West Side Story, Gypsy, and the Art of Broadway Orchestration

211 Pages·2021·14.988 MB·English

by  Paul Laird

West Side Story, Gypsy, and the Art of
Broadway Orchestration
In this ground-breaking study, Paul Laird examines the process and effect
of orchestration in West Side Story and Gypsy, two musicals that were among
the most significant Broadway shows of the 1950s, and remain important in
the modern repertory. Drawing on extensive archival research with original
manuscripts, Laird provides a detailed account of the process of orchestration
for these musicals, and their context in the history of Broadway orchestration.
He argues that the orchestration plays a vital role in the characterization and plot
development in each major musical number, opening a new avenue for analysis
that deepens our understanding of the musical as an art form.
The orchestration of the score in Broadway musicals deeply shapes their final
soundscapes, but only recently has it begun to receive real attention. Linked by
a shared orchestrator, in other ways West Side Story and Gypsy offer a study in
contrasts. Breaking down how the two composers, Leonard Bernstein and Jules
Styne, collaborated with orchestrators Sid Ramin, Irwin Kostal, and Robert
Ginzler, Laird’s study enables us to better understand both of these two iconic
shows, and the importance of orchestration within musical theatre in general.
Paul R. Laird is Professor of Musicology at the University of Kansas, where he
teaches courses on music history and the history of musical theater, and directs
the Instrumental Collegium Musicum. He has also co-written the second edi-
tion of Leonard Bernstein: A Research and Information Guide (Routledge) with
Hsun Lin.
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West Side Story, Gypsy,
and the Art of Broadway
Orchestration
Paul R. Laird
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2022 Paul R. Laird
The right of Paul R. Laird to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-08615-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-13427-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-02337-8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429023378
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Preface and acknowledgments vi
1 Introduction 1
2 Broadway orchestration in the 1950s 4
3 West Side Story and Gypsy: Composers and orchestrators 43
4 Process and effect in the orchestration of West Side Story 76
5 Process and effect in the orchestration of Gypsy 135
6 Concluding thoughts: Orchestration and shared illusions 185
Copyright Acknowledgements 189
Index 191
Preface and acknowledgments
This project has been more than a decade in the making. It started as part of an
attempt to publish an orchestral score of Gypsy for a series of such Broadway
efforts, but that hope died on the rocky shores of securing the necessary permis-
sions and a publisher that lost interest when the company’s priorities changed. We
did, however, get to the point of assembling an orchestral score of the show from
a set of parts supplied by the Jule Styne Office. This score became a crucial source
for this study. My research on Gypsy and continuing work on Leonard Bernstein
and West Side Story finally led me to the possibility of interviewing Sid Ramin
(1919–2019) in 2012. I met this delightful, affable man and his wife Gloria in their
New York penthouse. We had a pleasant conversation and he shared some of his
treasured memories about his long friendship with Bernstein, his work on various
versions of the music from West Side Story, and on the orchestration of Gypsy,
most of which had been published in other sources. For more details, he referred
me to the manuscripts and kindly let me borrow a copy of his biographical film,
Sid Ramin: A Life in Music, that he had recently made. I appreciate deeply Mr.
Ramin’s interest in my work and the permission that I received from his son,
composer Ron Ramin, to reproduce in this book manuscripts from the Sid Ramin
Papers at Columbia University Archive.
As publication hopes for the Gypsy score faded, I became fascinated by the fact
that Sid Ramin worked on the orchestration for both West Side Story and Gypsy,
two of the era’s most innovative Broadway shows in terms of the sounds from the
pit orchestra. These scores also show a strong contrast in the processes of their
orchestration: Bernstein closely supervised Ramin and his partner Irwin Kostal on
West Side Story, while composer Jule Styne left Ramin and his associate Robert
Ginzler basically to their own devices in orchestrating Gypsy. This study includes
close consideration of what manuscripts from these two shows tell us about these
processes, offering a peek into the close and detailed collaboration that produces
the scores of Broadway shows.
While mulling over a book on the orchestrations in these two shows, I was
also advising a dissertation by Elizabeth Sallinger in which she made fascinating
contributions on how the orchestration in a number of shows assisted with charac-
terization.1 Her work inspired me to explore this parameter in West Side Story and
Gypsy, which turned out to be a rich line of inquiry that helps describe in concrete
Preface and acknowledgments vii
terms the importance of orchestration in Broadway musicals, especially those tell-
ing dramatic stories with multifaceted characters. I thank Elizabeth Sallinger for
inspiring these portions of my study.
One cannot work on a project for ten years without owing deep gratitude to
numerous people. My commissioning editor at Routledge, Genevieve Aoki, has
cheerfully answered many questions and showed helpful patience when my work
slowed as we moved my mother to Lawrence, Kansas, for the last 17 months of
her life. Jennifer B. Lee, Curator of the Performing Arts Collection at Columbia
University’s Butler Library, was an enormous help in gaining access to materi-
als and very kindly assisted me with obtaining representative scans of a second
set of Gypsy orchestral scores that only became available late in my work on
this project. Vanessa Lee assisted her in producing those scans at a time when
COVID-19 restrictions closed the archive to me. I am very grateful to both of
them. Mark Eden Horowitz, archivist for the Leonard Bernstein Collection at the
Library of Congress, has helped me with numerous projects and also provided a
great deal of useful advice for this one. I am also appreciative of the efforts by
various offices of the University of Kansas Libraries, especially in the acquisition
of interlibrary loan materials. Inés Thiebaut produced the full score to Gypsy from
a set of parts supplied by the Jule Styne Office, a tedious task that she did cheer-
fully. She responded to each of my editing suggestions, and I express my deepest
