Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway Revolution

by Todd S. Purdum

“It was a revelation to learn,” he once wrote, “that by some curious kind of musical magnetics, the fourth step of the scale was pulled down to the third, and that the seventh was pulled up to the eighth. Nobody has ever explained it scientifically, but if you take the simple phrase of music that goes with ‘Shave and a haircut, two bits,’ you’ll find that the note that goes with ‘two’ is carried, whether it wants to or not, to the note that goes with ‘bits.’ It’s almost impossible for it to go anywhere else.” The note that goes with “two” is the

seventh tone of the major scale, known as the “leading tone,” the “ti” that wants by its nature to be brought back to “do.” In a musical phrase, the seventh tone lands with a pang, a note of unresolved longing, and Rodgers exploited this reality to the fullest. “We’ll have Man-HAT-tan” is a case in point, with the syllable “hat” lingering on the seventh tone in a way that sweeps the listener along.

I think the point is that it isn’t necessary to love one another. The necessity is to understand one another, because understanding, I think, is a block to hatred. We mustn’t hate one another. But love is not the only alternative. Oscar Hammerstein

But the world is full of zanies and fools Who don’t believe in sensible rules And won’t believe what sensible people say, And because these daft and dewy-eyed dopes Keep building up impossible hopes, Impossible things are happ’ning every day.