remembering Bergman's films

The first Bergman film I ever saw was a television showing (on PBS) of The Virgin Spring. I remember being horrorfied by the rape sequence and traumatized by the film. I was maybe 11 years old, watching alone and really didn't understand what I was seeing. But I knew I had seen something amazing and powerful. The image of the just raped girl, standing there in shock (just before she's murdered) is still vivid 40 years later without having seen the film again.

When I turned 12, I was allowed to take the train into Manhattan alone. It was the early 70's, my parents lived on Long Island and things were looser. Probably not safer than today, but there was less worrying about your kids getting into trouble.

After a few visits to the Museum of Natural History to overcome a youthful fascination (dinosaur bones lose their appeal when you can see them anytime you want) I began to go the movies. With no one watching over me I was seeing films like the newly released "Clockwork Orange" - another shocking experience for a young adolescent.

And then I went to see "Cries and Whispers". Did I understand what I was watching? - maybe - just barely. But I was in shock from seeing (and feeling) the kind of tragic emotions I never knew existed. (They existed in my own family - but buried under the surface where I, as the youngest child, was unaware of them till much later.) My memories of plot and character are vague now - but in my mind I still see the colors of black and red and the texture of velvet somehow associated with blood. I still remember the shock of seeing tragic intimacies I never imagined.

If I see "Cries and Whispers" again someday, I will see it with an adult, analytical mind. And with the developed empathy of someone who has now spent years watching plays and movies, trying to understand characters, plot, and structure.

But I hope I always remember the sense memories of seeing something I didn't understand on a conscious level ... something that pierced into me in a way I had no language or framework to describe and thereby lessen the impact.

Song vs. Play

(This is an old blog entry from about four years ago.)

The development of musical theatre has always been entwined with the medium of commercial popular music - Tin Pan Alley standards, swing and pop, commercial rock and roll, etc.

But to my mind, there has always been a tug of war in musicals - between the need to create a strong play and then need to put forth strong songs that stand on their own.

Some musicals let the play rule: the songs have unusual structures, can be full of dialog and recitative, can have odd and irregular rhyme schemes and no button at the end to trigger applause. Other musicals let the song rule: these songs usually have traditional structures, pop music styles and often lyrics that are general enough to work outside the confines of the play. (It should be noted that operas have the same polarities - scene versus aria. I think the works of Verdi span one end of the spectrum to the other as he matured.)

Most musicals are somewhere in the middle, between these two poles. And there is certainly no singular solution. Michael John LaChiusa's work definitely tends towards the play end of the spectrum, subverting song structure to serve the scene at hand. Older book musicals from the Thirties, and the earlier shows of Lloyd Weber are examples of the songs ruling the structure of the play. The Rodgers and Hammerstein canon still lets the song rule (to my mind), but the songs now are made to assist the play's forward motion.

This is all obvious to anyone working on musicals. But the orchestrater has a special role in this polarity. His approach to the song can push it more towards one end or the other of the spectrum. He can emphasize the 'popness' of a song, and isolate it from the play that's going on. An example of this was the song "Wanting" from the musical "Rags". It was definitely written to also have a life outside of the show, the music sounding very contemporary and the lyrics having no specific reference to characters in the play. The orchestrater's job was to deliver the commercial viability of the song to the listener, while simultaneously integrating it into a ragtime/jazz score set in the early 20th century.

An interesting twist on this polarity is the work of William Finn. Finn delivers a series of songs, each asking to be treated as strong individual units. But he also works to create a play FROM the series of song moments (as opposed to a series of scenes containing songs). He will open up the song structure to allow book material to be sung, but never abandons the song as the building block for the play. Here, the orchestrater needs to button and catch the varied song styles, but never lose thread of the play and characters that is winding its way through the piece as a whole.

Sometimes I think Finn's work is influenced by the record album as a literary form. Many albums made in the Sixties and Seventies were fully integrated, cohesive works. Again, a series of individual songs adding up to a greater whole.

it's not the rock, it's ....

Okay, with the success of "Spring Awakening" everyone will be trying to find the hip new rock musical.

But excuse me - rock music has been in the theater for a while now - I think this is the 3rd 'discovery' of the rock musical. (The previous 'discovery', "Rent", is still running.)

Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed "Spring Awakening" - it really works, is entertaining and has something to say. And I like rock music - grew up on it, led my kids to it and listen to it more than classical. ( I never listen to theatre music.)

But looking for the next rock musical is to mistake what works about "Spring Awakening" and what is the linchpin of almost all musicals.

The lyrics.

"Spring Awakening" had a wonderful dichotomy between it's slightly stuffy Germanic book and the modern (angry or passionate) lyrics. Just as the tension built up from a scene where it just seemed to be too old fashioned, the characters broke out in the vernacular of rock lyrics. It made one almost giddy with the contrast. That's the frisson that made it all work. The music (not to denigrate it in any way) was simply the style appropriate to the lyric outbursts. If the book had also been modernized into the vernacular it probably wouldn't have worked.

Now, would those lyrics (and score) have worked for a modern adaptation of Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice"? Probably not - the style of youthful outburst isn't appropriate to Mann's story. Which leads to my question ....

Is there a limit to the scope of rock lyrics in a theatrical setting? Can we distinguish them from 'theater' lyrics in the musical theatre mode? And if we distinguish them as being more direct, simpler expressions of inner angst (more 'geschrei' than turmoil) -- do we then see that they have less range of expression?

If there is a limit to the scope of rock lyrics -- should every producer be grabbing up properties and throwing rock scores at them because "Spring Awakening" won some (deserved) Tony awards? They certainly want (and need) to get a younger audience into the theatre.

But more importantly they need to invest in young writers and develop them as writers - not as song suppliers for Hollywood-spin-offs that have marketable product identity. But the long term development of writers and how producers pick properties are both off my topic ...

All of which is NOT to say that rock as a musical language is not flexible enough to have a wide range and applicability to different projects. A rock score might just work for "Death in Venice". But the lyrics would have to be quite dense and thoughtful to capture Aschenbach's turmoil and obsession. And the music would have to expand beyond guitar rock to something darker and more mystical ... Pink Floyd, maybe?

Just a thought on styles and words ....