Overview

Richard Rodgers, a musical genius whose Broadway career spanned six successful decades, composed more than a thousand songs for the American stage. Although he reaped wealth, success, and recognition that included two shared Pulitzer Prizes, Rodgers found happiness elusive. In this first comprehensive biography of Rodgers, William G. Hyland tells the full story of the complex man and his incomparable music. Hyland's portrait of Rodgers (1902-79) begins with his childhood in an affluent Jewish family living in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. During college years at Columbia University and early work on the amateur circuit and Broadway, Rodgers entered into a historic collaboration with the lyricist Lorenz Hart. The team produced a dozen popular shows and such enduring songs as ""The Lady Is a Tramp."" Rodgers' next partnership, with Oscar Hammerstein II, led to the creation of the musical play, a new and distinctively American art form. Beginning with Oklahoma! in 1943, this pair dominated Broadway for almost twenty years with a string of hits that remain beloved favorites: Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. When Hammerstein died in 1960, Rodgers began a new phase in his career, writing the lyrics to his own music, then joining lyricists Stephen Sondheim, Sheldon Harnick, and Martin Charnin. Despite periods of depression, excessive drinking, hypochondria, and devastating illness at different points in his life, Rodgers' outpouring of music seemed little affected, and he continued to compose until his death at age seventy-seven. An icon of the musical theater, Rodgers left a legacy of timeless songs that audiences return to hear over and again.

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9780300071153

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Reviews

Hyland, former editor of Foreign Affairs, continues his exploration of the giants of American popular song, begun in The Song Is Ended (1995), with a biography of the man who may have been the greatest of them all. Richard Rodgers was in many ways unique among the great composers of American theater music. He enjoyed lengthy partnerships with two very different lyricists of the first caliber, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein. He established himself not only as a great songwriter but as a highly regarded composer of soundtrack music, winning awards for his scores for Victory at Sea and The Valiant Years. His career - after some inconclusive noodling around after college - consisted of an ever-upward trajectory with few bumps along the way until he was well into his 50s. And unlike the other great Jewish tunesmiths who dominated the Broadway stage in the golden era of musical theater, he was the product of a well-to-do family, never experiencing poverty, never struggling for his next dollar. The last two facts may go some way in explaining why Hyland's new biography of Rodgers is such a dull read: There just isn't much drama in this life. On the other hand, Hyland doesn't help himself with his approach, an awkward veering between biographical detail and musical analysis that is too perfunctory with both. As a result, one never has much sense of Rodgers as a personality, despite lengthy descriptions of his behavior and attitude toward colleagues and friends, nor much understanding of what made him such a fine composer. Nor does Hyland really give much context for the innovations of Rodgers's work with each of his great partners. The book is constructed entirely out of library research, with no interviewing, and it has the musty air of the library throughout. Intelligent, but utterly lifeless. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

William G. Hyland is former editor of the quarterly journal Foreign Affairs and author of The Song Is Ended: Songwriters and American Music, 1900-1950.

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