That World of Somewhere In Between: The History of Cabaret and the Cabaret Songs of Richard Pearson Thomas, Volume I

D.M.A. DOCUMENT

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Musical Arts in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By

Rebecca Mullins

Graduate Program in Music

The Ohio State University

2013

D.M.A. Document Committee:

Dr. Scott McCoy, advisor

Dr. Graeme Boone

Professor Loretta Robinson

Copyright by

Rebecca Mullins

2013

Abstract

Cabaret songs have become a delightful and popular addition to the art song recital, yet there is no concise definition in the lexicon of classical music to explain precisely what cabaret songs are; indeed, they exist, as composer Richard Pearson

Thomas says, “in that world that’s somewhere in between” other genres. So what exactly makes a cabaret song a cabaret song? This document will explore the topic first by tracing historical antecedents to and the evolution of artistic cabaret from its inception in

Paris at the end of the 19th century, subsequent flourish throughout Europe, and progression into the United States. This document then aims to provide a stylistic analysis to the first volume of the cabaret songs of American composer Richard Pearson

Thomas.

ii

Dedication

This document is dedicated to the person who has been most greatly impacted by its writing, however unknowingly—my son Jack. I hope you grow up to be as proud of your

mom as she is of you, and remember that the things in life most worth having are the things for which we must work the hardest. Good things do not come to those who wait;

rather, they come to those who seize fate by the throat and make them happen.

iii

Acknowledgments

I must first and foremost acknowledge Richard Pearson Thomas for composing such charming music that it prompted me to undertake this document. I also cannot thank him enough for his time spent with interviews, e-mails, and listening.

I must also thank those who have served as members of my doctoral committee

(Dr. Scott McCoy, Dr. Karen Peeler, Dr. Graeme Boone, Professor Loretta Robinson, and

Dr. Patrick Woliver), who have supported and encouraged my work and given me the opportunity to succeed against all odds. Also, I want to thank my talented collaborator and pianist James Jenkins for making beautiful music with me, and for assisting with stylistic analysis.

A great deal of gratitude is owed as well to Emily Coen. When I needed an objective voice, yours was the one I sought most frequently. Thank you for helping me through this document and this degree with my sanity more or less intact.

Finally, to my family—Terry, Mary, Ginny, Adam, Faith, Annie, Mike, Robert, and Billy—I can say with certainty that none of this would have been possible without your help and support for me (and Jack) emotionally and scholastically. When I need help, the person on whom I know I can always count especially is you Dad. I hope I can always return the favor.

iv

Vita

August 24, 1981 ...... Born—Charleston, WV

1999...... St. Albans High School

2003...... B.A. Music, Radford University

2005...... M.M. Vocal Performance, West Virginia

University

2008 - Present ...... Graduate Student, Department of Music,

The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Music

v

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iii

Acknowledgments ...... iv

Vita ...... v

Table of Contents ...... vi

List of Musical Examples ...... ix

PART ONE ...... 1

Chapter 1: Life May Be a Cabaret, Old Chum, but what is a Cabaret? ...... 1

Historical Antecedents of the Modern Cabaret ...... 2

Montmartre ...... 5

Chapter 2: Cabaret Goes Abroad ...... 8

Barcelona ...... 8

Hungary ...... 10

Poland ...... 11

Russia...... 12

Chapter 3: German Language Cabaret ...... 15 vi

Berlin ...... 16

Munich ...... 19

Vienna ...... 21

Zurich...... 23

Chapter 4: Between the Wars ...... 26

Jazz Dances Across the Pond ...... 27

From Cabaret to Kabarett ...... 30

Spin-offs of the Literary Cabaret ...... 35

Chapter 5: Nazi Loss is the World’s Gain ...... 37

Chapter 6: Cabaret Across the Pond ...... 41

The Big Satire Boom ...... 43

Cabaret Remnants Today ...... 45

PART TWO ...... 48

Chapter 7: Who is Richard Pearson Thomas? ...... 48

His Music ...... 51

Chapter 8: The Cabaret Songs, Volume One ...... 53

My German Boyfriend...... 56

How Many Churches? ...... 59

You Do Not Understand ...... 63

vii

It Doesn’t Matter ...... 69

When I Kiss You ...... 72

I’m Yours! ...... 76

Conclusion ...... 82

Bibliography ...... 85

APPENDIX A: PHONE INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD PEARSON THOMAS ..... 88

