Noel and Cole: The Sophisticates - Hardcover

Citron, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195083857 ISBN 13: 9780195083859

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1993

Synopsis

Born an ocean apart--one in Peru, Indiana, to great wealth, the other in Teddington, England, to an itinerant piano salesman--Cole Porter and Noel Coward have come to represent the ultimate in sophistication and urbanity. "You Do Something to Me," Gay Divorce, "I Get a Kick Out of You," "Just One of Those Things," Anything Goes, "Begin the Beguine," Private Lives, "Night and Day," Blithe Spirit, "Let's Do It," Hay Fever, "It's De-Lovely"--the list of witty and irreverent songs and plays goes on and on. It is a body of work that was tremendously exciting when it first appeared and remains remarkably popular today.
Based on access to previously unpublished manuscripts, lyrics, scores and letters, plus dozens of interviews, Noel and Cole presents a fresh and often surprising portrait of these two geniuses and their work, packed with numerous photographs, some of which have never been published before. Stephen Citron interweaves the biographical strands with consummate skill, providing insight into both men's private lives--including a frank discussion of their homosexuality--while illuminating their musical achievements. Indeed Citron, a composer and lyricist himself, excels at musical analysis, and throughout the volume he sheds considerable light on Porter's and Coward's art. He tells us, for instance, that in composing the melody of "Night and Day," Cole Porter restricted himself to mid-range notes, with hardly any vocal leaps that would betray a breathless dancer, especially as the dancer was Fred Astaire, who had never studied singing seriously, and was just launching his solo career. (Citron also tells us that Astaire wanted "Night and Day" dropped from the show, because he feared that with its long-held notes, especially on the word "day," his voice would crack.) Citron also shows how fast a worker Noel Coward could be: Coward wrote Hay Fever in three days, for instance, and his finest play, Private Lives, took him four days (while he was laid low with a bout of influenza in Shanghai).
Packed with information, including a quintuple chronology and a fifty-page section devoted to the analysis of selected songs, Noel and Cole will be an essential reference as well as a fascinating dual biography of two men who brought style and dazzle to the art of popular entertainment.

About this title

About the Author

About the Author:
Stephen Citron is a composer, lyricist, and lecturer. His recent work includes writing scores for One More Song (the Judy Garland musical), and Laura (a murder mystery musical). He is the author of Songwriting, the standard reference work on the subject, and the recently published The Musical From Inside Out.

Reviews

Witty, urbane, and enormously gifted, Noel Coward and Cole Porter were both born in small towns and encouraged by strong mothers. Both were gay, died in their 73rd year, and, in a field dominated by collaborators (Rogers and Hart, etc.), wrote the music as well as the lyrics to their own songs. Here, Citron (The Musical from the Inside Out, 1992, etc.--not reviewed), himself a professional songwriter, anchors the pair in a tradition that reflects their restless times and analyzes the qualities that made each man an original. In alternating chapters that cover the composers in turn, Citron--who offers incisive analyses of their hit songs-- successfully traces the trajectories of the two musical stars. Born in 1891 to a wealthy but uncultured Indiana family, Porter was sent east for schooling. At Yale, he wrote undergraduate reviews, made important lifelong connections, and acquired his lavish way of life. Never dependent on songwriting for a livelihood (in addition to his own fortune, he married a wealthy divorc‚e), he was late in finding the limelight. By contrast, Coward, born in 1899 to an impecunious middle-class English family, bypassed a formal education and was on the stage by age 14. The more versatile of the two, he wrote fiction, plays, songs, operettas, and musical reviews, and acted and starred in many of his own productions-- while Porter wrote only complex harmonies, lilting melodies, and inimitable lyrics, many of them risqu‚. Porter emerges here as the colder personality, always a bit remote and, in his final, pain- ridden years (a leg, injured in a horse-racing accident 21 years earlier, had to be amputated), a semi-recluse. The two musical lions admired each other, Citron says, and they shared many friends and theatrical associates. A thorough introduction--featuring much original song interpretation--that's a valuable addition to existing memoirs and biographies (e.g., Coward's own Future Indefinite, 1986, and Charles Schwartz's Cole Porter, 1977). (Thirty halftones) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Noel and Cole is a courageous and highly successful chronicle of two great legends of the theater, music, and film worlds during the first half of the 20th century. Citron carefully documents the pair's parallel careers and frequent collaboration. No book currently available is as comprehensive in its treatment of these two greats.The history is made engaging through a generous blend of facts, photographs, scores, and interviews. The dynamism of Porter and Coward, whether working together or separately, is made abundantly clear and appealing for readers at all levels. As a reference work, the volume is well indexed, and the useful bibliography directs readers to other useful resources. For most serious music collections.
- Richard Lornzen, Univ. of Washington
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195083857
• ISBN 13: 9780195083859
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368