Word: allegros
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...pieces--a prelude and allegro by Couperin and an organ fugue of Bach--were played in modern orchestrations--by Milhaud and Williams respectively. Music critics of good taste have for years been screaming at conductors like Stokowski and Koussevitsky not to distort Bach, but when the orchestration is done by composers of the calibre of Williams and Milhaud, the result is quite different. Like a great translation which becomes a work of art by its own merits, a good transcription becomes a piece of music which can be enjoyed as a new work. Purists might still complain, but with...
...Allegro, with all its faults, is an impressive effort in a good cause: it is the latest sortie in that well-nigh-won revolution against cloak-and-daguerreotype operetta and June-moon musicomedy. In that revolution, Oscar Hammerstein is certainly one of the heroes. He put something like real people into Oklahoma! and Carousel; but Allegro is by far the most realistic of his librettos, by far the most deliberate manifestation of the New Look he gave to musical plays...
Stature for Solemnity. The New Look does not imply sophistication. Says Oscar: "The sophisticates have let us down." The theme of Allegro is a simple, minor-key faith shared by many Americans: a kind of puzzled sympathy for the puzzled ("Poor Joe! The older you grow, the harder it is to know . . ."). Oscar is a sentimentalist who is repelled by the materialistic din of big city living. One lyric in Allegro says bitterly...
...Brisk! Lively! Merry and bright! Allegro...
Behind the careful dreamer lies a waking life somewhat similar to that of Allegro's Joe Taylor, though Oscar was born in 1895, Joe in 1905. Like Joe, Oscar lost his mother when he was young and grew up close to his father. Like Joe, he married when he was making barely enough money to support a wife, and was divorced from her after he became successful. Like Joe and like millions of Joes throughout the U.S., he is easily dominated by the woman-on-the-pedestal. (Says Oscar: "Men are wrapped up in unrealities, like business...