The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #26115   Message #311724
Posted By: Joe Offer
04-Oct-00 - 04:02 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: How Are Things in Glocca Morra? (Harburg)
Subject: Glocca Morra
Here's the text from that link I posted above.
-Joe Offer-
FINIAN’S RAINBOW
Goodspeed Opera House, East Haddam, CT
50th Anniversary Production: April 2 - July 4, 1997

Program Notes

Always a Rainbow

by John Pike

Aggressive, sweet, intellectual, whimsical, antiestablishment, skeptic, true-believer. A rainbow of seemingly contradictory words have been used over the years to describe E.Y. Harburg and his work. His quixotic nature earned him the nickname Yip, short for yipsl, the Yiddish term for squirrel.

Harburg grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the turn of the century where Italian, Irish, Russian, and Jewish families lived and worked, bound together by their poverty. Never dreaming that this would be a macrocosm of Rainbow Valley, the mythical site of his most famous stage musical, Harburg, at an early age, took note of the various verbal idiosyncrasies of his immigrant neighbors.

It was this same environment that engendered in him a love of all kinds of music. Harburg claimed to have a parody for every popular song of his youth. He often tried his hand at poetry, inspired by the satiric light verse of W.S. Gilbert.

The proximity of the letters “G” to “H” in the alphabet was auspicious for Harburg, who found himself seated next to the future lyricist Ira Gershwin in school. When Gershwin introduced Harburg to the crisp melodies of Arthur Sullivan, Harburg was astonished that there was music that fit the marvelous words of his idol Gilbert. At that moment, he happily realized that his two passions, lyric satire and good music, were not mutually exclusive.

Though Harburg was known for his unique imagery, he never found lyric writing less than “nerve-racking and brain-racking.” Often, however, pure inspiration took over. For FINIAN’S RAINBOW’s most famous song, Harburg was researching Irish poetry when he stumbled upon two Gaelic names, “Glocca” and “Morra.” Although they had little meaning on their own, when Harburg combined the two words, they sounded like a lucky name and seemed to reflect the optimistic spirit of the musical he envisioned.

Harburg’s intuitive side manifested itself musically as well. Composer Burton Lane wrote melody after melody for “How are Things in Glocca Morra?,” struggling with each version to reach the proper blend of Irish authenticity and theatrical appeal. When a despondent Lane played Harburg his first melody, an impish smile came across Harburg’s face as he commanded the composer to look no further.

Although he enjoyed writing about love, Harburg knew that songs could also help implement social change. He delighted in attacking sacred cows but usually concealed the “subversive” side of his writing within the safety of munchkins, genies, witches, and leprechauns. He claimed he could “tackle any problem that had profundity, depth and real danger ... by destroying it with laughter.”

In later years he would muse that science had unraveled many of the natural wonders that had inspired both poets and lyricists for so long. The moon and the stars were no longer the awe-inspiring mysteries they once were. But, ever the optimist, Harburg believed that every generation would find their own rainbows to write about.

For the record, FINIAN’S RAINBOW opened January 10, 1947, at the 46th Street Theatre in New York, running 725 performances after an engagement in Philadelphia. The cast included Albert Sharpe (Finian), Ella Logan (Sharon), and David Wayne (Og). The production was directed by Bretaigne Windust and choreographed by Michael Kidd.

 

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