Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story
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€64.99
30th Street Studio
A01=Nigel Simeone
Act III
Arthur Laurents
Author_Nigel Simeone
Balcony Scene
Ballet Sequence
Bernstein's Music
Bernstein’s Music
Boris Karloff
Broadway score scholarly commentary
Cast Recording
Category=AVLA
Chichester Psalms
Crystal Cave
dissonance in music
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Evening Standard Theatre Award
Genesis
Goddard Lieberson
HUAC
Jet Song
Larry Kert
Latin-American rhythms
motivic development
musical analysis
Musical Call
Musical Manuscripts
orchestration techniques
Original Broadway Cast
Original Broadway Cast Recording
Piano Vocal Score
Reception
Score
Stephen Sondheim
Terrific Unity
twentieth-century theatre
West Side Story
Wonderful Town
Wrong Note Rag
York Philharmonic Symphony
Product details
- ISBN 9781138093263
- Weight: 360g
- Dimensions: 153 x 219mm
- Publication Date: 31 May 2017
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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One of the Broadway musicals that can genuinely claim to have transformed the genre, West Side Story has been featured in many books on Broadway, but it has yet to be the focus of a scholarly monograph. Nigel Simeone begins by exploring the long process of creating West Side Story, including a discussion of Bernstein's sketches, early drafts of the score and script, as well as cut songs. The core of the book is a commentary on the music itself. West Side Story is one of the very few Broadway musicals for which there is a complete published orchestral score, as well as two different editions of the piano-vocal score. The survival of the original copied orchestral score, and the reminiscences of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, reveal details of the orchestration process, and the extent to which Bernstein was involved in this. Simeone's commentary considers: musical characteristics and compositional techniques used to mirror the drama (for example, the various uses of the tritone), motivic development, the use and reinvention of Broadway and other conventions, the creation of dramatic continuity in the score through the use of motifs and other devices, the unusual degree of dissonance and rhythmic complexity (at least for the time), and the integration of Latin-American dance forms (Mambo, Huapango and so on). Simeone also considers the reception of West Side Story in the contemporary press. The stir the show caused included the response that it was the angular, edgy score that made it a remarkable achievement. Not all reviews were uncritical. Finally, the book looks in detail at the making of the original Broadway cast recording, made in just one day, included on the accompanying downloadable resources.
Nigel Simeone is Professor of Historical Musicology at the Department of Music, University of Sheffield, UK.
