Alan, that is so interesting, what you wrote about "This was a real nice clambake." At the time of the New York Philharmonic concerts of CAROUSEL with Kelli O'Hara, Nathan Gunn, et al., someone in the ensemble told me they spent a lot of time in rehearsal trying to observe the rest in that phrase the way Rodgers intended it -- but, unless my memory is off or I misunderstood him, I thought he said the rest in question was between "clam" and "bake," not between "real" and "nice." Does the score have rests in both places?
This hearkens back to an old ATC thread in which I took Carrie Underwood to task for singing "The hills are alive.....with the sound of music" in that unfortunate TV production of TSOM. Some people here immediately jumped on me and pointed out that there is a rest at that point in the score. I countered that neither Mary Martin nor Julie Andrews observe any kind of a rest at that point in the song.
Perhaps Rodgers used these rests not because he wanted any sense of even a brief pause at those points, but just to help with enunciation -- so that, rather that having the singer elide the "v"sound at the end of "alive" with the "w" sound at the beginning of "with," Rodgers wanted crisper articulation of those consonants.
Does this theory sound sensible to anyone? Because I can't think of any other reason to have rests in the places cited. |