APPENDIX B: CABARET SONGS OF RICHARD PEARSON THOMAS ...... 105

viii

List of Musical Examples

Example 1. “My German Boyfriend” mm. 1-4………………………………………….54 Example 2. “My German Boyfriend” mm. 25-28……………………………………….55 Example 3. “My German Boyfriend” mm. 5-16………………………………….....56-57 Example 4. “How Many Churches?” mm. 1-3………………………………………….59 Example 5. “How Many Churches?” mm. 17-20……………………………………….59 Example 6. “How Many Churches?” mm. 21-25……………………………………….60 Example 7. “You Do Not Understand” mm. 20-23……………………………………..61 Example 8. “You Do Not Understand” mm. 24-27……………………………………..62 Example 9. “You Do Not Understand” mm. 33-40……………………………………..63 Example 10. “You Do Not Understand” mm. 57-64……………………………………64 Example 11. “You Do Not Understand” mm. 65-74……………………………………65 Example 12. “It Doesn’t Matter” mm. 1-3……………………………………………...66 Example 13. “It Doesn’t Matter” mm. 29-36…………………………………………...68 Example 14. “When I Kiss You” mm. 1-9……………………………………………...70 Example 15. “When I Kiss You” mm. 38-43…………………………………………...72 Example 16. “When I Kiss You” mm. 44-46…………………………………………...73 Example 17. “I’m Yours!” mm. 1-5…………………………………………………….74 Example 18. “I’m Yours!” mm. 71-75………………………………………………….76 Example 19. “I’m Yours!” mm. 96-104………………………………………………...77

ix

PART ONE

Chapter 1: Life May Be a Cabaret, Old Chum, but what is a Cabaret?

To give cabaret music a definition is no simple task. Is it music theater? Is it popular music? Is it classical music? Or is it a separate genre identifiable by unique musical and aesthetic characteristics? Most general dictionary definitions limit the cabaret to entertainment at an establishment that serves food, which tells us nothing about type of performance that takes place, let alone anything about the cabaret song in particular. An Internet search will leave the seeker with naught but more confusion after skimming the Wikipedia article on the subject, which does little more than Merriam-

Webster in defining what exactly takes place on a cabaret stage, even mentioning a

Mediterranean brothel.1 In popular usage these days, audience members may think of anything from a dank, smoky nightclub or strip joint to Liza Minelli and Bob Fossi.

According to Lisa Appignanesi, author of the book The Cabaret, these types of cabaret are “more or less distant relatives of the avant-garde artistic cabaret which emerged in

France at the end of the nineteenth century and blossomed into a unique medium for political and cultural satire of the German Kabarett of the 1920s and early 30s.”2

1 “Cabaret”. Wikipedia, accessed February 20, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabaret 2 Lisa Appignanesi. Cabaret. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 1. 1

What these popular uses or ideas of cabaret fail to show is that the artistic cabaret of which Appignanesi speaks “shadowed the key moments of Western modernism.”3

Indeed she considers it to be modernism’s “youthful, light-hearted, sometimes raucous, late-night doppelgänger”.4 In order to provide clarity to a muddy issue, let us look to the past and follow the evolution of cabaret through time and place.

Historical Antecedents of the Modern Cabaret

The cabaret gets its name from a French wine cellar or tavern, which were already used in the mid-fifteenth century as performing venues where guests might join in a spontaneous sing-along or out-of-season carnival workers might perform.5 Two forms of artistic cabaret that would appear centuries later already were evident in this early antecedent—“cabaret as a meeting place for artists where performance or improvisation takes place among peers, and cabaret as an intimate, small-scale, but intellectually ambitious revue.”6 This form of cabaret that is recognizable as a unique genre and type of establishment began toward the end of the nineteenth century in Paris.

