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

Ballet,” Rittmann mapped out the entire number, and it was orchestrated, without major amendment, by Bennett.38 The orchestration of the preceding “Intro to Ball” is by Lang, with the exception of the first page, which is in Bennett’s hand.39

Why this original waltz was discarded is unclear. The excision of the two songs and the ballet automatically changed the nature of the closing of the act, but that does not explain why the waltz theme was changed. It might be that Loewe felt that with its numerous accidentals and harmonic clashes, the music was a little too sardonic, almost sinister, for the romantic scene that was to unfold. The replacement, after all, is smoother and more fluent; it glides but does not draw attention to itself. There are several sources for the published “Embassy Waltz,” and yet again the Loewe autograph is not the “original” manuscript. It was clearly created after a score titled “New Waltz,” which is in Rittmann’s hand and contains corrections where she considered different possibilities. This is a draft that actually bears a direct relationship to the performance, because it is full of directions to Bennett about the orchestration. By contrast, Loewe’s manuscript is so fluent and free of errors that it is obviously a later creation. Nevertheless, the presence of notes on the front cover about a rehearsal venue makes it likely that it was produced sometime during the rehearsals or tryouts (rather than being a fair copy for use in the production of the vocal score, for instance). No copy of “Eliza’s Entrance” has survived among the Warner-Chappell materials, and there is no Loewe manuscript for it. Presumably, the fact that it is the music of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” re-orchestrated for its dramatic purpose, meant that Lang was simply told to base his orchestration on a straight copy of the song. However, an earlier version of the entrance has survived; it consists of the same thematic material, orchestrated for tutti rather than just the strings (as in the final version). It is also in A major rather than the definitive G major. Lang orchestrated the final version, but Bennett took over for the “Intro to Promenade” and the whole of “The Embassy Waltz,” leading to the end of act 1.

Ex. 6.6. “The Pygmalion Waltzes,” original ball music.

HOW THEY DID IT

Once again, four different sources for the Entr’acte highlight the composer-arranger-orchestrator relationship: a piano score in Loewe’s hand, another in Rittmann’s hand, the full score, and an early or alternative orchestration of the end of the Entr’acte. Rittmann’s autograph piano score is the earliest of these.40 As the number follows conventional musical theater entr’acte medley form, Rittmann writes out the introduction and transition passages but only indicates the beginning and end of each of the statements of the three songs sounded in the number (“I’ve Grown Accustomed,” “I Could Have Danced,” and “Little Bit of Luck”). However, she provides no conclusion. The manuscript introduces three bars of the “Little Bit of Luck” theme, and then underneath indicates: “And a big glorious Russell Bennett finish!!” Bennett’s full score follows Rittmann’s outline up to bar 110 (the middle of the chorus of “With a Little Bit”); the second half of the chorus has been crossed out, then the melody of the song picks up again. Bennett seems to have written out more of “Luck” than was desired, so several pages have been crossed out.

The original ending of the Entr’acte was also discarded completely, and extra music was added to the end, orchestrated by Lang and stuck onto the rest of the score.41 Appended to the full score is a manuscript called “End of Temp[orary] Entr’acte” in Bennett’s hand. The word “Out” has been written across the middle, indicating that it was cut, though this music later became the final sixteen bars of the show’s “Exit Music.” There is another score in Lang’s hand titled “Finish of Entr’acte,” which brings the tally of endings to the number to three; clearly, the piece was more difficult to write than might be expected.42 That leaves the difficult task of placing Loewe’s autograph score in the process. Like Rittmann, Loewe indicates the sections where “Accustomed” and “Danced” are to be sounded, but he writes out the final abbreviated version of “Luck” and continues straight to the end. The fact that he reproduces the completed version of the number suggests he wrote it out for his own reference, or perhaps for the vocal score.

Lerner tells us little about the genesis of “You Did It.” He mentions that it was written during the middle of 1955, and recounts a story about the supposed meeting between Lerner, Levin, Loewe, and Michael Kidd, when the latter was approached to be the choreographer of My Fair Lady; Lerner claims that Kidd said “You Did It” was “wrong” because “it’s describing offstage action” and that as a result, Moss Hart refused to have Kidd on the show.43 However, as we saw in chapter 2, Hart was certainly not part of the creative team at the time when the meeting with Kidd took place, so at least part of the story must be inaccurate. Lerner’s only other mention of the song is in a passage about the Philadelphia tryout. He says that he and Loewe tried to improve the song one night by adding a “proper climax” to a section in the middle with the words “I know each language on the map, said he, / And she’s Hungarian as the first Hungarian rhapsody.” According to Lerner, Harrison “loved” the new lines, but “the night they went in he forgot every lyric in the entire show,” whereupon they were removed.44

Lerner’s story is confirmed by the compositional sources for the show, but he does not mention that the song was partly cut as well as added to. A lyric sheet from the Levin Collection, various copyist’s scores from the Warner-Chappell Collection, Bennett’s full score, and Loewe’s piano-vocal score all indicate two extra sections