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Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick on the Tony Awards in Could 2016.
Matthew Eisman/Getty Photos
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Matthew Eisman/Getty Photos
Broadway lyricist Sheldon Harnick on the Tony Awards in Could 2016.
Matthew Eisman/Getty Photos
One of many final masters of Broadway’s Golden Age, Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist Sheldon Harnick, has died. He wrote Fiddler on the Roof and Fiorello!, amongst different musicals. He died Friday in New York Metropolis of pure causes, based on his publicist. He was 99.
Whether or not he was writing about New York politician Fiorello LaGuardia, fragrance store staff in Budapest, or a Jewish dairyman in pre-revolutionary Russia, Harnick all the time wrote lyrics for particular characters in particular conditions.
“A part of my expertise, as a lyricist,” Harnick instructed NPR in 2014, “is that I imagine I feel like a playwright, when it comes to character, in order that I can discover completely different diction, completely different voices for the completely different characters.”
Harnick’s profession prolonged for over 60 years. He got here to New York from Chicago in 1950 and started writing songs – each music and lyrics – for topical revues on and off Broadway.
Harnick recalled that it was one other well-known lyricist, E.Y. “Yip” Harburg, the author of Finian’s Rainbow and The Wizard of Oz, who gave him some nice profession recommendation, after listening to a few of Harnick’s tunes.
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He stated, Harnick recounted, “‘In my expertise, there are extra succesful theater composers than there are theater lyricists, so you’ll get invites to work with different folks, apart from your self.’ He stated, ‘Take these invites. It may well facilitate your profession.'”
After a few partnerships, Harnick met composer Jerry Bock by means of a mutual pal. They hit it off and Harnick signed with Bock’s writer, Tommy Valando.
“And Tommy labored an precise miracle!” Harnick exclaimed. “He received Jerry and me the job of writing the songs for a brand new musical known as The Physique Lovely, though Jerry and I had by no means written a music collectively, which continues to be astonishing to me!”
The Physique Lovely was a flop, however producer and director Hal Prince appreciated their work and employed them for a musical known as Fiorello!, which gained them a Pulitzer. Prince labored along with Bock and Harnick on 4 exhibits; Prince directed She Loves Me and produced Fiddler on the Roof.
“The number of what they might write was extraordinary,” Prince instructed NPR. “The rating of She Loves Me is nearly as good as any rating they’ve ever written, together with Fiddler. It is so delicate and clever. And the whole lot they wrote was character-driven.”
Sheldon Harnick, middle, with Jerry Bock, left, and actor Alfie Bass in London after it was introduced that Bock would take over the function of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof in October 1967.
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Gary Weaser/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Photos
Fiddler on the Roof was directed by Jerome Robbins. Prince says Robbins wasn’t happy with the unique opening quantity from Fiddler, a music known as “We Have not Missed a Sabbath But,” as a result of it did not clarify what the present was about.
“We met and we met and we met,” Prince defined, “and every time he’d say, ‘However what’s it about? What’s it about?’ And at last Sheldon – I’ve by no means heard him lose his mood earlier than – stated ‘Oh, for God’s sakes, Jerry, it is about custom!’ And Jerry stated, ‘That is it! That is what it is about. Write the opening quantity.'”
So Bock and Harnick wrote “Custom.” And Fiddler on the Roof ran for 3,242 performances on Broadway, has performed all around the world, was made into a movie and is continually being revived. Bock and Harnick labored collectively on a pair extra exhibits, then their partnership broke up. Harnick labored with different composers, amongst them Richard Rodgers and Michel Legrand.
New York College theater professor Laurence Maslon says he thinks Harnick’s exhibits struck a chord with audiences as a result of Harnick himself was such a sympathetic man.
“Sheldon does not have a imply bone in his physique,” Maslon says, “and his generosity simply filters by means of all this characters. And I feel that is why folks embraced them, as exhibits, as a result of Sheldon embraced the viewers first, in his lyrics.”
And Sheldon Harnick by no means stopped working in his personal lifetime.
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