In what Klaus Wachsmann and Patrick O’Conner of Grove Music Online call cabaret in its “strictest sense,” they describe a form of artistic and social activity in the fifty or so years between the opening of the Chat Noir and the 1930’s between the two

World Wars when political crises in Europe put a stop to much of the freedom of thought

3 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 1. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 2 and expression that are vital to cabaret.7 While the intent of this document is to continue to trace the development of the cabaret into the United States beyond that point, one must first look to France to understand the culture that brought about this original literary and artistic cabaret.

Third Republic France was the seventy year republican government that existed from the fall of Napoleon to its fall to Germany, when the Vichy regime took power for four years during World War II. This period brought many social changes to France, and it is during this time that, according to Jann Pasler in her book, Composing the Citizen:

Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France, the foundation for France’s current attitude toward the arts was laid. Among these, she asserts, are:

 the desire to assure accessibility to the arts for all citizens (regardless of class)  the use of music and musical practices to build community and help people explore what they value as a people  faith in music’s capacity to revitalize and help us imagine change because we we have heard it.8

Indeed, toward the end of the nineteenth century, the song, or chanson, was the main form of entertainment in French cafés; however the chanson served not just as entertainment, but as a major medium for public communication, functioning to record daily history and react to current events.9 The chanson was a medium that could be controlled by the people who wrote and shared it at a time when newspapers were

7 Klauss Wachsmann and Patrick O’Conner. “Cabaret.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, accessed February 20, 2012. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.lib.ohio- state.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/04505 8 Jann Passler. Composing the Citizen: Music as Public Utility in Third Republic France. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. 9 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 1-2. 3 controlled by the ruling class. It was a vehicle for the working class that could “spoof or ridicule authority, target hypocritical sexual mores, and act as a rallying call,” which thus came “to serve as a democratic tool, a satirical weapon for criticism and protest.”10

The chanson was performed by a solitary singer, and soon the solitary chanson singer grew into the café-concert, which was a grander affair with costumes and props, and sometimes even a full band, rather than a single instrument. These concerts primarily were a vehicle for entertainment. The cabaret grew out of the café-concert, and it was, according to Appignanessi, the natural home for the more aggressive chanson that dealt with satire or protest.11

The birth of the cabaret was brought directly by the Hydropathes—a literary society that met weekly for writers and poets to share their work with one another, ranging from poetry and songs to monologues and short sketches.12 This function as a meeting place for this sharing was a key element in cabaret from this point forward in history. Along with this concept of cabaret as a “testing ground for young artists,”13 cabaret also emerged as a stage venue for contemporary satire—“a critically reflective mirror of topical events, morals, politics and culture.”14 The first artistic cabaret, Le Chat

Noir was started by Rudolphe Salis, along with a few other members of the Hydropathes society.15

10 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 2. 11 Ibid. 5 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. 11. 4

Montmartre

The name, “Le chat noir,” or “the black cat,” was taken from a macabre Edgar

Allan Poe short story of the same name. In the case of the cabaret, the black cat represents art, and it mocks its foe—the bourgeoisie that is fascinated by it.16 Salis chose

Montmartre, as the location for his Le Chat Noir to avoid the high rents of the Latin

Quarter and it was initially what Appignanesi calls a modest undertaking.17 There a group of friends comprised of poets, writers, composers, and painters met and shared their works with one another. The private nature of the club garnered much attention from the surrounding community and Salis began to capitalize on the curiosity and offered a night once a week that was open to those in the public who “earned their thirst artistically.”18

The artists of Le Chat Noir lived as the local people did, and in depicting the lives of those people through art, along with their speech rhythms and forms, the artists “raised popular culture into an art which was to influence the literary mainstream.”19 That is, by incorporating the culture of the people around them, they brought their culture to the level of the more elite class. In Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club, Bernard

Gendron studies the high/low alliances, as he calls them, discussing in great detail the interactions back and forth between the two. He refers to the artistic cabarets of

Montmartre at the end of the 19th century as a time when “popular music joined forces with art and literature in a synthesis of high and low cultures that has since rarely been

16 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 9. 17 Ibid. 11-12. 18 Ibid. 19 Ibid. 15. 5 equaled.”20 Still, this meeting of common and elite is something that exists throughout the development of the cabaret and is present today in the descendants of the original artistic cabarets of Montmartre; indeed, to this author’s mind, this high/low alliance is part of what draws performers and crowds to cabaret music in the concert hall today.

