On Jan 18, 2009, at 9:17 PM, John Howell wrote:
At 2:50 PM -0500 1/18/09, David W. Fenton wrote:
Were the chord symbols printed in the publications of Richard
Rodgers' music "his" symbols, or those of an arranger? Frankly, I
strongly doubt that we should attribute them to Rodgers himself.
A valid point, David, although Rodgers was certainly a better-
trained musicians than, say, Irving Berlin, and I doubt that he
needed a "musical secretary." But I wouldn't even attempt to
untangle the probable web of songwriter; "arranger" (if any;
Rodgers did play piano pretty well); "editor" (probably hired by
his publisher); and publisher ( businessmen always blamed for
errors or editorial decisions, but very seldom having anything to
do with them). Given his background, I would certainly expect the
chords to have been his, but I have no way of proving it. (I
wonder whether orignal mss. exist somewhere. Or whether Rodgers'
wife had anything to say about it in her book.) Certainly the
written piano chords in the sheet music must have been his, whether
or not he personally derived the chord symbols from them. No
competent songwriter would leave those to chance. One huge
difference between his sheet music and that of later songwriters is
the number of harmonic changes per measure rather than letting a
single chord suffice for a full measure or more. (Not unlike many
questions about baroque music, actually, including the harmonic
comparison of Bach and Handel!)
Richard Rodgers had apparently said to an interviewer once, "I would
kill an orchestrator who changed one of my voicings" or words to
that effect. I don't know the citation exactly, but I certainly
remember the gist of it vividly, that he insisted on the vertical
content of his music to be just so.
Like Jerome Kern and Stephen Sondheim (that spring to mind right
away), he seems to have written fairly complete piano accompaniments
to his songs, which were then orchestrated with a minimum of added
material.
The guitar chords in the published sheet music were almost certainly
added later by an editor, and do not reflect the way Rodgers himself
thought of his harmony.
Christopher
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