Noel and Cole the Sophisticates Coward - Hardcover

Citron, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1856190854 ISBN 13: 9781856190855

Publisher: Trafalgar Square, 1992

Synopsis

Born an ocean apart, Cole Porter and Noel Coward made the Atlantic their private pond, frequently crossing it to present their shows in London, Paris or New York. This book gives an understanding of the reasons for their unquenchable popularity. It looks into their songs, their lives, their output, their iconoclasm and their special friendships. The author has had access to previously unpublished manuscripts, lyrics, scores and letters, and has conducted dozens of interviews to produce a portrait of these two people and their work. Stephen Citron's works include "One More Song", "Laura" and he is the author of "Songwriting", a reference work on the subject, and he published "The Musical From Inside Out".

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.

From Kirkus 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Trafalgar Square
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 1856190854
• ISBN 13: 9781856190855
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320