The Richard Rodgers Reader

By Geoffrey Block

Book Overview

"Excellent."--John Lahr, The New Yorker "A useful and informative anthology of essays, interviews, and criticism drawn from a diversity of published and unpublished sources.... The Richard Rodgers Reader is like surfing the Internet. One can dip into it or read it section by section." --Mel Gussow, New York Times Richard Rodgers was one of America's most prolific and best-loved composers. A world without "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady is a Tramp," "Blue Moon," and "Bewitched," to name just a few of the songs he wrote with Lorenz Hart, is scarcely imaginable, and the musicals he wrote with his second collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein--Oklahoma , Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music--continue to enchant and entertain audiences. Arranged in four sections, Rodgers and Hart (1929-1943), Rodgers and Hammerstein (1943-1960), Rodgers After Hammerstein (1960-1979), and The Composer Speaks (1939-1971), The Richard Rodgers Reader offers a cornucopia of informative, perceptive, and stylish biographical and critical overviews. It also contains a selection of Rodgers's letters to his wife Dorothy in the 1920s, the 1938 Time magazine cover story and New Yorker profiles in 1938 and 1961, and essays and reviews by such noted critics as Brooks Atkinson, Eric Bentley, Leonard Bernstein, Lehman Engel, Walter Kerr, Ken Mandelbaum, Ethan Mordden, George Jean Nathan, and Alec Wilder. The volume features personal accounts by Richard Adler, Agnes de Mille, Joshua Logan, Mary Martin, and Diahann Carroll. The collection concludes with complete selections from more than thirty years of Rodgers's own writings on topics ranging from the creative process, the state of the Broadway theater, even Rodgers's bout with cancer, and a generous sample from the candid and previously unpublished Columbia University interviews.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195139542
• ISBN13: 9780195139549
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Scholars Press
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 1.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A patchwork quilt of theories and enthusiasms

Geoffrey Block knows everything there is to know about Rodgers, but frustratingly this book is arranged on the lines of a patchwork quilt; if you're looking for something on a particular show (say FLOWER DRUM SONG) you're wasting your time here. Perhaps to see Rodgers through fresh eyes, Block narrows down his focus and his individual chapters pick up on very rarefied aspects of Rodgers' career. If there is just about nothing on FLOWER DRUM SONG or THE SOUND OF MUSIC, you'll find a learned monograph on the three versions of the TV project CINDERELLA. The learning's worn lightly and the writing is everywhere vivid and provocative.As in his previous book THE RICHARD RODGERS READER, Block attempts a giant salvage operation, making a serious case for the worthwhileness, indeed the greatness, of Rodgers' final five musicals. I don't know if anyone will be convinced that TWO BY TWO or REX are great works of musical theater, but it's entertaining, just as a dip into the Bacon-wrote-Shakespeare camp might be. This is a book that will start a hundred arguments among lovers of Richard Rodgers, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Outstanding Collection of Articles and Essays

If any college plans to teach a course on Richard Rodgers, they need look no further than this book for the perfect text. Here is a collection of essays, book chapters, reviews, etc., dealing with Rodgers in each of his eras. They range from a Time magazine piece on Rodgers and Hart in the late 30s, to a Holiday magazine piece on Rodgers and Hammerstein in the late 50s. The collection helps give the reader an even better understanding of Richard Rodgers than he does in his own autobiography, because, as the editor notes, in the interviews that make up the final section, Rodgers is much more at ease and more glib. Some of the articles are a little technical in nature, with their study of Rodgers' musical compositions, but anyone familiar with his writings should be able to understand what they're referring to, by simply running the tune through your head as you analyze what's being discussed. The book is hardly a whitewash, and is amazingly fair in its presentation of articles both friendly and not so friendly. For example, there's a chapter from Diahann Carroll's autobiography that paints Rodgers in a very unflattering light. The collection is not only informative, but it's very entertaining. While this book is good for people just getting familiar with Rodgers, it's probably best suited for the well-versed scholar, who will enjoy this research packed together in a handy volume, eliminating the need to head to the library's microfilm collection. Also, the editor does a very good job of pointing the reader to other articles that were not included (usually because of the cost, as he mentions in the foreword)but present an opposing view or elaborate further on an idea.Great job!