Review

Reviewed Work(s): null by Elizabeth Wells; null by Nigel Simeone

Review by: Jim Lovensheimer
Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Spring 2012), pp.
285-291
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological
Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/jams.2012.65.1.285
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 Reviews 285

West Side Story: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical, by Elizabeth

Wells. Lanham, MD, Toronto, and Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow, 2011. xiii,
312 pp.

Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story, by Nigel Simeone. Landmarks in Music

since 1950. Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009. xiii, 177 pp.;
compact disc.

Anyone writing about West Side Story must at some point acknowledge the
problematic issue of the works genre classification: is it, or is it not, an opera?
Larry Stempel, in his recent Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical
Theater,1 introduces his discussion of the matter within a more general consid-
eration of musicals and operas. He provides interesting and occasionally
provocative comments by composer Leonard Bernstein, critic Cecil Smith,
and musicologist Joseph Kerman. Bernstein, quoted from his 1956 Omnibus
episode on American Musical Comedy, argued that the genre, like the
Austro-German Singspiel of the mid-eighteenth century, was ready to take
the leap to a work of art. . . . After all, he continued, The Magic Flute is a
Singspiel; only its by Mozart. He observed that musical comedy in the mid-
1950s was similarly anticipating its Mozart to appear and elevate it to the sta-
tus of art.2 Cecil Smith, on the other hand, did not see this leap as desirable:
A musical comedy does not exist for the same purpose as an opera, nor, es-
sentially, does it employ comparable musical or plot materials.3 And Kerman,
in a quote from his controversial classic Opera as Drama, which argued that
the composer was the dramatist in opera, was unsurprisingly dismissive of the
entire genre of musical comedy: Musical comedy . . . might [theoretically]
serve as a proving-ground for art, just as opera buffa did in the eighteenth
century; but in over a hundred years operetta and musical comedy have come
forth with not a single serious dramatist.4 Kermans restrictive perspective
on just who is a dramatist in lyric theater obviously omitted even the possibil-
ity of including the important innovative librettist and lyricist Oscar
Hammerstein II, among others, into that category.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of all three of the above comments is
the use of the term musical comedy for a genre that, certainly by the mid-
1950s, included works of increasingly serious subject matter and style that
were referred to as musical plays. Although this second term was sparingly
used before the appearance of Rodgers and Hammersteins Oklahoma! in
1943, musical play gained currency after the premiere of that work and was
subsequently applied to works by others for which the classification musical

1. Larry Stempel, Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater (New York: Norton,
2010).
2. Quoted in ibid., 398.
3. Quoted in ibid.
4. Quoted in ibid.

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286 Journal of the American Musicological Society

comedy was inadequate. Nonetheless, two pages after these quotes, Stempel,
in one of the few missteps in his book, declares that playwright Arthur
Laurents, lyricist Stephen Sondheim, director-choreographer Jerome Robbins,
and composer Bernstein created a Broadway opera, because such serious-
ness of subject [as that in West Side Story] demanded a seriousness of form that
seemed well beyond musical comedys reach.5 That seriousness, however,
was not beyond the reach of a musical play. Why then did Stempel feel com-
pelled to categorize West Side Story as an opera and not a musical play?
Further, the creative team for West Side Story recognized the need for a form
more serious than musical comedy from the earliest stages of the work. Yet
only Bernstein fixated on the work as an opera. Indeed, Arthur Laurents, in
his autobiography, recalled that from the very first meeting he, Bernstein, and
Robbins hadSondheim came on board laterthe only initial obstacle was
one that Lenny always put in the way: he wanted to write an American
opera. . . . Neither Jerry nor I wanted to do an opera any more than we
wanted to do a musical comedy. What we did want, what all three of us agreed
we wanted, was impossible to categorize because we couldnt define it.6
Later, in an interview with Elizabeth A. Wells for her excellent new study of
West Side Story, Laurents became even more emphatic: The real problem,
and it exists to this dayLenny, like most Classical musiciansthe culture is
snobbishthinks opera is art, Broadway is not. His greatest theatre piece is
West Side Storya Broadway musical. What interfered with his other theatre
pieces was his desire to be accepted as a classical composer. He didnt accept
that West Side was a masterpiece. Wells concurs, affirming that West Side
Story is Bernsteins greatest musical (p. 92). But then she somewhat prob-
lematically adds to Laurentss observation: It was [Bernsteins] own inner
struggles that perhaps did not allow him to recognize that it was also his great
American opera (p. 92). In the end, perhaps masterpiece is the most satis-
factory classification for the work. But whatever it is, it is not an opera. It is a
musical, albeit a musical with one of the most sophisticated scores ever created
for the Broadway stage.
Regardless of whether or not one agrees with her conclusion, the reason
Wells is able to be so succinct about the opera issueit is by no means a recur-
ring themeis that her book is not composer-centric. The collaborative
process [of the genre], she observes very early in her discussion, demands
the waiving of imagined inalienable rights of the composer and the immutable
work (p. 3). In other words, we no longer can get away with referring to
Bernsteins West Side Story or Weills Street Scene; instead, the synesthetic
nature of musicals demands that we think of them from many perspectives. To
this end, Wells explores the many creative voices in West Side Story and also

