‘The most beautiful sound I ever heard’: Liturgy, Religious Imagery and Symbolism in West Side Story

Abstract

Liturgy is one of the most obvious ways in which faith is enacted or produced. An analogy might be drawn between liturgical celebration and musical theatre: structurally similar, both performance media include dialogue and song and embrace movement or dance. While recent research on the musical has tended to focus on the musicological, the sociological and the historical, this study suggests that the evolving form of the twentieth-century musical reveals not only cultural influences, but many liturgical and theological references, both visual and auditory, intentional or not.

With 732 performances to its credit, the original production of West Side Story was undoubtedly a highly regarded and popular hit on Broadway. The collaboration not only marks a creative high point in the history of the genre of the musical, at a time when that art form was enjoying its golden age, but the show is also reflective of the ongoing sacralisation of the Broadway musical, a phenomenon which reached a distinct climax in this particular production. By evaluating the content of this seminal musical, this study shows how the form of West Side Story exhibits liturgical traits, suggesting that such an interpretation might be applied to musical theatre in general.

Notes

1. Meryle Secrest, Leonard Bernstein: A Life (London: Bloomsbury, 1995), p. 330.

2. Joan Peyser, Leonard Bernstein (London: Bantam, 1988), p. 228.

3. Leonard Bernstein, ‘Excerpts from Bernstein's West Side Log’ (25 August 1955), http://www.leonardbernstein.com/wss.php[accessed 21 May 2008].

4. Stephen Banfield, Sondheim's Broadway Musicals (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), p. 36.

5. Although the ‘Balcony Scene’ of the first act does include ‘Tonight’, that number was not originally intended for this scene but was lifted from the later ensemble number ‘Tonight’.

6. Sondheim himself was to use a distorted harmonic variation of the tune of ‘America’ to underline a similar point to excellent effect in Assassins (1990).

7. Banfield, Sondheim's Broadway Musicals, p. 34.

8. Joseph P. Swain, The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey (Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2002), p. 261.

9. Vocal score of West Side Story (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc and Chappell & Co. Inc.), p. iv.

10. Irene Heskes, Passport to Jewish Music: Its History, Traditions and Culture (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 72.

11. Jack Gottlieb, Funny, It Doesn't Sound Jewish: How Yiddish Songs and Synagogue Melodies Influenced Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood (New York: State University of New York Press, 2004), p. 179.

12. The shofar call is not only evident in the Jets' whistles and in the orchestral texture throughout West Side Story, it also clearly sounded before the prologue in the original Broadway production (this can be heard on the Original Broadway Cast Recording); this was subsequently omitted from the printed vocal score. It remains at the opening of the Symphonic Dances and the film version, however. Furthermore, Gottlieb notes that the trumpets are instructed to play ‘like a shofar’ in Candide (No. 8, ‘Auto-da-fé’, bars 141–53).

13. An online sound clip of a shofar blast (Tekiah Gedolah or Tekiah haGodolah) clearly shows the comparison. http://shofarsblast.com/Hear/Sounds/Takiah_haGodolah1.mp3[accessed 11 February 2008].

14. Swain, The Broadway Musical, p. 222.

15. Arthur Laurents, West Side Story (Libretto/Vocal Book: Rental material from Josef Weinberger, London), p. 75.

16. Scapegoat: an animal that is symbolically burdened with the sins of the nation and sent into the wilderness to die.

17. Leonard Bernstein, Mass: A Theatre Piece For Singers, Players and Dancers (Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1998), p. 237.

18. Britten also used the interval of the tritone between C and F# in his 1962 War Requiem, signifying the theme of conflict and reconciliation, and like West Side Story, the interval unifies the entire work.

19. ‘Something's Coming’ (No. 3), bars 101–33, West Side Story (New York: G. Schirmer, Inc and Chappell & Co. Inc.), pp. 31–32.

20. Placed at this point in the musical, such songs stake out the territory to be explored. Quite often it is this want, wish or aspiration that lubricates the fulcrum of the plot. Consequently, many ‘I want’ songs might be interpreted as prayers.

