Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies) (23 page)

Ex. 4.16. “Dress Ballet,” bars 169–172.

The ostinato continues until bar 135, gradually calming down to
pianississimo
. There is a three-bar silence before the next part of the ballet begins. The Dance Master arrives to teach Eliza the tango, and in a piece of irony “The Rain in Spain” is heard in the underscore. What had been a spontaneous and free dance of jubilation after her success in learning how to speak properly in the middle of the act has now become yet another chore for Eliza. Again, Miller’s score gives us details about the choreography, with comments such as “low jeté lunge,” “double reverse turn,” “tango step,” “shows to Vera [Lee, the Dance Mistress],” and “curtsey.” All of this is accompanied by a straight playing of the first ten bars of “The Rain in Spain,” but a two-bar transition passage introduces a new episode titled “The Lesson” (
ex. 4.15
). Above the right-hand part, Rittmann wrote “insistent vamp!” and the music indeed takes on a strict, rigorous air. The melody in bars 156–59 (C sharp–D–F natural) is a deliberate distortion of the line “On the plain!” from “The Rain in Spain”; it follows on from the extract from the song heard in the previous section and, allotted by Bennett to a solo clarinet (“
mf
sweet”), again acts as an illustration of Eliza’s mental confusion.

At 169 a faster section (marked
Più mosso
) begins. Although two-fifths of the music remains, this feels like the beginning of the end; the tension never lets up until the final bars of the ballet. The
Più mosso
section is based on a descending chromatic pattern, on top of which is floated a muted trumpet fanfare, shown in the melody line of bars 171–72 in
example 4.16
. The same material persists until bar 183, when
example 4.12
returns once more. It is worth noting that in the full score, bars 186–89 have been rewritten by Phil Lang; the change increases the harmonic tension by adding new rising chromatic scales in the strings and tuba. This leads more dramatically into the return of
example 4.12
, which then continues until bar 210. At this point the music whips up into a frenzy, with the dynamic at
fortissimo
and the whole orchestra breaking into the chorus of “With a Little Bit of Luck.” This develops into a free melody that adds sinister chromatic inflections to Doolittle’s jaunty song. A rising sequence begins at 227, reaching its height at 245 when the same bar is repeated four times before a huge glissando into the opening of the melody of “The Servants’ Chorus” (“Poor Professor Higgins,”
ex. 4.17
). This is marked
furioso
and
fff
; Rittmann’s score also has “climax” and “howling!” After the theme has been played twice
tutti
, there is a diminuendo while the cellos and trombones sound the theme one last time, and the music ends softly and mysteriously.

The harmonic complexity of the “Dress Ballet” may be considered both a strength and a weakness. Since Holm conceived it as a “nightmare,” it is suitable that the music should be ghoulish both on the fundamental level of Rittmann’s arrangement and the expansive surface given to it by Bennett’s orchestration. Yet the number’s extremity also makes it stand out from the rest of the score. None of the other numbers in the show features such a contorted palette of sounds as is found here, so much so that it might have hijacked the entire musical. By extension, the psychological extremity of the choreography was probably also ill-matched with the rest of the show. In a more general sense, the dance also repeated the image (from earlier in the act) of Eliza being taught how to do something, even if these new lessons were of a different nature. It would be fascinating if the producer of a new
revival of
My Fair Lady
decided to include the ballet, but the resolution to cut it in New Haven was undoubtedly born of wisdom.

Ex. 4.17. “Dress Ballet,” ending.

The last of the three numbers that were cut in New Haven needs the least introduction. “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” found lasting fame as one of the title character’s solos in the 1958 film of
Gigi
(though it was cut for the 1973 stage adaptation), but it was originally a song for Eliza to perform in
My Fair Lady
before she went to the ball. It is mentioned from Outline 1 on (see chap. 3), yet Lerner later confessed that he was not sorry to see it cut. “I never liked it. Fritz did. … It would never have found its way into
Gigi
except Fritz, that dirty dog, played it one night for Arthur [Freed, the film’s producer] and Vincente [Minnelli, the director] when I was not around, and the following morning I was out-voted three to one. … It pains me to admit it, but I was wrong: it was one of the most touching moments in the film.”
³⁵

The sources for “Say a Prayer for Me Tonight” are the second most extensive of any song connected with
My Fair Lady
(after “Why Can’t the English?”). A lyric from Herman Levin’s papers contains several revelations about the number. With the exception of the first six lines (which consist of simple verse material), Liza’s opening solo (up to the entrance of the servants) is familiar from the version of the song that made it into
Gigi
. However, the rest of the lyric is completely unknown:

SERVANTS
: Have no fear, you’ll be fine.