5. Ibid., 400, 401.

6. Arthur Laurents, Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood (New York:
Applause, 2000), 329.

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 Reviews 287

moves into various areas of cultural contextualization, all of which give this
book considerable breadth without sacrificing any depth. This is not to imply
that she eschews any treatment of the score. On the contrary, her chapter on
Bernstein and the score is among the most important discussions in the book.
It also may well prove to be the most controversial.
Although she does not deny or challenge the organicism and unity of Bern-
steins score for West Side Storyshe notes that Bernstein clearly planned this
organicism in his compositional process (p. 62), an observation that is chal-
lenged by Nigel Simeone and dealt with later in this reviewWellss analysis
of the score moves beyond that conventional wisdom and into what she calls
a more postmodern light. This approach, as she immediately explains, looks
under the musical text and surface structure to reveal layers of subtle influ-
ence and borrowings (p. 62). The word subtle is of particular importance
here, for while Wells indeed discusses such familiar issues as the tritones mo-
tivic centrality to the score and the similarity between Bernsteins subject for
the Cool fugue and Beethovens for the Grosse Fuge, among others, she ar-
gues that the perceived organicism of the score is less important than its ele-
ments that diverge from a homogeneous, organic, and singular artwork
(p. 59). This approach to the score recalls Scott McMillins approach to musi-
cals in general: he observes the genre not as a model of integrated elements
working together but as a mixture of elements notable for their difference as
well as for creating meaning by not working together.7 The difference that
Wells findsthe nonorganic facets of the score lurking beneath its surface
organizationstems from her reading the score as a critique of Western art
music, a critique that may in part have grown from Bernsteins continual urge
to find his place within a historical continuum of that musical tradition
(pp. 9091). Further, Wells suggests that later comments by Bernstein, in
books as well as in often-televised lectures, promote the identification of
intersections between the composers score for West Side Story and the
canon of Western art music, intersections that serve as a lens through which
the classics are perceived and filtered (p. 91). This lens also brings into focus
Bernsteins fascination with the deep structures or underlying grammars in
music as revealed through composers borrowing (p. 63). This interest led the
composer, most notably in a series of lectures given at Harvard in the early
1970s,8 to build upon linguist Noam Chomskys discussions of universal lin-
guistic structures that lie beneath the surface structures of various languages.
Wellss suggestion that the score to West Side Story contains such moments of
convergence (p. 64) with many of the canonic works of Western art music,
and not necessarily just those quoted or alluded to in Bernsteins score, and

7. See Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama: A Study of the Principles and Conventions be-
hind Musical Shows from Kern to Sondheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).
8. See Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1976).

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288 Journal of the American Musicological Society

her use of the Harvard lectures to demonstrate how Bernstein exploits these
convergences, will probably raise some eyebrows. And, indeed, some of her
examples are more persuasive than others.
For instance, Wellss notion that the parallels between the song Maria
and Chopins Mazurka, Op. 17, No. 4, are astonishing seems a bit
far-fetchedtriplet subdivisions and an eight-note interior line in the Chopin
do not necessarily scream, or even whisper, Maria (p. 64). On the other
hand, her discussion of Berliozs Romeo and Juliet and West Side Story and
the deep structural relation between the two works is far more convincing.
After establishing Bernsteins early familiarity with the work and its centrality
to his Harvard lectures, Wells continues by pointing out numerous structural
similarities between the works: both composers recall Romeo-Tonys earlier
musicRomeo Alone and Somethings Coming, respectivelyin the
subsequent Ball at the Capulets and Dance at the Gym sequences; the
importance of dance music to the central concept of West Side Story recalls
Berliozs treatment of much of the plays drama through solely instrumental
music; the comparison of Berliozs Strophes in part 1 as a kind of disem-
bodied love song for alto to Bernsteins use of Somewhere as an offstage
love song for alto during the act 2 dream ballet sequence; musical compar-
isons between Romeos theme and Somethings Coming, and so on
(pp. 6971). Overall, Wells persuasively argues that Bernstein borrows for his
score what she calls Berliozs underlying grammars (p. 63). She follows this
with a less satisfying discussion of Wagners Tristan und Isolde and its relation
to Berlioz and Bernsteins scores. While she clearly suggests how Bernsteins
Prologue and Rumble sequences demonstrate what Robert Bailey, in dis-
cussing the Tristan prelude, called its double tonic complex between A
major and C major (p. 73),9 she is less convincing in her discussion of
Bernsteins recurring tritone as a counterpoint to Wagners Tristan chord.
Wells also brings Gershwin and Porgy and Bess into the picturesinging
African Americans, nonsinging white Americans in Porgy; singing and dancing
young people, nonsinging and nondancing adults in West Side Storyas well
as Stravinsky. Indeed, Bernsteins comments in the Harvard lectures that
Stravinskys Rite of Spring is a synthesis of earthy vernacular embedded in
stylistic sophistication might also be about West Side Story.10
While the subsequent chapter, Mambo!: West Side Story and the
Hispanic, is also concerned in large part with Bernsteins score, Wells gets to
it only after historically contextualizing Mexican and Puerto Rican cultures in
the United States before and during the time of the musicals creation. She
then traces Hispanic elements in American music, although she has a bit of

