How "The Sound of Music" Came About
These programme notes have been researched by me and were intended for performances by the Weymouth Operatic Society.
Look for your lover and hold him tight
While your health you're keeping.
Oscar Hammerstein - early lyrics for his last song:- Edelweiss.
It was early in 1956 that director Vincent Donahue saw a German film called
"The Trapp Family Singers". It was based on the true story of young
postulant Maria Rainer who went to work as a governess for the children of army
captain Baron Georg von Trapp. The governess and the captain fell in love, the
girl left her order and the two were married. They created a family singing
group and were forced by the Nazis to flee Austria.
Donahue was so impressed by this film that he wished to remake it on stage as a
vehicle for Mary Martin. Mary, her husband Richard Halliday and producer
Leyland Hayward saw the film and thought that the idea had great potential.
However, they envisaged it as just a stage play featuring authentic Trapp
family songs with one new number by Rodgers and Hammerstein. They commissioned
Lindsay and Crouse to write the play.
Rodgers later wrote 'Oscar and I saw the picture and agreed that it had the
makings of an impressive stage production, but we disagreed with their
concept... Why invite a clash of styles by simply adding one new song? Why not
a fresh score? When I suggested this to Leyland and Mary they said they'd love
to have a new score - but only if Oscar and I wrote it. We had to explain that
we would be tied up with Flower Drum Song for a year, but they came back with
the two most flattering words possible: "We'll wait." '
In March 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein laid out the placement of the songs and
dummy titles using a book prepared two years before by Lindsay and Crouse.
Following on from this Hammerstein spent a month in Jamaica where he wrote the
lyrics for the songs The Sound of Music and Climb Every Mountain. On May 20th
he began work on Maria, which gave him the particular problem of thinking up
all the required adjectives.
One of the difficulties faced by Richard Rodgers was that of writing
ecclesiastical music. Rodgers was noted for his ability to adapt to any
compositional style; however having been brought up in the Jewish faith (his
mother was a second generation Russian immigrant) writing traditional-sounding
ecclesiastical music did not come easily to him - especially as the show was
due to open with nuns singing a version of the Catholic prayer "Dixit
Dominus". He therefore got in touch with the head of music at
Manhattanville College, New York, who offered to help out, and, with the
assistance of her nuns, gave Rodgers a private concert.
The sets and costumes were designed during the summer, and in the last week of
August rehearsals began. In October the show was premiered at New Haven with
Mary Martin playing the role of Maria. Sadly, however, one of the collaborators
was too ill to travel.
On September 16th Hammerstein had visited the doctor for check-up. All seemed
well, but just as he was about to leave he admitted that he'd been waking in
the middle of the night feeling hungry. His doctor worried this might be an
ulcer - but X-rays and tests made it necessary for the doctor to reveal to his
family that he had stomach cancer.
His spirits were cheered, however, when he read the reviews from the New Haven
tryouts, all predicting a smash hit. On the 14th October 1959 the show opened
at Boston, and on the 15th Hammerstein wrote a lyric to a melody that Von Trapp
sings as an expression of love for his homeland. Edelweiss was to be the last
song written by Rodgers and Hammerstein,
On November 16th the show opened at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on Broadway. The
first night reviews were mixed, mainly praising the score and criticising the
'sentimentality' of the play by Lindsay and Crouse.
Hammerstein's health continued to decline steadily. He continued to work on
other projects, but by May 1960 he had started to noticeably lose his appetite.
In July X-rays showed a recurrence of the carcinoma, and he made his goodbyes
to his friends. He died in the night of the 22nd of August.
The Sound of Music lasted over three and a half years on Broadway (becoming the
second longest running Broadway musical of the fifties) and, incredibly, lasted
over twice as long in London where the first night reviews had been terrible.
'The English' wrote Rodgers, 'have a habit of making up their own minds.'
John Crocker