When it comes to love, musicals are your genre. Romantic love songs are standard fare. But, as Thos and Josh point out, it's rarely approached head-on. More often than not, in the classics, it's oblique. They rightly point to Kern and Wodehouse's song "Bill" which has this lovely line:
His form and face
His manly grace
Are not the kind that you
Would find in a statue...
I love him because he's - I don't know -
Because he's just my Bill
Lovely rhymes aside, the sentiment is, on the face of it, not complimentary. Something similar is going on in "My Funny Valentine":
Is your figure less than Greek?
Is your mouth a little weak?
When you open it to speak
Are you smart?
Taken at face value the singer seems to be demonstrating their romatic feelings by describing the object of their love as a chubby, wonky-mouthed moron. But this is, thankfully, not the real message. The beautiful but resigned music tells us something else is going on. The singer is in love but not the idealistic kind. They love, not despite the faults of the other person but because of those faults. The song shows us their love is real.
It's also very satisfying dramatically. The Oblique Love Song allows for a sub-text. The songs above are superficially about one thing (complaining about somebody's imperfection) but are really about something else (the depth of the singer's love). That's more interesting for actor and audience alike. In fact the way Oscar Hammerstein uses "Bill" in Showboat makes it even more oblique. Julie sings it in a rehearsal as if it's just another audition piece of a past-their-best lounge act. But we know it means much more to her and that it's not really about some imaginary fella called Bill but about her lost love, Steve.
Moving on a few decades.
Here's the big love song from Phantom of the Opera:
Say you love me
Ev'ry waking moment
Turn my head with talk of summertime...
Anywhere you go let me go too
Love me - that's All I Ask of You
No obliqueness here. No, siree. This is about planting two feet on the floor and telling it like it is, singing what you mean and meaning what you sing. Let's call this a Declamatory Love Song.
Now I think this is one of the things that distinguishes the old musicals from the new. In the old shows the love songs tend to be more oblique, in the new ones they tend to be more declamatory. This may be generalising but I think there is some truth to it.
My sense is that both approaches can work but it does depend on the context. The kind of impassioned sentiment of "All I Ask of You" suits a boldly romantic show such as Phantom of the Opera. The problem is when that kind of declamatory style is used in smaller kinds of shows which call for a more oblique, character-led style. Imagine a modern-day, ordinary character - a student or waitress or an accountant, say - singing "Say you love/Every waking moment". It would sound overblown and silly.
The point is that the Declamatory Love Song has its dramatic limitations. It can only be used to tell certain kinds of stories. For new stories we need a new style of storytelling. Or, perhaps, an old one. Bring on the obliquity.
No comments:
Post a Comment