The Waltz King

Reading the title of this article, followers of classical music may assume I’m referring to Johann Strauss, the Austrian composer who popularized the waltz in the late 1800s. Some of his hits included “The Blue Danube,” “The Emperor Waltz,” and “Tales from the Vienna Woods.”

In fact, I’ve got a different waltz king in mind, one you may not think of in that way. It’s the American songwriter Richard Rodgers.

In his lifetime, Rodgers had two great collaborators. The first was lyricist Lorenz Hart, shown here, with whom he wrote 28 musicals and over 500 songs, including such classics as “Blue Moon,” “Isn’t It Romantic,” “This Can’t Be Love,” and the immortal “My Funny Valentine.” 

Hart died in 1943, and Rodgers began working with a different lyricist, Oscar Hammerstein II. Hammerstein’s lyrics, unlike the clever, painful words of Hart, were simple and heartwarming, such as “Shall We Dance?,” “Getting to Know You,” and “People Will Say We’re in Love.”

What many listeners don’t realize is that, especially in his years with Hammerstein, some of Rodgers’s best melodies were in 3/4 time. I’m thinking of such classics as “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’,” “Hello, Young Lovers,” and “My Favorite Things,” all of which in fact used 3/4 time, making them waltzes, even though we may not think of them that way.

Rodgers in fact created melodies of all kinds, and could do so in minutes. Hammerstein would take days to craft a satisfying lyric, then hand it to Rodgers and get it back the next morning with a perfect finished song.

These days, the work of Rodgers and Hammerstein has fallen out of favor, criticized as being in poor taste or even corny. Audiences are more interested in the music of Stephen Sondheim, which seems to better fit our current frame of mind.

Personally, I love both Sondheim’s dark, cerebral work and Rodger and Hammerstein’s simple beauty, presented so frequently and charmingly in the form of a waltz.