Musical Analysis
Weill did not want to use the "tom-tom" beat that Americans were familiar with, nor did he want the spirituals of the South, so he obtained recordings of Zulu music from Africa to study. In an interview with The New York Times however, Weill noted that "American spirituals are closer to African music than many people realize." In pointing out the set, he commented "Notice that this is an Anglican church. That is another influence that appears in the music. In general, the whole play has a Biblical tone that we hope the public will like." He was influenced by African American musical idioms through his use of spiritual melodies, blues and jazz.
The title song "Lost in the Stars" enjoyed a measure of popular success, and versions of it were recorded by Anita O'Day, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Generation Gap, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner and many others. The words, which in the musical are those of the minister Stephen Kumalo at the depth of his desperation, tell how God once "held all the stars in the palm of his hand" "and they ran through his fingers like grains of sand, and one little star fell alone." Kumalo says that God sought and found the little lost star and "stated and promised he'd take special care so it wouldn't get lost again." But at times he thinks that God has forgotten his promise and that "we're lost out here in the stars."
Read more about this topic: Lost In The Stars
Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or analysis:
“Then, bringing me the joy we feel when wee see a work by our favorite painter which differs from any other that we know, or if we are led before a painting of which we have until then only seen a pencil sketch, if a musical piece heard only on the piano appears before us clothed in the colors of the orchestra, my grandfather called me the [hawthorn] hedge at Tansonville, saying, “You who are so fond of hawthorns, look at this pink thorn, isn’t it lovely?””
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality; both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)