Re-membering the Waltz

In the article Remembering and re-membering: Sondheim, the waltz, and A Little Night Music, Steve Swayne notes some interesting points about how the waltz is presented in the performance and brings to surface some assumptions and misinterpretations that are made about A Little Night Music. Here are some excerpts from the article that might be of interest:

"George Benjamin wrote that Ravel's La Valse 'plots the birth, decay and destruction of a musical genre: the waltz' (Benjamin 1994:432). In a similar fashion, Sondheim deconstructed the waltz, as his mature musicals demonstrate. This is the second reason Sondheim stands at some remove from the Broadway waltz tradition expression of love. Sonfheim, like Ravel, rearranged the meaning of the waltz; he re-membered it."

"...There is no togetherness when the waltz sounds in Night Music. Instead, with every waltz there is another partner waiting, with couples being shuffled like a deck of cards the musical's creators originally imagined. Throughout Night Music, the sound of the waltz signals the decoupling of the 'proper' couples, which is the overarching dramaturgical trajectory for Night Music. When the waltz occurs, someone is either contemplating - or in the process of - leaving someone for someone else. By the evenings end, all of the original couples have engaged in re-membering, an act always accompanied by the waltz."

"Sondheim spoke about how he wanted the score to be perceived rather than how it is actually constructed. Of greater interest to him was the idea of organization by triple time rather than of the waltz or of three-quarter time as the principle musical features. The score 'vaguely' resembles a long waltz, but with his admission of 'scherzi' as a part of the mix, Sondheim also acknowledges that Night Music, for all of its triple-time pretentions, is in actuality not a long waltz."

"A second stream of criticism recognizes that not all of the music in Night Music can be construed as a waltz. Whole on the surface this stance appears closer to accepting Sondheim's clinical description of 'multiples of three', it errs in not hearing these various non-waltzes as independent dances with their own distinct histories. Instead it makes the historical and musical mistake of reducing all of these various non-waltzes as independent dances to the lowest common denominator..."

"...In moving away from traditional understandings of the waltz and in redefining its meaning, Sondheim has broken triple time open for new uses. And while he may have a few precedents for his unique way of slewing the waltz, others before him rethought the dance...."

Remembering and re-membering: Sondheim, the waltz, and "A Little Night Music"
Author(s): Steve Swayne Dartmouth College
Source: Studies in Musical Theatre. Volume 1 Number 3, 2007. (p. 259-273).
Published by: Intellect Ltd.
IncStable URL: https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals.php?issn=17503159