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date: 05 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

This chapter explores some of the influence Sondheim’s mentor Oscar Hammerstein II may have had on the composer. With close analysis of the ways in which lyric patterning guided the structure of the music in several Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, the chapter suggests that one of their primary contributions to musical theater was to structure the dramatic dynamic of a show into the score through a use of extended song-form. I note in particular the way this works in Carousel (1945), Allegro (1947), and South Pacific (1949). The chapter then speculates about how Sondheim has developed this technique through a modular montaging of scenes and through the creation of palindromic trajectories within a whole show in A Little Night Music (1973) and Sunday in the Park with George (1984).

Keywords: Sondheim, Hammerstein, mentor, influence, song form, structure, Carousel, Allegro, South Pacific, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George

Dominic Symonds

Dominic Symonds is Reader in Drama at the University of Lincoln. His research focuses on post-structuralist approaches to the musical. He is joint editor of Studies in Musical Theatre (Intellect) and founded the international conference Song, Stage and Screen. He is also co-convenor of the music theatre working group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. He has recently co-edited two collections of essays for the IFTR, The Legacy of Opera: Reading Music Theatre as Experience and Performance (Rodopi, 2013) and Gestures of Music Theatre: The Performativity of Song and Dance (OUP, 2013). His monographs We’ll Have Manhattan: The Early Work of Rodgers and Hart (OUP) and Broadway Rhythm: Imaging the City in Song (University of Michigan Press), will appear in 2014.

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