Each cabaret that appeared in Montmartre had its specialty. The Mirliton, for example, placed emphasis on performance over décor, while Le Tambourin (The

Castanet) functioned primarily as gallery space for its clientele. Others emphasized shadow plays or poetry readings or song. The Divan Japonais (The Japanese Divan) employed a more artistic, or as Gendron says, “aestheticized version” of the café-concert featuring Yvette Guilbert.21 Guilbert was one of few women to perform

“cabaretistically” at the time in France, and she is described as “an actress in song…who spoke, sang, [and] prophesied her numbers,” and her style influenced cabaret performance for the next half century.22

Yet as quickly as the cabaret appeared in the 1880’s, its existence in Montmartre had come to an end by the turn of the century, followed rapidly by its demise throughout

France in the first decade of the 20th century.23 By the end of the 19th century, close to forty artistic cabarets had appeared, and subsequently disappeared in Montmartre.24

However, while the “fickle” French public turned to “the slick extravaganzas of the

Moulin Rouge and other music halls,” cabaret’s influence had already spread to the rest

20 Gendron, Bernard. Between Montmarte and the Mudd Club. 29. 21 Ibid. 61. 22Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 28. 23 Gendron. 30. 24 Ibid. 60. 6 of Europe, and according to Gendron, it was reborn in other areas of European modernism, from Spain to Germany, and even into Russia.25

25 Gendron. Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club. 30. 7

Chapter 2: Cabaret Goes Abroad

By many accounts, Paris was the cultural hub at the turn of the 20th century. It attracted artists and writers from all over Europe and beyond who were “keen to thrust their own countries into this age of bristling freedoms and radical artistic experiment.”26

So it comes as no surprise that the cabaret spread rapidly throughout Europe as artists and thinkers visited Paris and experienced cabaret firsthand.

Barcelona

A Catalan movement erupted from such Parisian visits, and became the first to establish a cabaret outside Paris. Pablo Picasso was a part of that movement, which looked toward France, rather than inward to Madrid for its artistic inspiration.27

Barcelona became the home of its own cabaret in 1897, the very year the Chat Noir ceased to exist. The Quatre Gats (The Four Cats) of Barcelona was obviously modeled after the Chat Noir, including the cat in its name. The “four cats” who founded the club—Miquel Utrillo, Santiago Rusinol, Ramon Casas, and Pere Romeu—specialized in several functions:

 providing a place that could serve as exhibition space for new Catalonian art  employing Catalan folklore, myth and language to challenge the imperial Catilian culture of Madrid

26 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 31. 27 Ibid. 8

 puppet shows28

Like the Chat Noir, the Quatre Gats also produced a magazine, and like French cabarets in general, enjoyed only a short period of existence, closing its doors after five years.

That Barcelona was a center of culture in which cabaret made an appearance at this time in history should come as no surprise, as it was the center of the Catalonian cultural revival known as the Renaixença. Miquel Utrillo, also known as “Morlius,” went to Paris in 1880 to study mathematics and meteorology. He became fascinated with the cabaret culture in Montmartre and wasted no time in making himself a member of the

Chat Noir circle.29 He became friends with Erik Satie, and his studies certainly became secondary to his fascination with the cabaret life, even prompting him to take up residence above the Moulin de la Galette dance hall. He returned to Barcelona in 1895.

Unlike other cabarets at the turn of the century, the members of Els Quatre Gats openly sought public patronage, as opposed to being an elitist private club. Their aim was to bring in the public to “gain favor for the new Catalonian modernist painting represented by its participants.”30 Apart from art exhibits, the organizers of Els Quatre

Gats gained attention for two forms of entertainment—shadow plays and puppet shows.

According to Segal, it was the manager Romeau’s “overly casual” attitude toward business matters that contributed to the decline Els Quatre Gats, and he asserts that it was likely Utrillo who attempted to expand the type of programs offered with songs and recitations.31 The efforts were met with little success and the club closed in 1903.

