Tea at Trianon: The Blessed Unreality of American Musicals

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

The Blessed Unreality of American Musicals

From Deal Hudson at The Christian Review:

Musicals, in retrospect, stamped my imagination and sensibility with aspirations that no doubt are questionable from a philosophical point of view, but the mark on my inner life was already deeply set before I began to scrutinize it.

What did that mark contain? First and foremost, a celebration of love, of falling in love, and romance. I still think that lovers should sing and dance. What’s more natural than that? And the music should be singable with a melodic line whose beauty is irresistible and memorable. My use of should is deliberate and normative in the least offensive way to those who disagree.

Love songs should be capable of being taken home, so to speak; songs that can be sung offstage or offscreen are the heart of great musicals. Musicals without them, those that contain only a form of rhythmic patter or rap speech (like ‘Hamilton’) are fakes.

Sadly, the musicals of the last twenty years have suffered greatly from that problem, the inattention to melody, whether from disinterest or lack of talent I don’t know. (Read more.)