Summary: Conflicting History
- Borroff, Edith. “Origin of Species: Conflicting Views of American Musical Theater History.” American Music 2, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 101-11.
At the outset, two contradictory quotes from Miles Kreuger and Martin Gottfried assign “early…European” and “purely American” foundations to the American Musical. Borroff writes that this confusion is partially because there is an overlap between the various types of staged works. She continues, marking one clear distinction in that “some musicals are plays and some are not.” Musicals in the former grouping are often written by one composer, and thus have a continuity that is not always found in the latter, a variety show format, which seeks to entertain rather than tell a story.
Delving further into the contradiction the introduced the article, Borroff cites twenty-eight scholarly assertions as to the development and lineage of the American Musical. Among these quotations, we find The Beggar’s Opera (1728), Gilbert & Sullivan Operettas (from 1875), Italian intermezzi influenced by Negro folk music, and the works of George M. Cohan, as influenced by London burlesque. One of the only points that is agreed upon by two or more of those quoted is that Irving Berlin was the “first composer of musicals,” though one author’s reasoning is due to his work with the Ziegfeld Follies (especially 1919) and the other leans heavily on his Jewish heritage fused with the musical stylings of Negro spirituals.
Following this exhaustive listing of theories, Borroff posits her own ‘anti-theory’ that although the creative process is influenced by one’s prior experiences, this sort of influence does not constitute a genetic link between the newly composed work and various past influences upon its creator. Her view of music history places greater importance on present day cultural influences; opera and operetta emerged from European culture and Vaudeville shows sprang up amongst a fledgling, pioneer society where professional musicians were a rarity.
The natural extension of Borroff’s commentary is that American Musical Theater historians are looking back in time and attempting to explain when, how, and why this new artistic genre came into existence. In general, music historians attempt to categorize events and ideas and to conform the evolution of what is essentially a temporal art form into an archetypical hierarchy. In the case of musical theater, however, this proves to be an impossibility. The composers and performers themselves were pioneering a new style that had not existed previously; thus, in a certain sense, they themselves had no knowledge as to what the new genre would finally become following decades of formation.
With the focus of this article being on the vast difference of opinion regarding the emergence of American Musical Theater, Borroff’s citations include only secondary sources, with the earliest being a 1978 reprinting of Edward Hipsher’s 1927 book American Opera and Its Composers. Several other books surveying the history of musical theater alongside an article from the New Yorker and album liner notes round out the bibliography.