Broadway Musicals - Athena

that a journalist asked my grandfather if it was true that he didn’t pay
for his son’s piano lessons, and why didn’t he encourage his son’s career
more? And Sam Bernstein famously replied, “Well how was I supposed
to know he’d turn out to be Leonard Bernstein?”
Composer Charles Strouse (Annie, Bye Bye Birdie, Rags)
You can’t help but notice that a great many of the songwriters are of
Jewish descent. I believe that is because Jews were largely shut out of
music in Europe. Anti-Semitism has been prevalent there for longer
than you and I have been around, and Jews were largely shut out of the
musical establishment.
I think when the immigrants came to this country, they saw there was
an outlet. They came to this country—a lot of Russian Jews, but German
Jews too; I’m of German descent—at the time that jazz and vaudeville
were becoming prevalent. So in this melding, Jews became able to float
in the warm seas that America granted them, and I think that’s where
a great deal of it comes from. It was a great melting pot, and one of the
reasons that Jews became so prominent in
pop music was because of that. Of course
it’s all changed now. You know country
music is not a Jewish thing, although God
knows, there are a lot of Jewish cowboys
out there. But it’s all changed. I suppose I’m
a good example of it, although I happen to
be an atheist, but the Jewish strain is in me.
Mary Rodgers Guettel, composer (Once
Upon a Mattress) and daughter of
Richard Rodgers
I don’t think Steve Sondheim has any
Jewish sensibility except humor. If it
works and is funny for that character, he’ll
l-r. Arthur Laurents, Richard
Rodgers, and Stephen Sondheim
Photofest
put it in, but he’s just as unreligious as I am. We all grew up in that
atmosphere where none of our parents obviously insisted that we be
observant Jews. I remember saying to my father when I was about 12,
“Do you believe in God?” And he said, “No.” And I said, “Oh that’s good,
’cause I don’t either. Well, what do you believe in?” And he said, “I
believe in people. For instance, if you were to get sick, I would not pray
to God, I would find the best doctor in New York.” And I thought that
was eminently sensible, and that’s the way I have felt ever since.
Composer/lyricist Andrew Lippa (The Addams Family)
For 10 years, I was a high holiday cantor. As a kid, Jewish music was
show business to me. Everybody’s quiet, they turn the lights off, and
there’s a “stage.” The bimah is a stage, usually in Conservative or Reform
Judaism, where it’s at the front, as opposed to Orthodox Judaism, where
it’s in the middle. So when I was little, it was a show. People are wearing
funny costumes, and they’re schlepping things around the room when
you bring up the Torah, and there are props, and so Judaism is theater.
For me, it’s not so much only the Jewish musical influence, but I
think my sense of theater and pomp and grandiosity and gigantic
presentation. On Purim we walked around with toys, and there were
lemons and fronds, and so there was always some sort of magical
theatrical element to Judaism that caught me as a kid. That was the
thing that pushed me into the theater, not only the music.
Catholicism is very theatrical as well, so where are all the Catholic
theater composers? I think it’s that combination of religion as theater
and that Jewish music has a motor in it somehow. You hear it, and you
go, “Oh, what’s that?” And so it’s the combination of music, theater, and
I think whatever the Jewish ethos is, the idea of the immigrant ethos,
the idea of coming to America and you’re going to make it, and you’re
going to make yourself into something bigger. Musicals are all about
hope and making yourself into something bigger.
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