Is it just me or is the Pink Floyd claim rather weak? It’s not a complex melody.
If I were to rank every broadway musical by order of preference, none of ALW’s shows would be in my top 5, but 3 or 4 would be in my top 20.
And this claim that he never writes more than one melody, or only writes one per show, is silly and easily, immediately disproven. Cats, for instance, as both Memory and The Ballad of Billy McCaw (although the latter was only in the London version for some bizarre rason).
Wow, those are my two favorite Sondheim shows. **Sunday **is a work of genius. In fact Sunday, **Company **& Phantom of the Opera are my top three musicals! (Les Mis would be number four.)
Hardly. ALW has already been around for close to 40 years and is the creator of the most successful musical of all time. And not only the most successful musical, but Phantom of the Opera is also the most successful piece of entertainment in history, including films. (The last figure I had seen was in 2004 when it had $3.2 *billion *in worldwide grosses. That’s more than LOTR, Harry Potter or Avatar. It’s only gone up since then.)
If you want to say that he’d be forgotten, then you have to say that about every single composer as well.
Just to keep the facts straight, Lloyd Webber has composed music for the following shows:
- The Likes of Us
- Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat
- Jeeves/By Jeeves
- Evita
- Variations
- Tell Me on a Sunday
- CATS
- Song & Dance
- Starlight Express
- Cricket
- The Phantom of the Opera
- Aspects of Love
- Sunset Boulevard
- Whistle Down the Wind
- The Beautiful Game
His other works include:
- Soundtrack to movie “Gumshoe”
- Soundtrack to movie “The Odess File”
- Contributions to the show Hulla Baloo
- Requiem
He will go down in history as a prolific, succesful and I think good composer.
I wasn’t really sure how to answer. When you look at the classic Aristotilian elements of drama (Plot, Character, Thought/theme, Diction, Melody, Spectacle), ALW has an unparallelled flair for Spectacle and Theme, and isn’t bad on Character. Plot, he almost universally ignores.
People for whom plot is an essentially part of the theatergoing experience, generally loathe ALW. Other people don’t care about plotlessness if they feel totally transported and immersed by the experience.
I think he’s fine … when I’m in the mood for Spectacle.
You forgot Woman in White and Love Never Dies, understandably.
URGGG! Updated list
The problem here is, Webber is a composer, so Aristotle shouldn’t enter into it. This is what I meant when I said he gets credit for parts of the plays that he shouldn’t. Tim Rice is something of a genius, and almost without exception it is Rice’s contribution to the show that makes the plays he worked on worth watching. I know people love Phantom, but with the exception of Music of the Night, there isn’t a whole lot of good going on there musically and the book(which Webber did work on in this case) is just a mess. But it is SPECTACULAR! That spectacle has nothing to do with Webber though. Give the credit Hal Prince, who is also something of a genius and who helped design the spectacle.
Webber is proficient, and has a knack for melody. He can usually give you one song a show that is genuinely good, but really you should expect more from your composers that 1 out of 15 songs being above average. He isn’t terrible, he just isn’t anything special and he has a tendency to recycle his music. People who are very familiar with musical theatre get frustrated that he is the one who got famous when there are so many other great composers who aren’t. The known composers are essentially him Sondheim and to a lesser extent Steven Schwartz, and that is kind of sad.
This may be the first thread I ever subscribe to, if only to learn who what’s-his-name is.
Don’t disappoint me, Skald.
I’m not speaking for Skald, but I’m assuming he means “Time Machine Hookup” with Mandy Patinkin since he’s showing his years. I’m guessing that what’s-his-name is either Jesse Martinor Brian Stokes Mitchell- if not it should be- add in Nathan Lane and you’d have my foursome to to pick Rachel’s two dads from on GLEE.
To be fair, I dislike musicals as a general rule now.
I do love the South Park Movie, though.
His shows seem to have 1 and occasionally 2 decent songs. the rest are forgettable. But the show backgrounds and costuming are very good.
I presume that by that, you mean current composers? Because Rogers and Hammerstein and Gilbert and Sullivan are quite well-known, too. And you could make a case for Schönberg, as well (he might not be as well-known by name, but everyone knows Les Miserables and Miss Saigon).
And Annie Xmas, it looks like you also left off Jesus Christ Superstar.
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Return of Martin Guerre (by the Schönberg & co.) is similar to many ALW shows. It has a couple of my favorite melodies of anything he’s written and I like the story and the films it inspired, but the lyrics and writing and most of the score are “meh”.
Yeah, I meant living working composers. There are some good one’s out there, but most people don’t know them.
I don’t think you would get any responses if you started a thread asking what people thought about Claude-Michel Schönberg even though Miss Saigon and Les Miserables are well known, so I don’t think he counts because it’s the personal fame that I think is the real issue for a lot of people. Miss Saigon is every bit as bad a show as most of what Webber does, but you don’t see Schönberg getting the hate that Webber gets becuase he didn’t have Webbers genius for cultivating personal fame.
And then there are the Jason Robert Browns of the world, who are even less well known and who deserve to be famous.
Let me amend that last statement to "who deserve to be more famous. Brown himself isn’t quite living up to his potential, but he sticks out in my mind because of The Last Five Years which was so brilliant it hurts.
Yes and no. Webber’s production company ran the major productions since 1977; as such he was responsible for production design and the overall vision.
I’d quote this for truth a million times if I could.