9. See Robert Bailey, An Analytical Study of the Sketches and Drafts, in Richard Wagner,
Prelude and Transfiguration from Tristan und Isolde, ed. Bailey, 11346 (New York: Norton,
1985).
10. Bernstein, Unanswered Question, 359.

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 Reviews 289

historical amnesia: while Jelly Roll Morton introduced the term Latin [or
Spanish] tinge for an essential element of jazz, he was not, as Wells states,
the first non-Hispanic musician to exploit it in his music (p. 103). Surely
that distinction belongs to Louis Moreau Gottschalk, whose virtuosic piano
music from the mid-nineteenth century is rife with Latin and Caribbean titles
and dance types. Scott Joplin, only a few years earlier than Morton, also used
the habanera as a dominant rhythmic element in his lovely Solace, as did
George Chadwick in the first movement of his Symphonic Sketches. Nonethe-
less, this chapter introduces one of Wellss great strengths, which is her explo-
ration of the cultural perspectives suggested by the books title. Although
she notes Bernsteins early (1930s) attraction to Hispanic music through
Carlos Chvez and Aaron Copland and its later manifestations in his works for
the stage before West Side Story, Wells also discusses the rising popularity of the
mambo during the same era, a popularity much exploited in Bernsteins score,
as well as the social problems indicated by the rise of mid-twentieth-century
Hispanic youth gangs in urban America. Clearly written and argued, this
chapter is a wonderful example of the multidisciplinary approach to musical
theater that is increasingly prevalent in the literature.
The next two chapters deal with, respectively, the women characters in
West Side Story and what Wells refers to as the shows prevalent social con-
sciousness (p. 203). The second of these chapters is focused on the contem-
poraneous gangs that initially inspired the work and how the representation of
those gangs was, and remains, problematic. It is perhaps the best chapter in
the book. Wells puts the musical in the context of other art at the time, films in
particular, as well as sociological studies about juvenile delinquency that also
appeared, and she finds that the creators drew deeply from all these sources as
they created the musical. From Jerome Robbinss list of gang movies then
out (p. 191) to multiple studies of the time that suggested how white middle
class educators could stem the rampant growth of youthful offenses
(p. 196), Wells finds many correspondences to the show in mid-1950s popu-
lar culture. Further, she suggests that the creative team demonstrated their
concern for these correspondences by inviting groups of juvenile delinquents
to see the show and discuss it afterward. This program, Wells notes, was in-
tended to continue indefinitely, at least till the Broadway closing in the sum-
mer of 1959 (p. 206).
In the opening pages of her book, Wells states that West Side Story has
yet to earn a serious, full-length musicological study (p. 3). Yet, in her penul-
timate chapter, she cites Nigel Simeones Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story,
which is just such a study that came out well before Wellss monograph.
Although Simeones book is much narrower in scope than Wellsshis con-
cern is Bernstein and the scorehe states on the first page his sensitivity to the
collaborative nature of the genre and the importance of the other creators, in
particular in terms of how their work impacted Bernsteins. Nonetheless, as
the title of his book demonstrates, Simeones concern is the composer and the

