Last weekend I made a substantial foray into the works of composer-lyricist-vocal arranger Hugh Martin, famous for the songs from Meet Me in St. Louis (which isn't a good movie, despite Minnelli directing and the good songs). I listened to cast recordings of three of his Broadway shows: Best Foot Forward (with Ralph Blane, his main collaborator), Make a Wish and High Spirits (with Timothy Gray), as well as a collected demos CD called Hidden Treasures. Everything I listened to except for High Spirits was almost uniformly brilliant. I attribute High Spirits failure to impress me to poor orchestrations (as a wannabe composer-lyricist-orchestrator this hurts me a lot more than it might most people) and a clutch of weak songs, including what was essentially a list song about how seance is better than any drug trips.
Martin is a slightly neglected figure in the history of musical theatre and film, but several people have stressed his importance. His primary innovations are in bringing the Jazz vocal style to stage and screen, but as a composer-lyricist he is equally as brilliant (to the point that Sondheim put a few of his songs on his list of songs he'd wished he'd written (at least in part)). On a technical level he is superb, with lyrics that sit on the music very well as being clever and surprising, and music that is quite Jazzy and extremely melodic. For an example of his lyrical nous, listen to Gotta Dance, which is effortless in conveying the character as well as being funny and entertaining to listen to. Musically he isn't interested in disorienting the audience, instead carrying them through the song as effortlessly as possible, but his music is still quite modulatory and harmonically expansive (though the actual progressions tend to be predictable, not that that's a bad thing). His songs tend to be structured in song form (AABA), though he'll often extend the ending or expand the form slightly, but to me this is all the more striking in that every songwriter knows the difficulty of actually writing a great song in song form.
The title of this post is mainly concerned with one song, my favourite of the bunch I've listened to, I Happen To Love You. As iTunes doesn't give liner notes, I couldn't figure out what show this demo was from (though I did see it in the score for the Broadway version of Meet Me in St. Louis as an interlude during "The Boy Next Door"), but it struck me as being a great torch song for a man. I'm a sucker for torch songs, but this one was particularly poignant and sincere. Men get pretty short shrift in the unrequited love song stakes in musical theatre, which I guess is probably because female singers have by and large always been bigger stars on stage and torch songs tend to be eleven 'o clock numbers, but it's not as though a man can't express the same feelings. Admittedly most of the more specifically male-oriented stuff in the lyrics is in the verse (another thing Martin tends to write very well), but to me it seems a very relatable song and generally more geared to a male perspective than a female one. Unforced sincerity is something I admire greatly (and really wish I could do better) in lyrics, and Martin seems to be right up there with Sheldon Harnick as a master of it, especially in this song. Incidentally, Harnick actually collaborated with Martin on one of the demo songs (and wrote an essay on Martin's lyrics for the liner notes, which I really wish I had), which I find quite interesting.
Other favourites from what I've listened to so far are: Ev'ry Time, Gotta Dance (both of which were on Sonhdeim's list), The Hollywood Story (though that could have been written by Blane, either way it's a great song), That Face, Did I Just Fall in Love? and I Don't Know What I Want.
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