LIZA
: No, I won’t.

SERVANTS
: Gracious, proud and refine.

LIZA
: No, I won’t.

SERVANTS
: Stately and serene …

LIZA
: I won’t …

SERVANTS
: Practically a queen …

LIZA
: I won’t …

SERVANTS
: No, Miss Liza, no, you cannot fail.

LIZA
: Fail to end in Reading Gaol.

Oh, how I shall behave …

SERVANTS
: No, you won’t.

LIZA
: Like I live in a cave.

SERVANTS
: No, you won’t.

LIZA
: Sit when I should stand …

SERVANTS
: You won’t …

LIZA
: Shake the butler’s hand …

SERVANTS
: You won’t …

LIZA
: Future history will write

This was England’s blackest night.

SERVANTS
: Don’t worry, Miss Liza … (etc.)

(spoken)

(Servants leave)

LIZA
: If I were a work of art

Would I wake his sleeping heart?

Is perfection the only way?

If it is—kneel down—and say

A prayer for me tonight;

That the night will bring

Me ev’rything

I’ve waited for.

Say a prayer that he’ll discover

I’m his lover

For now and evermore.

Pray that he’s lonely, a ship lost at sea;

Searching for someone exactly like me.

And say a prayer that he’ll remember

Long ago somewhere

He said a prayer

For me.
³⁶

The second section involves a dialogue between Eliza and the maids, split into two sections. First, they tell her four times how great she will be, and she rebuts them; then she tells them four times what a disaster she will be, and they rebut her. They comfort her once more and leave. Then begins the most interesting part. Left alone, Eliza moves on from merely worrying about her success at the ball and instead sings about why that success is so important to her. In the verse she asks whether she could “wake his sleeping heart,” and the chorus is this time focused on Higgins. She hopes “that he’ll discover / I’m his lover,” that he is “searching for someone exactly like” her, and that “he’ll remember … he said a prayer / for me.” This adds a layer to the song and changes the focus of the show: Eliza is portrayed as going through the
lessons and wanting to triumph, purely to make Higgins love her. As we saw in the case of “Shy,” such an overt declaration of love is foreign to the ultimately ambiguous focus of the musical.

The musical sources for the song are the most detailed evidence in existence of the creation of a melody by Loewe. Three untitled manuscripts contain snippets of material from the song. One in particular appears to show the genesis of the melody, with three different versions of it on the same page, shown in
examples 4.18
,
4.19
, and
4.20
. The shape of the melody is already established in
example 4.18
, with its characteristic series of turns, then
example 4.19
shows the first seven bars almost as they appear in the finished song. The only difference is that the fourth bar contains four eighth notes rather than the two quarter notes that appear in the completed melody; Loewe has bracketed and put short lines above the final two eighth notes of the bar to indicate the notes that are to become quarter notes in the final version, which is the third melody on the page (
ex. 4.20
, curiously transposed to E-flat major), marked “Att.” (“Attention”).

The latter is copied out on two other loose manuscripts in the Loewe Collection: one is in F major and reproduces the first eight bars with one small change (the two quarter notes in bar 4 changed to a dotted quarter note and an eighth note) and a small error (the first two notes are transformed from eighth notes to quarter notes, making four beats in a triple-time bar); the other contains just the first three bars in E-flat major. The two documents are quite different in nature to one another. The first is on a page consisting of four separate melodies, the third of which has been crossed out (because it is an early version of the fourth melody on the page) and all of which are slightly untidy; this feels like a true page of sketches. The E-flat major version is on a page titled “Sketches” containing three very short melodic extracts numbered 10, 11 and 12. All three are very brief, very neat, and fluently written, and the
first two end with “etc.”; the document seems like a sort of “thematic catalogue” to remind Loewe of melodies he had invented and perhaps intended for a specific purpose. None of the other extracts on these pages is familiar as a song from another Lerner and Loewe show, so either they were very aborted attempts at writing songs for
Fair Lady
or they were related to another show altogether. Loewe could conceivably have had the melody on his desk for some years before it was used in the New Haven version of this show.

Ex. 4.18.“Say a Prayer for Me Tonight,” sketch 1.