Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber (62 page)

Example 13.7.
“Somewhere” motive in “I Have a Love”

“Somewhere” and “Procession and Nightmare,” with their foreshadowings and symbolic apotheoses, musically convey the principal dramatic message of
West Side Story
. But Bernstein also uses musical materials more directly by taking advantage of music’s power to depict psychological states and by assigning appropriate musical equivalents to the driving emotions of passionate youthful hate and its counterpart in youthful love. Bernstein’s principal musical accomplice to make this possible is the tritone or augmented fourth, a highly charged dissonant interval that figures prominently in the motive associated with the hate-filled gangs (
Example 13.9a
, F-B). It may not be coincidental that the pervasive use of the intervals formed by these notes C-F-B (a rising fourth followed by a rising tritone) as a central motive in
West Side Story
) employs the same three-note sequence of notes heard as the opening and central motive of Alban Berg’s youthful late-Romantic early-modernist Piano Sonata, op. 1 (1907–1908), well known in Bernstein’s circle (
Example 13.9b
, G-C-F
). With its short upbeat, its disproportionately long second note, and the short final note on the tritone, to mark the second note of the tritone, the hate motive relates even more closely rhythmically as well in approximate pitch to the principal motive sounded by the Shofar (the latter not always easily determined on this instrument), the ancient ram’s horn that announces Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, a sound that Bernstein knew well.

In any event, Bernstein’s motive clearly serves as a central unifying element. Although no one has speculated on its possible connection with Berg’s sonata, its appearance (in nearly every musical number of the show) was recognized as early as Jack Gottlieb’s 1964 dissertation; the motive has been discussed in varying detail since then by Peter Gradenwitz, Larry Stempel, and Swain.
⁷⁸
Gottlieb prefaces his discussion of the “hate” motive with the following statement:

It was in
WEST SIDE STORY
that the fullest expression of the interval as a progenitor of musical development came into effect. Unlike
WONDERFUL TOWN
(perfect fifth)
⁷⁹
and
CANDIDE
(minor seventh),
⁸⁰
the interval here was not used for melodic purposes only, but as a harmonic force also. The interval in question is the tritone (augmented fourth), the famous
Diabolus in Musica
, certainly an appropriate symbolism for this tragic musical drama.
⁸¹

A summary of how Bernstein uses the “hate” motive for dramatic purposes follows.

Example 13.8.
“Procession” motive in “I Have a Love” and Wagner’s
Ring

(a) “Procession” motive

(b) “I Have a Love” (“Procession” motive)

(c) Redemption motive in Wagner’s
Die Walküre

Bernstein introduces the definitive form of the “hate” motive in the Prologue shortly after the stage directions “Bernardo enters.”
⁸²
Once Bernstein associates his unresolved tritone motive with the hate-filled Jets, he positions himself to convey dramatic meanings through its resolution or attempted resolution. An example of the latter occurs in Promenade, when the social worker Glad Hand attempts to get the Sharks and Jets to mix amiably at the
Settlement dance. Here the accented tritone dissonances in the bass (now spelled C-G
), symbolically demonstrate the underlying tensions and resulting futility of attempts to resolve the animosity between the gangs. The drama reinforces this musical point when Promenade is interrupted by the Mambo, and Bernardo and Riff circumvent their intended partners and heed Anita’s subsequent dictum to associate exclusively with “their own kind.”

As the song instructs, the Jets in “Cool” attempt to achieve a degree of calm prior to The Rumble (or after The Rumble in the film version).
⁸³
The main tune of “Cool” consists of a tritone (spelled C-F
) followed almost invariably by its upward resolution to the perfect fifth (G) (
Example 13.9c
). Underneath the main tune the definitive “hate” (or “gang”) motive appears as an accompaniment, and tritones also provide a harmonic foundation. One might interpret the upward resolution as an easing of tension, a perfect fifth as a metaphor for a more perfect world. If so, the Jets’ attempt to compose themselves in this song, like their attempts to mix at the Settlement dance, are also destined for musical failure, a failure borne out dramatically by the subsequent deaths of Riff and Bernardo.

Example 13.9.
“Hate” in
West Side Story

(a) “Hate” motive (Prologue)

(b) “Hate” motive in Berg’s Piano Sonata

(c) “Hate” motive in “Cool” (attempted resolution)

(d) Resolution of the “Hate” motive in “Something’s Coming”

(e) Tony’s resolution of the tritone and Maria’s name as resolution of the “Hate” motive in The Dance at the Gym

Only the characters who represent the triumph of love over hate, Tony and Maria, can unambiguously and convincingly resolve the tritone tension embodied in the gang’s signature motive. This happens as early as Tony’s first song, “Something’s Coming” (
Example 13.9d
). Tony’s first words, “Could be!,” outline a perfect descending fourth (D-A), and his next question, “Who knows?,” establishes a second perfect fourth after an eighth-note digression to
the tritone (D-G
-A). By this immediate resolution Bernstein lets his audiences know, at least subliminally, that Tony, an ex-Jet, is a man capable of assuaging the tensions of his former gang as his musical line resolves its tritones. Throughout the entire first portion of “Something’s Coming,” the orchestral accompaniment, which consists entirely of perfect fourths—in contrast to the alternating perfect fourths and tritones in the bass of Promenade—supports this important dramatic point: that Tony is a man who wants peace.