Composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick had their greatest success with the musical Fiddler on the Roof, which ran for nearly eight years on Broadway. Working together from 1956 until 1970, the songwriters wrote seven finely crafted stage musicals typified by songs with heart and humour.
Raised in New York, Jerrold Bock (b. on November 23, 1928) studied music at the University of Wisconsin, and, before teaming with Harnick, wrote songs for television and stage with a college classmate.
Sheldon Harnick (b. on April 30, 1924) was initially a violinist who wrote both music and lyrics. The songwriter moved to New York from Chicago in 1950, writing for revues and nightclub acts.
Bock and Harnick were introduced in 1956 by musical theatre performer Jack Cassidy. They first collaborated on The Body Beautiful, a 1958 musical about the tribulations of a professional boxer. The production lasted on Broadway for just sixty performances, but brought the songwriters to the attention of producers Harold Prince and Robert Griffith, who eventually engaged them to write the songs for their new musical about Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City. Fiorello was a major critical and commercial success. Its score featured clever satire, like the show-stopping examination of political corruption, “Little Tin Box,” as well as a gentle period waltz, “Til Tomorrow.” The 1959 musical ran 795 performances and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama.
Based on the life of a crusading minister in 1890s New York, Bock and Harnick's next musical, Tenderloin, opened in I960. Although the show failed to meet expectations generated by their previous success, the team still produced a collection of well-received songs.
The original 1963 production of Bock and Harnick's next musical, She Loves Me, ran a modest 301 performances, but appreciation for its charming, intimate score has built steadily throughout the years. The musical focuses on Georg and Amanda, clerks in an Eastern European perfumery. Although the two bicker constantly in person, neither realises that they are involved with each other in a romance conducted by anonymous letters. The refreshing and abundant score includes the atmospheric opener, “Good Morning, Good Day,” the exuberant title song, and several numbers such as “Where's My Shoe?” These songs effectively carry forward the musical's dramatic action, and simultaneously convey the unique qualities of the characters singing them.
The duo's next work was the first they initiated themselves. Fiddler on the Roof was based on several stories by Sholom Alecheim, and focuses on Tevye the milkman as he and his family live through the sudden dissolution of the traditions which guided life in their village. Many of the songs from the 1964 musical, including “To Life,” “If I Were a Rich Man,” “Sunrise, Sunset,” and “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” have become popular standards.
Bock and Harnick followed Fiddler in 1966 with The Apple Tree, a musical with three acts, each based on a different short story. Their final collaboration, The Rothschilds, which opened in 1970, depicted the rise of the international banking family.
Since then, Sheldon Harnick has written lyrics for musicals and operettas with several different composers, including Mary Rodgers, Richard RODGERS, Michel LEGRAND, Joe Raposo, and Thomas Z. Shepard. In the early 1970s, Jerry Bock wrote the score to the 1992 film A Stranger Among Us. He has, however, not contributed any new material to the Broadway musical theatre. Bock and Harnick's musicals have been revived on Broadway and continue to be produced in theatres around the country and throughout the world.
Herb Scher
SEE ALSO:
FILM MUSICALS; MUSICALS; POPULAR MUSIC; PRODUCERS.
Alpert, Hollis. Broadway!
(New York: Arcade, 1991);
Bordman, Gerald Martin. American Musical Theatre
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).
Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello;
She Loves Me; Tenderloin.