Broadway Musical Research Paper

BTEC in Music Practise (Year 1)

MUSIC HISTORY ASSIGNMENT

BROADWAY MUSICALS

Broadway Musicals

When we are talking about the Broadway Musicals, we would think about the theatre music. In the very early 20th Century in America, the theatre music was booming, there were thirty-three legitimate Broadway theatres in New York, over 3,000 professional theatres across the United States, and more was going to be built to meet the audience demand. The famous actor was Al Jolson, a ‘charismatic performer’ in Broadway. His performance saved Warner Bros. from bankruptcy. The Singing Fool which made the gross income of $5.5m, a biggest income only to be exceeded by Gone With The Wind eleven years later.

Following the Wall Street crash in 1929,
The songwriter Frank Loesser’s Guys & Dolls; other musicals included Singin' In The Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Calamity Jane, High Society, An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, The Great Caruso and Royal
They both graduated from Columbia University, they have been collaborated with other people before they started working together in the 1940s and 1950s. They together produced songs and lyrics for Oklahoma (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949), The King and I (1951), and The Sound of Music (1959). The Sound of Music remains among the best and most popular musicals of all time. After Hammerstein's death in 1960, Rodgers continued to compose. His later works include Do I Hear a Waltz (1965), Two By Two (1970), Rex (1976) and I Remember Mama (1979). He also won a Tony for the music and lyrics to No Strings (1962). His career spanned for 6 decades, and produced more than 50 stage and screen musicals. He is considered one of the greatest writers in American musical