Richard Rodgers And Oscar Hammerstein Research Paper
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Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a composer and lyricist duo that were incredibly influential and successful. The pair is noted to be the greatest partnership of the 20th century. “In 1998, Rodgers & Hammerstein were cited by Time Magazine and CBS News as among the 20 most influential artists of the 20th century.” (Hutchinson 2012) Some of their hits include: Oklahoma!, Carousel, State Fair, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Although they wrote many great numbers, the duo hadn’t always worked together.
Richard Rodgers started his career as a composer at an early age. At seventeen, Rogers was introduced to Lorentz Hart, who was seven years older, while attending Columbia University. The two collaborated on twenty-eight stage musicals and over five hundred songs before the passing of Hart in 1943. Several years after their first meeting, Rodgers and Hart produced their first…show more content… Oklahoma! was their first musical together. This piece was new and innovative. This musical became the first to have the songs and dance numbers tell the plot of the actual story instead of acting as a diversion and an unnecessary element to the play. No longer were their songs just their to bring music to the play while having little to do with the play itself but were there to further progress the plot and help tell the story. Usually musicals were written with certain famous stars in mind and targeted for those stars alone but with Oklahoma! the actors who played in this musical were not well-known. The duo felt that the story and the songs were so powerful; they didn’t need that kind of star power in order to make their musical a hit. This musical drama marked a revolution in story telling and went on to play for 2,212 performances, finally shutting its doors on March29,