Patrick Tice-Carroll

March 15, 2019

Annotated Bibliography

Fiss, Laura Kasson. 2009. “‘This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter’: patter songs and the
word-music relationship.” In The Cambridge Companion to Gilbert and Sullivan, edited
by David Eden, Meinhard Saremba, 98-108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

This source discusses the innate relationship between the words and music of a patter
song in an attempt to explain its popularity and effectiveness in the context of musical
drama. Looking particularly at interaction between Gilbert’s libretti and Sullivan’s music,
Fiss argues that the humor and value derived from patter songs are products of the
number of notes stressed, rather than how many notes are present in a short period of
time.

Savran, David. 2012. “‘You’ve got that thing’: Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, and the Erotics
of the List Song.” Theatre Journal 64, no. 4 (2012): 533-48. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.

This source looks at the genre of list songs from Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim
through the perspective of homoerotic tendencies of list songs. Savran argues that these
songs are comprised of lists that act as sets of desires and anxieties that juxtapose when
delivered by the composer through the mouth of the character.

ed. Latham, Alison. 2011. “patter song.” The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

This source provides a general definition of the term “patter song,” serving as a place for
the rest of the discussion to be based on. The definition provided extends specifically to
the patter songs common of opera in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as the operetta of
Gilbert and Sullivan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is from this definition that
one can begin to look at how Sondheim might have approached his compositional
process of patter songs in context of the historical relevance of patter songs.

Sondheim, Stephen; Herbert, Trevor. 1989. “Sondheim’s technique.” Contemporary Music

Review, 5, iss. 1: 199-214

This source gives a first-hand account from an interview with Stephen Sondheim as he
describes his own compositional process, dealing particularly with the relationship he
finds between the words and music he writes. While this draws on songs that are not
necessarily patter, the overall approach that Sondheim brings towards his compositions
can be readily applied to his oeuvre and can help describe the relation between these
elements in his patter and list songs.
Salzman, Eric. 1991. “Whither American Music Theater?.” The Musical Quarterly 75, no. 4
(Winter, 1991): 235-47. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

This source describes the status of musical theater in the transitory time of the late 20th
century. Musical theater fell out of mainstream listening by the 1960s, and the rising
budgets of productions put a halt to more contemporary and forward-thinking pursuits in
musical theater. Salzman describes this period as an age “in which music theater is
retrogressive,” in that its further development pushes away even more from the general
public. The discussion on the function of theater, particularly the different musical
devices used in the theater, provides excellent basis for historical and musical analysis of
Sondheim’s musicals in this same transitory time period.