Waltzing to a different drummer

 

by Michael Kotze

 

In the beginning, there was operetta. Having triumphed in Europe, operetta looked west, across the Atlantic Ocean. In America, it came, it saw, it conquered.

 

But once in the New World, something began to happen to operetta. It fell

in with a different crowd, and soon had no time for its old pals, the soulful

princesses, dancing hussars and gypsy barons that used to be operetta’s

constant companions.

 

It was now hanging out with gangsters, bootleggers, madcap American

heiresses and tap dancers, and going by a different name: musical comedy.

 

What happened? Jazz happened. As the new American popular music began to

find its way to the stage, operetta underwent a metamorphosis as one great

populist art form gave way to another, and the American musical was born.

 

Firmly rooted in the Old World

 

Some Broadway composers were born to Jazz; others had Jazz thrust upon

them. None could ignore it, and they all assimilated the rhythms and harmonies

of the new American sound into their work.

 

With one exception: Frederick Loewe. He was unique among the great Broadway composers in that his musical style never absorbed the American popular vernacular. To put it bluntly, Fritz didn’t swing.

 

Not that this proved much of a handicap. Loewe produced a string of hits

that places him among the most successful composers of the American musical

theater. And while the other top composers of his era, from Leonard Bernstein to

Jule Styne, kept Broadway swinging with such shows as West Side Story and

Bells Are Ringing, Loewe, innocent of jazz, labored on a series of romantic

period pieces that, though undeniably modern in the sophistication of their

storytelling, hark back unmistakably to the old world of operetta.

 

Loewe’s career was a virtual renaissance for time-honored operetta fundamentals, from the folk costumes and dances of Brigadoon (Scottish here, not the genre’s typical Austro-Hungarian goulash), to the unabashedly high-flown romanticism of Camelot, to the gowns and waltzes of My Fair Lady and Gigi. And all with lyric soprano heroines—unlike the other Broadway composers of his time, Loewe was not following in the footsteps of George Gershwin and Cole Porter, but walking the now somewhat overgrown pathways of Franz Lehár and Sigmund Romberg.

 

This all may come as no surprise when one considers Loewe’s background.

Born in Berlin in 1901 to Viennese parents, he was the son of Edmund Loewe, a

celebrated operetta tenor; when Frederick was four years old, his father played

Danilo in the Berlin premiere of The Merry Widow.

 

New York to Montana and back

 

The boy followed in his father’s musical footsteps. He was a child  prodigy at the piano, and made his solo debut with the Berlin Philharmonic at the age of 13. As if that weren’t enough, at 15 he published the song “Katrina,” a tribute to “the girl with the best legs in Berlin,” which purportedly sold two million copies.

 

Loewe traveled to America in 1923. His father had been summoned to New

York by theatrical impresario David Belasco with an offer of a part in a new

show; the 22-year-old Fritz (a nickname that stuck his entire life) tagged along,

hoping to get a break on Broadway. Edmund Loewe died while rehearsals were

underway, leaving Frederick and his mother 4,000 miles from home and in

desperate financial straits.

 

Fritz went to work. He played piano in movie theaters, and claimed to have boxed professionally as well, despite the seemingly mutually exclusive digital demands of pianism and pugilism. For a while he taught horseback riding (apparently at least one aspect of his German military school training paid off) and later traveled west, working in Montana as a cowboy. This period of Loewe’s life is poorly documented, and we rely heavily on the colorful recollections with which he regaled friends and reporters later in life.

 

Fritz meets his match

 

By the early thirties, Loewe was back in New York, building his musical career. He played piano in restaurants and Broadway pits, and continued to compose. But it wasn’t until he met the young Harvard-educated lyricist and playwright Alan Jay Lerner that things began to happen. They teamed up in 1942 to write a musical comedy for a stock company in Detroit. This modest success took them to Broadway, where they collaborated on two short-lived shows, What’s Up and The Day Before Spring.

 

Then, in 1947, Lerner and Loewe finally had their hit. Brigadoon ran for nearly 600 performances, and set the tone for the period romances that would follow: Paint Your Wagon (1951), My Fair Lady (1956), Gigi (1958), and Camelot (1960). In each, Loewe’s music captures the atmosphere of its time and place to perfection. Equally remarkable is Loewe’s gift for musical characterization; the vocal stylings invented for each of Lerner’s vast and varied casts of characters is utterly convincing, whether a Cockney flower girl, Parisian playboy, or legendary king of England.

 

In this, Loewe went a step beyond the operetta composers of the previous generation who didn’t generally trouble themselves with the kind of detailed word-setting that Loewe regularly produced in his collaborations with Lerner.   This compositional care gives Loewe’s work spontaneity and life, along with a conversational ease that is distinctly modern, despite its operetta roots.   Fritz didn’t swing, but as his triumphant career proves, that didn’t mean a thing.

 

            

Natalie Ford (Gigi) and           Natalie Ford (Gigi) and Nicholas         Robert Hildreth (Honore

Nicolas Foster (Gaston          Foster (Gaston Lachailles) "fly          Lachailles) and Natalie

Lachailles) find love in           to the sky on champagne."              Ford (Gigi). 

Paris.

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