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290 Journal of the American Musicological Society

score, and his treatment of both is a skillful combination of impressive scholar-

ship and accessible presentation.
Simeones second chapter, titled simply Genesis, is perhaps the best de-
scription of the works development in print. It is compact and tightly written,
makes impressive use of primary and secondary sources, and includes several
detailed versions of early drafts, including a comparison of an early (but un-
dated) typescript found in the Library of Congress and the published libretto.
This section also includes substantial discussions of the casting process, the
bumpy ride toward finding a producer, the search for a conductor, and re-
hearsals. The rather general if important information in this chapter is fol-
lowed by an in-depth look at Bernsteins musical manuscripts for the score.
This may be the most challenging chapter for a nonmusician, since many of
the musical examples are from material no longer in the score and thus only
demonstrable by playing them on a keyboard. (For examples of the musical
numbers as they finally appeared, and as they are found in the current piano-
vocal score, the book generously comes with a CD of the complete original
Broadway cast recording.) Again, organization is one of Simeones principal
attributes: he first presents musical material cut from the show, after which he
examines all musical revisions to the score, scene by scene. Toward the end of
this chapter, Simeone notes that the manuscripts . . . are an absorbing record
of the creative process, and of the kinds of changes that were made in collabo-
ration with the rest of the team, and in response to their criticisms (p. 74).
Simeones straightforward delivery of this material has much to do with its
being absorbing for readers.
The subsequent chapter, The Score, is equally absorbing and probably
the books most far-reaching chapter. Simeone begins with elements of the
score that reach beyond the printed page: issues of genre (yet again), what he
calls features of the musical language (p. 75): how the orchestra is used and
the process of orchestrating the show. Only when he has considered these var-
ious issues does he turn his attention to the individual musical numbers in the
show. This and the previous chapter, which especially demonstrate the unique
demands faced by a composer for the theater, would make great reading for a
class of composers or musicologists interested in musicals. In terms of genre,
Simeone finds the work leaning less toward opera than toward what the
composers brother termed a monster ballet (p. 78). Unsurprising, Simeone
suggests, since it was [choreographer] Robbins who had conceived the
whole project in the first place (p. 78). Simeone also dispels some of the no-
tions of organicism often applied to the score: The relatively haphazard way
in which most Broadway scores are composedand he has already demon-
strated how this was so with West Side Storysuggests that any over-arching
motivic plan would be unlikely (p. 80). He then goes on to quote co-
orchestrators Irwin Kostal and Sid Ramin, as well as Stephen Sondheim, each
of whom talked individually about bringing the prevalence of the tritone in
the score to Bernsteins attention. Lenny later claimed that the score was

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 Reviews 291

built around the tritone, Sondheim offered, which is nonsense since half the
score was taken from other shows and ballets (p. 81). Simeone provides a
succinct and insightful twenty-page analysis of the numbers in the show, dur-
ing which he has what might be, or ought to be, the final word on the show as
opera. Discussing the act 1 Quintet, a number that nearly all writers on the
show from as early as the Washington previews have singled out as operatic
Simeone quotes Richard Coes early review from the Washington Post, for
instanceSimeone comments that it is operatic urgency rather than operatic
excess that is at work in this number. He continues, There is no sense what-
soever of Bernstein falling into an opera trap; instead he has created a
Broadway reinterpretation of a model that was the ideal fit for this critical mo-
ment in the drama (p. 106).
Each of these works stands distinctly apart from many of the more general
considerations of the genre as well as from studies of particular works for the
musical stage. Wellss multidisciplinary approach, for instance, which embraces
the collaborative nature of the genre, demonstrates an impressively broad sam-
ple of primary sources and archival materials. Especially useful in both works
are the extensive observations of some of the works original creatorsthe
comments of Kostal and Ramin are rare and valuable, for exampleand the
contemporary interviews with gang members that Wells provides richly con-
textualize the work as a mid-twentieth-century social critique. And although
Simeone focuses specifically on Bernsteins score, he, like Wells, is very forth-
coming in describing what he is doing as part of a necessarily larger picture in-
volving co-creators and various other artists. In short, Wells and Simeone have
joined the still short but growing list of scholars who are defining musical the-
ater studies, and each has joined that list with an insightful and skilled mono-
graph about one of the genres most problematic yet successful works.

JIM LOVENSHEIMER

Twelve-Tone Music in America, by Joseph N. Straus. Music in the Twentieth

Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xxiv, 301 pp.

Like its subject, Twelve-Tone Music in America is a hybrid: a sourcebook/

anthology fused with a case study in musical polemics. Nested within, the
book contains its own strong plea: it generates a sense of moral purpose by
treating its eponymous subject as if it were an injured class, analogous to a
marginalized social group, whose rights and dignities warrant protection.
Straus suggests a link between respect for diverse musical kinds, cultural (and
human) diversity, and human dignity in his refutation of one of the many
fictions circulating about twelve-tone methods, what he calls the Myth of
Unnaturalness:

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