gratitude for her major role in this study. Inés was reimbursed for her time by Jule
Styne’s widow, Margaret Styne, who was enthusiastic about our hopes to publish
the score before other entities blocked the effort. The Styne Office also assisted
me by supplying other important sources, including a PDF of the Broadway script
and an audio recording of the entire production made on 25 March 1961, the last
night that Gypsy played on Broadway in its original run. I also thank Leslee Wood
for later entering some editorial changes into the computer files for the Gypsy
score.
John Graziano was instrumental in this project because he initiated the produc-
tion of the full score and asked me to serve as editor. John and his wife Roberta
have regularly welcomed me into their home for lodging and meals when I have
been in New York City for research. Graduate fellowships for doctoral students
in musicology at the University of Kansas provided timely research help from
Dorothy Glick Maglione, Sara McClure, and TJ Laws-Nicola. Mary Beth Sheehy,
writing a dissertation on Gypsy that I am advising, has given me the benefit of her
understanding of the show and suggested helpful sources. An important basis for
my work on this project is Steven Suskin’s ground-breaking book on Broadway
orchestration: The Sound of Broadway Music: A Book of Orchestrators &
Orchestrations.2 Another leading scholar in the field is George J. Ferencz, author
of “The Broadway Sound”: The Autobiography and Selected Essays of Robert
Russell Bennett.3 I have appreciated my useful discussions with George over
the years. A number of other scholars—William A. Everett, Elizabeth A. Wells,
Gonzalo Fernández Monte, Katherine Baber, Jane Riegel Ferencz, Hsun Lin, and
Erica Argyropoulos—have been very helpful with discussions about orchestra-
tion, various Broadway shows, and other matters, demonstrating the wonderful
viii Preface and acknowledgments
fellowship that exists in our community of researchers. I appreciate the assistance
of Marie Carter and Hannah Webster of the Leonard Bernstein Office, Inc., Erin
Dickenson of Boosey/Concord, Jennifer B. Lee, and Ron Ramin in obtaining cop-
yright permissions for the volume. I thank Owen Hansen for preparing the index.
It is appropriate to mention some of the figures from decades ago who helped
start me on this path. My father, Robert K. Laird, loved Broadway shows and had
a large LP collection that fueled my initial interest in the field. I always loved
the sound of an orchestra, but that feeling crystallized under the influence of my
incredible high school orchestra director, Barbara Barstow, conductor of my first
pit orchestras for high school productions of Bye Bye Birdie and Guys and Dolls.
James W. Pruett, my dissertation advisor at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill, taught a seminar on manuscripts that piqued my interest in archi-
val study. That course mostly had to do with early music, but it has been thrill-
ing to apply many of those same skills and techniques to manuscripts from West
Side Story and Gypsy. My mother, Mary Kathryn Laird, died in March 2020.
She shared with me her love for music and, along with my father, taught me the
importance of dedicating one’s life to learning and pursuing your passions. I share
my love for Broadway musicals with my daughter, Caitlin Laird, and her partner,
Martha Keslar. We have had many happy discussions of the topic, and I relish
their enthusiasm and how much I learn from them. My wife, Joy Laird, is my con-
stant inspiration and sounding board, a patient supporter of my life’s work. It is
to these four wonderful women—Mom, Caitlin, Martha, and Joy—that I dedicate
this book with love and respect.
Paul R. Laird
Lawrence, KS
12 March 2021
Notes
1 Elizabeth Sallinger, “Broadway Starts to Rock: Musical Theater Orchestrations and
Character, 1968–1975” (PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, 2016).
2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
3 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1999).
10.4324/9780429023378-1
1
1 Introduction
In the profoundly collaborative world of musical theater, various elements brought
together to create a show have their moments of peak importance, when the audi-
ence becomes more aware of that aspect of the show. West Side Story, for exam-
ple, often features Jerome Robbins’s choreography, such as the dances in “Cool”
or the “Rumble,” when movement by the characters becomes the focal point on
stage and for that moment drives the plot and characterization. In Maria’s power-
ful speech from Arthur Laurents’s book in the last scene, the audience understands
the danger of hatred and what it has done to this young woman, who has lost her
lover. Laurents provided Maria’s dramatic monologue in a show dominated by
song and dance. Other moments in West Side Story when various theatrical ele-
ments come to the fore could be described, but this is a study of orchestration,
one of the more arcane elements in creating a musical, fully understood by few,
but playing a powerful role in how we experience shows. What might be the
peak moment for orchestration in West Side Story? There are numerous places
that one could cite in Bernstein’s powerful score, but the hope expressed in the
song “Somewhere” carries one of the show’s most important messages. The plot
has been paused for the dream ballet; at this moment Tony and Maria dance, and
a lone voice sings one of Bernstein’s most satisfying melodies. The lyrics elo-
quently establish that Tony and Maria will only be able to love each other without
consequences in another time and place. Bernstein provided the song with a con-
trapuntal accompaniment, bringing the orchestra into conversation with the voice;
the soprano sings the words, but in a musical sense the flute, violins, and cel-
los become almost as important as the voice when imitating what she has sung.1
In places, the accompaniment sounds like chamber music, with simple, sinuous
lines woven together, a magical moment where one voice and several instruments
carry the drama. Most examples of orchestration in West Side Story and Gypsy
described in this book are not quite so singular, but the aim herein is to place such
moments in high relief, demonstrating how the orchestration of each show was
realized and to describe those places where it especially helps further the plot and
informs the audience about situations and characters.
Chapter 2 presents the necessary context to approach the orchestrations for
West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959). Working from a list of important shows
of the 1950s, we consider the work of the most significant composers and lyricists
DOI: 10.4324/9780429023378-1