Collection also indicates that originally, Eliza’s shocking cry to close the scene was “Come on, Dover! Get the bloody lead out!”31 This seems to have been kept into the rehearsal period: the copyist’s choral score and conductor’s score both contain two verses of the song, even after the new introduction and dance section had been added.32 Bennett’s full score also follows this version, but Lang intervened by adding two pages to end the first sounding of the song and thereby complete the number.

Ex. 6.4. No. 10a, Scene Change.

Ex. 6.5. “The Son of the Wooden Soldier.”

The end of the scene caused difficulties. In every extant version of the song, the chorus resumes with the “There they are again” section. However, Rittmann composed an original piece of “Fainting Music” (to follow Eliza’s faux pas), which must have been rejected after it was first played. Rittmann’s autograph contains a message that illustrates her collegiality toward Bennett: “Russell, mon cher, this is the end of the Ascot Gavotte. It would be loverly, if the orchestra could have a GEGENBEWEGUNG [counter-movement] from the bass up. Love Trude.” Although her manuscript contains a chromatic scale descending two octaves, Rittmann requests a contrary motion gesture from the orchestrator; her sketch of the piece survives on the bottom of a photocopy of her “Gavotte Reprise” autograph.33 Orchestra parts titled “Fainting Music” have survived, presumably representing Bennett’s loose interpretation of Rittmann’s score.34 Bennett’s autograph full score for the scene contains its now-familiar ending, however, and there is no sign of the “Fainting Music.” Since there is no surviving autograph piano score of the final version of the section, we will probably never know who wrote it. But the first four bars of the music that follows Eliza’s cry of “Move your bloomin’ arse” were clearly added after the rest and were written on a separate page with its own title (“Intro to End of Gavotte”), suggesting this was a late addition.

The only drastic change made to the show during its out-of-town tryouts was the excision of “Come to the Ball,” the “Dress Ballet,” and “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” in the penultimate scene of act 1. These numbers were replaced by a short scene between Higgins and Pickering, after which Eliza enters the hallway underscored by “I Could Have Danced All Night” before moving straight to the Ball scene. This excision had an impact on other numbers, too. Various stages were gone through between the deletion of “Say a Prayer” and the definitive version of the show. There are at least sixteen different sources for this part of the show, including piano scores in the hands of Loewe, Rittmann, Bennett, and an unknown copyist; orchestral parts; and Bennett and Lang’s full scores. Together, these sources amount to more than a hundred pieces of paper, many of which are fragments and in some cases may not have been used in any form.

The genesis of the waltz music was as much a question of arrangement as of composition. Here, Rittmann came into her own as the dance arranger. Five of the sources for the music of the end of act 1 contain her handwriting, either entirely or as annotations of others’ work. One piano score is in Bennett’s hand, and another is in Lang’s. Originally, the end of “Say a Prayer” segued straight into a piece of music called “Ballroom Intro” and from there into “The Embassy Waltz” via the “Processional.” The conductor’s piano scores of “Ballroom Intro” and “Processional” (which are bound together) are in two hands; Bennett’s is recognizable on the front page, but the other is of an unknown copyist.35 The “Intro” is a clever reworking of “Say a Prayer” into a Viennese waltz (first in D major, then E-flat major). At that point, it runs into the “Processional” in A-flat major, which is a four-bar version of the ten-bar published introduction to “The Embassy Waltz.” Geoffrey Block has noted that this piece of music—later retitled “Introduction to Promenade”—is derived from “Say a Prayer,” and now it becomes more apparent why: it is a continuation of the gradual dissolution of the “Say a Prayer” music into “The Embassy Waltz.”36 Consequently, the “Introduction” music was better integrated into the musical canvas when “Say a Prayer” was still in the show, since it alluded to Eliza’s nerves when she arrived at the ball, albeit transformed into a guise that was appropriate to the grand setting. When it was removed, there was no motivation for invoking the theme, a redundancy of meaning caused by musicians working at top speed during an intense period of creativity. It is only on this very pedantic level that one can find flaws in the show.

Of the numerous sources for this number, there are two main versions. The basis for the first is a score titled “The Pygmalion Waltzes,” which exists in two different versions in the Loewe and Warner-Chappell Collections. Both start off with two pages of photocopies, which have been annotated and then added to. The title on the front page is in Rittmann’s hand, but the two photocopied pages of music are in Loewe’s hand. The remaining five pages in the Loewe Collection version are in Rittmann’s writing, and consist of photocopies with pencil annotations (also by Rittmann); the Warner-Chappell version has those five pages plus another two, again photocopies rather than originals. Corresponding almost exactly to the Warner-Chappell version is a complete set of instrumental parts in the same collection.37 Interestingly, this version does not contain the main theme of the published “Embassy Waltz,” even though the orchestral parts are given that title. Instead, the main theme of this earlier waltz (shown in ex. 6.6) was totally discarded. It resurfaced in the 1964 film version of the show, when it underscores the part of the Ball scene when Higgins and Pickering observe Eliza being the attention of the room, following her commendation from the Queen of Transylvania. As with the “Dress