21. ‘Something's Coming’ (No. 3), bars 74–78, Vocal Score, p. 30.

22. Swain, The Broadway Musical, p. 236.

23. Scott McMillin, The Musical as Drama (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), p. 33.

24. Laurents, West Side Story, p. 18.

25. Ibid., p. 24.

26. Ibid., p. 57.

27. Ibid., p. 21.

28. West Side Story, 1961. Dir. Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise. MGM. 15930CDVD MZ1. A note on page 55 of the Vocal Score indicates that in the New York production the repeated ‘Marias’ were sung by off-stage voices up to bar 9. This effect can be heard on the Original Broadway Cast Recording.

29. ‘Maria’ (No. 5), bars 42–44, Vocal Score, p. 57.

30. ‘Sondheim said Bernstein had written the name “Maria” as “a lyric line”. Bernstein answered that he had completed the song as a tune “but not as a lyric, not as a satisfactory lyric”’ (Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, p. 233).

31. Deryck Cooke, The Language of Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 130.

32. ‘Maria’ (No. 5), bars 40–44, Vocal Score, p. 57.

33. For a facsimile of Bernstein's manuscript, see http://www.leonardbernstein.com/studio/zoom2.asp?id = 89[accessed 28 August 2007].

34. Peyser, Leonard Bernstein, p. 239.

35. Interview with Arthur Laurents in ‘West Side Memories’, Special Edition DVD of West Side Story, 15930CDVD MZ1.

36. Interview with Stephen Sondheim in ‘West Side Memories’, Special Edition DVD of West Side Story, 15930CDVD MZ1.

40. Laurents, West Side Story, p. 16.

42. This lyric sketch is to be found in the folder containing music sketches for ‘Somewhere’ in the West Side Story material in the Leonard Bernstein Collection of the Library of Congress.

37. ‘Balcony Scene’ (No. 6), bars 45–48, Vocal Score, p. 63.

38. Laurents, West Side Story, p. 24.

39. ‘Something's Coming’ (No. 3), bars 42–44, Vocal Score, p. 28.

41. ‘Balcony Scene’ (No. 6), bars 91–118, Vocal Score, pp. 66–69.

43. Romeo and Juliet, I. 5. 108.

44. Laurents, West Side Story, p. 41.

45. Songs 8:6 (King James Version).

46. However, this is different in the 1961 film, which has the Sharks play a major role in ‘America’; this adds more in terms of potential dance, and arguably makes better narrative, lyrical and musical sense.

47. ‘Tonight’ (No. 10), bars 68–75, Vocal Score, p. 117.

48. The imagery in the lyric also suggests the liturgical: in the Exsultet (Easter Proclamation), sung during the Paschal Vigil, Christ is referred to as ‘the morning star which never sets’. For the text of the Exsultet, see http://www.domcentral.org/life/exsultet.htm[accessed 21 May, 2008].

49. ‘Ballet Sequence’ (No. 13A), bars 1–2, 7–8, Vocal Score, p. 150–51.

50. Geoffrey Block, Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 250.

51. Psalm 2:1.

52. Banfield, Sondheim's Broadway Musicals, p. 36.

53. Leonard Bernstein, Candide (Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., 1994), p. vi.

54. Leonard Bernstein, ‘Excerpts from Bernstein's West Side Log’ (17 March 1956), http://www.leonardbernstein.com/research.php[accessed 26 August 2007] (‘Telegrams / Working Notes / Letters’ / ‘West Side Story’ / ‘Excerpts from Bernstein's West Side Log’).

55. Nina Bernstein, ‘Mass’, http://www.leonardbernstein.com/studio/element2.asp?FeatID = 12&AssetID = 24 [accessed 13 September 2007].

56. Musical extracts © copyright 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959 by The Estate of Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed. Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher. Boosey & Hawkes, Inc., Sole Agent. International Copyright Secured. Reproduced by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.