28 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 35. 29 Ibid. 87. 30 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 93-94. 31 Ibid. 114-115. 9

Hungary

Cabaret also made its way to Budapest, where it became part of the wave of nationalism in Hungary at the time. In 1901 a group of talented writers and performers came together at the Tarka Színház (Variety Theater). There they performed in

Hungarian, which strayed from the tradition of German language theater of the day.

They received criticism from the National Association of Actors, who decreed that

Hungarians who performed cabaret were dishonorable, and this contributed to the short life of the Tarka Színház, which closed after only a year. Budapest then experienced a five year lull in cabaret until the opening of the Bonbonnìère in 1907.32

Journalist Endre Nagy was a driving force behind the success of the Bonbonnìère.

Described as providing “biting, improvised, satirical commentary on current affairs,”

Nagy acted as conférencier with the audience, sometimes in rhyming couplets.33 The

Bonbonnìère embraced works from the natives, both in new Hungarian chansons and some based on old folk songs; indeed, the programs included “the best of Hungarian talent.”34 In 1907, the Modern Theatre Cabaret was born. After ten months, Nagy took over and renamed it Modern Stage Cabaret, and it flourished for over five years during what is known as the golden age of cabaret culture. Nagy’s “brilliant conférence” was enjoyed by politicians in the crowds, and scandals made their way into the papers and

32 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 114-15. 33 Ibid. 60. 34 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 60. 10 parliament the next day.35 Songs were also a great part of the cabaret, especially under

Vilma Medgyaszay, who ran it between 1913 and 1915. She entertained with folk songs collected and arranged by Kodály and Bartók and shared witty chansons. The repertoire of the Modern Stage Cabaret also included monologues and duets, parodies and recitations, and sketches and short pieces, “whose idiosyncratic language and interest in science and philosophy are said to have revolutionized the art of satire in Hungary.”36

These early cabarets were not the only ones that flourished in Hungary; rather, cabarets spread about Hungary and the form carried on into the Communist period.

Poland

Młoda Polska , or Young Poland, was a time in Polish cultural history from 1890 to 1914 that marks a renaissance of Polish art; not surprisingly, the cabaret found a welcome home in Cracow during these years. Segal equates the function of the first cabaret in Poland to comic relief, saying:

The era of Young Poland was not noted for the levity of its art. But just as medieval mystery dramas had their intermedia for comic relief, so Young Poland had its Zielony Balonik (Green Balloon).37

The Green Balloon opened in 1905 and its founder, Jan August Kisielewski, had a grand vision for his cabaret, which he hoped would become the:

center of Warsaw artistic life…a metropolis of everything young and new, which removed from official seriousness and official cares and responsibilities, and within the limits of artistic taste, would be able to cultivate, create and reveal,

35 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 60. 36 Ibid. 37 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 224. 11

serve and test—and enjoy a many-colored Beauty, something that does not yet— and never will be able—to fit into academic categories of art.38

One interesting aspect of the Green Balloon is that its home was never a theater, but a café, and though cabaret programming in the spot ended by 1915, the café itself remains open today and actively functions as both a café and informal museum of Zielony

Balonik.

Russia

Cabaret made its way to Moscow as well, first in the form of Летучая Мьишь

(Letuchaya mysh), or Bat, in February 1908. It was described as follows in the magazine

Russky Artist:

The goal of the circle [founders] is to be a place of repose for its members and, at the same time, a studio for trying out experiments in the different arts, primarily dramatic since the majority of the members are actors in the [Moscow] Art Theater. But artists from other stages as well as several painters, musicians, singers, and writers have also joined it.39

The magazine goes on to describe the scene, which consisted of a small auditorium with a wide stage in a “cozy cellar” based on the Parisian model, where an artist could mount the stage and sing “couplets about topical issues” or declaim “verses of his own compositions.”40 So cabaret song was indeed a part of the Moscovite cabaret, which the magazine asserts followed the model of the Parisian cabaret. This is interesting since the name, “Bat” might suggest a conscious nod to Vienna’s Fledermaus. Segal asserts that

38 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 225-26. 39 Ibid. 255. 40 Ibid. 12 this may well have been true, given that “Vienna was, after all, the closest major German- language cultural center to Russia at the time in view of the common borders of the

Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires” and that Austrian culture was well known in

Russia.41 Still, while the name may have been influenced by Viennese cabaret, the similarities end there, because the Russian Bat “arose wholly within the context of contemporary Russian theater.”42 So, though the idea to begin a cabaret came from the outside, Russian version owes much of what it became to Russian theatrical influences and the actors of the Art Theater.

