There’s a Place for Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein by Helen Smith (review)

Helen Smith’s study is among the first to consider the musical theatre works of Leonard Bernstein collectively. Her aim is to “survey the musical theatre works of Bernstein as a whole, and, through consideration of the musicals, operas and theatre pieces to observe how both his compositional technique and his approach to composing developed and evolved” (2). The book is organized in a chronological fashion, with each chapter devoted to a musical theatre work (On the Town, Trouble in Tahiti, Wonderful Town, Candide, West Side Story, Mass, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, A Quiet Place) composed between 1944 and 1983.

In each chapter, Smith begins by briefly situating the musical in its general historical context, considering influences emanating from the years in which the musical work was written, such as the wartime climate of On the Town (1944) or the McCarthy investigations that are paralleled in Candide (1956). The contextual information is followed by a short plot summary, which is useful as not all readers will be familiar with every work. An almost exclusive focus on music is perhaps a departure from other studies of musical theatre works, which frequently devote equal space to detailing the complex (and at times torturous) process of creating a musical, from its inception to its Broadway premiere. While Smith certainly does not discount the fact that Bernstein wrote his musical theatre works as a member of a production team—noting that the “study . . . is complicated by the fact that the composer is only one part of a team”—Smith’s understanding that “Bernstein [is] totally and individually responsible for the music for each show” (2), coupled with her study’s musical emphasis, ultimately means that she pays significantly less attention to the librettos, books, lyrics, rehearsal processes, or pre-Broadway tryouts than might be expected. (An exception to this is the chapter on Candide, which details changes in Lillian Hellman’s book and subsequent versions of the entire work spanning thirty years.) Once again, Smith does not ignore these factors, but they are mentioned only if directly affecting Bernstein’s compositions. For instance, director George Abbott’s decision to cut “Gabey’s Comin’” from On the Town had ramifications on the audience’s initial introduction to important musical motifs for the entire musical score. Similarly, the amount of time taken to create a show, which spanned anything from four-and-a-half weeks to years, is noted only in terms of how it affected Bernstein’s compositional output; in the short time allotted to compose the score for Wonderful Town, Smith reflects on Bernstein’s employing the “practice of using ‘trunk’ music—that is, music that remained initially unused or in the composer’s ‘trunk’ following its composition, or reuse of melodies and music in different shows” (90). The importance of choreography and dance, however, is privileged, particularly as Jerome Robbins’s visions for On the Town and West Side Story were so integral to their creation.

The bulk of each chapter is given to extensive analysis of the music; Smith interacts with earlier scholarship, including work by Paul Laird, Jack Gottlieb, and Ethan Mordden, both acknowledging foundational research done by others and signaling where her work departs from or revises current exchanges. Significant attention is paid to the composers who influenced Bernstein, from contemporaries and mentors such as Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copeland, and Marc Blitzstein, to earlier influences such as Beethoven, Mozart, Britten, Bellini, and Bartók. One of the strengths of Smith’s writing is that she gives her reader clear and concise definitions of important terminology the book employs; for instance, she delineates pastiche as a “method of defining a period through musical means” (79) versus parody, which is “inclusion of music for an ironic or comic effect, by implication or ridicule” (122). This distinction is particularly useful, as Bernstein employs both methods of musical composition in setting the scene and developing...