Perhaps even more fascinating than individual songwriters are songwriting teams. “How do they work together?” and “Who’s responsible for what?” are common questions.
In this realm, everyone has heard of Lennon and McCartney and Rodgers and Hammerstein. But Baruch Fine and Performing Arts Professor Philip Lambert (who also holds an appointment in music at CUNY’s Graduate Center) wants us to become more familiar with another highly successful songwriting team: Bock and Harnick. Lambert’s To Broadway, To Life! The Musical Theater of Bock and Harnick (Oxford University Press) is the first complete book about these artists.
In 14 years of collaboration, composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick co-wrote seven of Broadway’s most beloved and memorable musicals, most notably Fiddler on the Roof (1964), but also the enduring She Loves Me (1963) and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fiorello! (1959). For their creative efforts, Bock and Harnick earned 18 Tony Awards, and their musicals continue to delight audiences a half century later.
For the average music lover, Lambert’s range of interests and book subjects seems quite eclectic. Previously he wrote Inside the Music of Brian Wilson: The Songs, Sounds, and Influences of the Beach Boys’ Founding Genius (Continuum) [see page 23 of BCAM Winter 2008] and The Music of Charles Ives (Yale University Press).
Lambert sees clear connections among these different musical styles and artistic sensibilities however: “I’m interested in the process of musical creation,” he explains, “and I’ve focused on artists who spoke with distinctive, original voices, even though the languages they used, in musical terms, were quite disparate.” He adds, “I also like to think about, and listen to, and write about music that crosses traditional boundaries between ‘popular’ and ‘classical’ realms, and that is something that each of my subjects did, in one way or another. It’s a very ‘American’ approach—and an apt reflection of the culture from which they emerged.”
—Diane Harrigan