Also separating it from some of its foreign forbearers is the fact that the Bat had a fairly long life comparatively speaking. It opened in 1908 and as the group grew, it moved several times. The last move came in 1913, when it was “already a landmark of

Moscow nightlife,” to a spacious cellar beneath Moscow’s biggest apartment building.43

While there were many big names in Russian theater participating regularly, it was its founder Nikita Believ, who found a dynamic role as the conférencier to the extent that the

Bat became “unthinkable without him.”44 Still with the heavy involvement of the theater crowd, the cabaret became the “alter ego of the Moscow Art Theater itself, a comic double…”45 Segal echoes here the notion that Appignanesi voiced in her book—that the cabaret became modernism’s “late night doppelgänger.”46 So it was with the Moscow

Art Theater and the Bat. Focus was on parodies, which Segal calls the cabaret’s “real

41 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 256. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 259. 44 Ibid. 261. 45 Ibid. 262. 46 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 1. 13 strength,” but after the initial move to the larger space, programs also included more one- act plays, dramatic sketches, dances, and chansons, which gave the cabaret a “somewhat more conventional cabaret appearance.”47 Original to the Bat, were “living-doll” numbers, which were an extension of earlier cabaret puppet and shadow plays. In these living-doll scenes, actors and actresses pretended to be puppets or dolls, which, at some point in the performance, sprang to life, dancing or singing or speaking, before returning to their lifeless states at the end.48 The shows became the Bat’s leading attraction, and after the Russian Revolution in 1920, the Bat was reestablished by Believ in Paris as the

Chauve-Souris (“bat” in French). Here the living doll routines continued and achieved international distinction.49

Believ’s departure did not entirely end the Bat’s existence in Moscow. Other performers made efforts to keep it alive, but it closed in 1922, and the location was taken over by a new cabaret called Кривой Джимми (Krivoi Dzhimmi), or “Crooked Jimmy,” to which Segal refers as a “lesser” cabaret that ultimately closed in May 1924.50 There were other cabarets that also thrived in prerevolutionary Russia, but were unable to do so in the Soviet period. The Bat remains the most widely known to date because of its great success for many years and subsequent success abroad.51

47 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 263. 48 Ibid. 266. 49 Ibid. 268. 50 Ibid. 275 51 Ibid. 276-77. 14

Chapter 3: German Language Cabaret

Meanwhile in Germany at the turn of the century, the political and cultural climate was quite different from that of Barcelona or Paris. According to Appignanesi, a hierarchical structure of authority prevailed, corruption was widespread, and religion was dispassionate. A “sombre sense of duty to family, church, business and state was the prized attribute of the German burgher, this only thinly veiled that desire for material gain which constituted success.”52 High culture was something that people regarded with the kind of “incomprehending [sic] awe akin to boredom.”53 Indeed, a noted German historian wrote, “The Wilhelmine style was devoid of taste, with all its court poets, court painters, and court preachers, its speeches in honour of the Kaiser’s birthday and its

Sedan celebrations, with its ostentatious buildings, barracks and mock castle.”54 One can see how this atmosphere, rife with censorship in the arts and strict sexual morality, was ripe for the arrival of the cabaret.

According to Appignanesi a number of factors contributed to the inception of

German cabaret—gossip from France concerning the “vital bohemian ambiance of

Montmartre and the creation there of this new artistic form” being primary.55 Alfred

Langen, who had travelled to France, began a weekly illustrated, satirical magazine—

52 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 36. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 36-37. 15

Simplicissimus—which attacked authority, literary kitsch, and hypocritical morality.

