What would you say is the “message” of *Make Our Garden Grow *from “Candide”? I think it has one meaning within the context of the book/musical, and a totally different meaning when heard out of context.
I did a choral arrangement of it last year, and I’m not familiar with Candide. I guess I would say it’s like, “Hey, I love you. Let’s get married and have a family because even though things like chopping wood and planting flowers might sound mundane, they’re the kind of thing I want to do with you, because I love you.”
Someone who’s read the book will now come along and say, “Yes, but what you DON’T know is that…”
Yes, on the surface, it seems like a song between two individuals, about love and commitment. But my vague recollections of the musical (which I saw many years ago) indicate an ***extremely *** different meaning. But I’d like to hear from someone who’s more familiar with the book or musical.
I’m familiar with the retooled script from the early 70’s, not the Lillian Hellman script from the 50’s and I would venture that it has two different meanings in the two different shows.
I’ll speak for the 70’s and then give an impression of the one from the 50’s:
In the one from the 70’s they spend a lot of time exploring the premise: “Once one, dismisses, the rest of all possible worlds, one finds that this is the best of all possible worlds.”
This is borne out by being beaten, swindled, hanging out in paradise, kept as a love slave, and other not best of anything experiences. In the end, they seem to decide that you make the world you want to live in and so, having found each other after all these calamaties, go on to make the best of all possible worlds themselves, which includes their love and all the mundane bits of life that go with it.
In the 50’s the experiences seem to have left them jaded and much the worse for the wear and I believe there is good deal of sarcasm intended in this context.
Other than that, I probably don’t have much to offer.