Show Boat. My Fair Lady. The Sound of Music.
Some of the most iconic musicals of the 1940s and 1950s were orchestrated by a Kansas City native: Robert Russell Bennett. By now, his name has largely been forgotten. When he is remembered, it's for the theater music that he never wanted to be his legacy.
Bennett grew up surrounded by classical music. His mother started giving him piano lessons as soon as he could reach the keys, and his father taught him trumpet and violin. In his autobiography, "The Broadway Sound," Bennett recalls playing a ragtime piece that was left out on the piano when he was ten years old. His mother rushed in to tell him that he needed to stop playing that song if he ever wanted to be a real musician.
"As incredible as it seems," Bennett wrote, "I don't remember ever playing one more bar of it. And my mother had begotten an incurable life-long musical snob."
Bennett's dream job would have been conducting in famous opera houses and composing great works of music. He even moved his family to Paris for four years to study with legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. They would examine and discuss contemporary music and musicians for hours.
"There's a lot of classical compositions that you have to listen to a few times to start to understand. And an audience member has to be willing to do that," musicologist Paul Laird said. "Broadway music needs to be immediately accessible. If it's not, it's not going to work."
Bennett was a good composer, but his ear and talent for transposing and arranging led him to a career in orchestrating popular music. He built out scores for many iconic Broadway composers, including Jerome Kern, George Gerschwin, Richard Rodgers, and Frederick Loewe.
"Richard Rodgers said he couldn't believe the powers of concentration that Robert Russell Bennett had," said George Harter, founder of Music Theater Heritage. "Rodgers and Hart went to see him and he was working on a table, orchestrating the score for this show – in ink – while the radio was blasting some jazz-age music!"
Bennett's concentration allowed him to orchestrate shows very quickly. In the beginning of his career, he would work on a whopping 22 shows a year. Later on, he re-orchestrated Irving Berlin's "Annie Get Your Gun" in two days. This speed is what attracted musical theater composers to him – it also allowed him to make time for original compositions.
"His work in commercial music limited his ability to compose, but there were pieces that were performed during the day both in concert halls and on the radio," Laird said, "I think he would have loved to have had his works be more well-known. But he couldn't have been surprised about the way it worked out, given all of the work he did in commercial music."
Bennett never believed his orchestrations counted as real classical music, but by the time he wrote his autobiography he could recognize the merit of Broadway. He wrote, "I doubt very much that any greater talents have ever existed than those of our American song-writers of the last seventy-odd years.”
“What they arrive at is often a pure sequence of tones and syllables that is as inevitable and individual as any detail of art can be."
Program
Autobiography - Mvt. I-III
By Robert Russell Bennett
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra
Four Preludes for Band - IV. Jerome
By Robert Russell Bennett
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra
Overture from Show Boat
By Jerome Kern
Arranged by Robert Russell Bennett
Show Boat Orchestra (1946)
Oklahoma! (Orchestral Suite)
By Richard Rodgers
Arranged by Robert Russell Bennett
Cincinnati Pops Orchestra
Overture from Annie Get Your Gun
By Irving Berlin
Arranged by Robert Russell Bennett
London Festival Orchestra
Suite of Old American Dances - IV. Wallflower Waltz
By Robert Russell Bennett
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra
Victory at Sea - Track IX. Victory at Sea (1992 Remastered)
By Robert Russell Bennett
Themes by Richard Rodgers
RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra
Selections from the Sound of Music
By Richard Rodgers
Arranged by Robert Russell Bennett
Cleveland Pops Orchestra
Autobiography - VII. 1935. What Was the Question?
By Robert Russell Bennett
Royal Northern College of Music Wind Orchestra
Want more from Robert Russell Bennett? You're in luck! On September 15, Chandos Records will be releasing a brand-new recording of Oklahoma! featuring the complete original score - for the first time in the musical's history. In November, Lyric Opera of Kansas City will be performing the Sound of Music.
