Specifically the middle section of Some People, the “I had a dream” portion?
I call these episodes “the trio,” after the median of the symphony’s scherzo movement. Back when the first symphonies had not a scherzo but a minuet in that slot, the trio was literally three voice parts—say, strings, oboe, and flute. Sweet. Later, symphonies became big, robust, Mahlerian. But the middle section was still called the trio.
Well, ha!, because the Broadway musical also discovered the trio, when character interaction became too psych for the AABA song. Example: I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face, a love song…with an enraged trio section, as Henry Higgins lashes out at the escaped Eliza, in “I can see her now, Mrs. Freddy Eynsford-Hill” and so on, seething with injured merit. Then he returns to his love chorus, framing the trio, which has shown us how conflicted he is about his fear of losing power in a romance, because it means compromising his quirky individuality.
Perhaps the greatest trio of all, though, is in Gypsy’s Some People. This is Madam Rose’s ID number—her policy statement, so to say. She tells us who she is and what she wants—or, rather, what she desperately needs. Because Some People tells us that only those who need it will make it: celebrity, prominence, recognition. Later in the show, she says, “Just wanted to be noticed.”
The star’s ID number, traditionally (though not invariably) the second song in the score, would be the moment when the protagonist of the story welcomes the audience into his or her world with a highly characteristic showpiece. Probably the great Ethel Merman ID number of all time was Happy Hunting’s (Gee, but) It’s Good To Be Here, because the music and the vocal arrangement (there’s a gaggle of harmonizing male choristers supporting her) give us the pow! Merman, blunt and joyous and unstoppable. She’s why you came to the show: twenty-five years at it and she’s still the Queen Of Broadway.
But Some People is greater yet, because it gives us not just Merman the voice but Merman the concept. The Happy Hunting number really isn’t about anything. Some People, however, is about what every great musical is about: somebody needs something so badly that some geniuses have to write a show telling us how it went.
So composer Jule Styne and lyricist Stephen Sondheim set the action up for us: Rose is a stage mother living through her two kids (who will eventually become Gypsy Rose Lee and June Havoc). Rose has put them on the stage because show biz makes stars, and everyone else is nothing. America, Rose believes, is like show biz: stars and nobodies, that’s all there is.
So Sondheim has a lot to work with in Rose’s character—and he added in one very clever jest. It’s a sort of Easter egg, so hidden (though in plain sight) that I didn’t get it for decades: Rose is talking about vaudeville’s Orpheum Circuit, and she imagines being “in Mr. Orpheum’s office,” outlining the kids’ act.
Only there was no Mr. Orpheum. The very word is a theatre real-estate buzzterm, like Majestic or Tivoli. This is like a Hollywood wannabe saying, “I’m going to take an interview with Mr. Paramount.” Rose’s ignorant assumption warns us that, for all her finagling and commissioning and cheating, she doesn’t know the first thing about show business, and her tragedy is that her kids won’t succeed till they break free of their mother’s control. Yes, they will make it. But Rose will be nothing.
Now, this crucial kernel of subtext lies in Some People’s trio, and I always thought that Sondheim wrote the music for it as well as the lyrics. It’s a brilliant composition, made of chugging triads in the clarinets while Rose, doubled on cello, sings the “I had a dream” motif, two ascending fourths. It has a haunting, uncanny feeling, an out-of-this-world noise, and it doesn’t sound like Jule Styne to me.
Of course, sometimes Jule Styne didn’t sound like Jule Styne, as in his marvelous title song to Subways Are For Sleeping, an indescribable intro blending glee-club anthem and a descending scale like someone falling downstairs, leading to a carefree waltz with the energy of a whirling dervish.
But isn’t it possible that Sondheim, while crafting the lyrics to Some People’s trio, just happened to think of the music that should go with them, tried it out on Styne, and Styne said yes?
And, after all, as my friend Jon Cronwell points out, Sondheim was originally supposed to have written the music as well as the lyrics to Gypsy, so he might have had this passage of the score in his head for some time.
So one day, while visiting Sondheim’s house, I asked him if he composed the trio.
Now, he might have said, “Oh no. Jule wrote that. Good old Jule, yes.”
Or he might have said, “Well, I got the idea for it and showed Jule how the two fourths of the ‘dream’ theme could open the overture and bring down the final curtain, thus emphasizing Gypsy’s theme. And Jule liked it, so that was that.”
Well, Sondheim didn’t do either of those things. What he did was respond to the question by not answering it. It was years ago, so I’m hazy on the details, but he replied with something like this:
“Jule loves to noodle at the keyboard, and one day grunch came in while George Spelvin ran away with the spoon till handkerchief round your hip, though I wondered as I wander all over the rill. And that’s how the elephant got his trunk.”
So you decide where the truth of the matter lies.
Interesting, and replete with all your traits, humor and skill. It wastes no time, spares no thought.