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(More customer reviews)"Jerome Kern," Stephen Banfield's contribution to the Yale Broadway Masters series, is a learned, beautifully written work that deserves careful study and will yield enormous pleasure to fans of the Broadway musical. On all levels--as biography, as musical study, and as theatre history--Banfield succeeds brilliantly.
Despite Kern's enduring popularity and his strong influence on such beloved composers as George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers, Banfield reminds readers how little we know today of the Broadway "sound" of Kern's shows because of the absence of cast recordings and the scarcity of published vocal scores. In his examination of Kern's development as a composer, Banfield closely examines three representative Kern stage musicals ("Sitting Pretty," "Show Boat," and "The Cat and the Fiddle"), paying close attention to characters, dialogue, song placement, and performance history, and the results are a revelation. Moreover, unlike many critics of Broadway musicals, Banfield is an extremely sympathetic scholar of song lyrics, and his careful analysis of Kern's collaborations with P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein, Johnny Mercer, Yip Harburg, and Ira Gershwin is a welcome and long-overdue addition to Kern studies.
Banfield's enthusiasm for his subject and the clarity of his writing are a joy to encounter. He has thought long and deeply about his subject and brings the kind of zeal that makes the reader want to hear all of Kern's music. There is not a trace of condescension in Banfield's approach, and the reader comes away with heightened respect for "tunesmiths" such as Kern who have yet to be fully understood or appreciated for their huge contribution to American musical culture, both serious and popular.
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A founding father of the modern American musical, Jerome Kern (1885–1945) was the composer of legions of popular songs, including such standards as "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Ol' Man River." His 1927 Show Boat with Oscar Hammerstein II helped to set a new standard for musical theater.This book is the first to provide a critical overview of Kern's musical accomplishments throughout his career. Stephen Banfield ranges from Broadway, to Hollywood, and to London's West End, drawing on unpublished manuscripts and scores to assess the composer's extraordinary oeuvre.Kern's life, personality, and working methods are given due attention, as is the development of his work from the early musical comedies through the collaborations with Hammerstein and P. G. Wodehouse up to the later film scores. Banfield focuses especially on the musical and lyrical structures of Kern's compositions, illuminating beloved works and shedding light on compositions often overlooked.
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