Then, impressed by the French spirit of song and the way it “brought art to the people,” poet Otto Julius Bierbaum published a collection of singable poems in 1900, entitled

Deutsche Chansons. After the appearance and wild popularity of Deutsche Chansons, things moved quickly toward the opening of the cabaret in Germany.56

Berlin

Ernst von Wozogen, both a poet and an aristocrat, opened the Überbrettl (“Brettl” being German popular theater and “über” a nod to Nietsche). He had specific ideas about what he wanted his cabaret to be and his ideals moved in a slightly different direction from its Parisian predecessors; indeed, Appignanesi deems it “not quite a cabaret, except in spirit” because the size of the theater he rented lacked intimacy and the programs lacked “the satirical bite of the best cabarets.”57 In his own words, Wozogen describes his Überbrettl with “no beer and wine stench and no tobacco fumes, but instead a regular theater. A ramp and a proper orchestra pit between me and the public. A small stage for tasteful “small art” of every type.”58 Already one can begin to see drastic differences between the French model and this new idea of cabaret, but Wozogen continued to describe the ideal concept of his cabaret:

No yielding to the proletariat. The satire neither injurious nor instigated, serving the platform of no political party. No prudishness in the erotic, but at the same time no deliberately provocative sultriness and no clumsy obscenity. The material

56 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 38. 57 Ibid. 39 58 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 125. 16

for my performances is to be provided exclusively by real artist and not by any transformed rhymesters. And to the music to be provided only by German musicians who have not yet forfeited their creative power and taste for melodic charm in that frantic search for that ‘That-Which-Has-Not-Yet-Been.’ My performers and singers must be artists, but artists who create the impressions of refined and tasteful dilettantes in the best sense of the word.59

So, Wozogen desired a toned down version of the provocative content of art and events of the Parisian cabarets, demanding a subtler form of expression. Where French cabarets were boldly sexual and openly political, the German cabaret could not possibly have been so overt in its criticism of the government because of censorship at the time in Berlin, though later in the cabaret that would evolve in Weimar and political satire would return.

Further, Wozogen wanted his cabaret to establish an “authentically German” character.60

In doing so he felt he had to temper some of the staples of French cabaret. For example, in addition to abandoning political satire, he “had to abandon the idea of allowing dilettantes to appear as reciters of their own poems and as singers of their own compositions” because, in his words, “the talent for this exists among us [Germans] all too rarely.”61 Whether reality or not, this was Wozogen’s impression of German artists of his day, and he built the idea of his cabaret around these limitations.

The opening night of the Überbrettl was fairly disastrous, starting late after a

Goethe program by the Berlin Philharmonic which Wozogen described as “a real orgy of tastelessness.”62 The crowd at the Überbrettl was overflowing and so badly managed that

59 Segal. Turn of the Century Cabaret. 125. 60 Ibid. 126. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 126-27. 17 fights erupted. Eventually electric failures resulted in calling off the night.63 Despite its disastrous beginnings, however, the young cabaret had a successful first season. Cabaret fever was catching and rival cabaret ventures emerged. Just five days after the opening of Wolzogen’s theater, another cabaret opened in another part of Berlin called Schall und

Rauch (Sound and Smoke), the creation of which was somewhat reminiscent of the Chat

Noir in France.64 Segal asserts that this actually became German’s first successful cabaret.65

The Schall und Rauch was “the outgrowth of a lighthearted bohemian artists’ society known as Die Brille (The Spectacles) which used to meet in a beer cellar and restaurant.”66 The founders were Christian Morgenstern, Friedrich Kayssler, Richard

Vallentin, Martin Zickel, and most notably, Max Reinhardt (the great future director of the German Theater).67 The endeavors of the Schall und Rauch consisted mainly of parodies, most often directed by Reinhardt; however, with time and repetition, the songs and dances of the cabaret lost their novelty and the “big number” on each program—the dramatic parodies—also became banal and predictable to audiences.68 By the second season in 1902, the Schall und Rauch was already fading. According to Segal,

“Reinhardt now perceived the cabaret period of his life, represented by Die Brille and the

Schall und Rauch, as a stepping-stone to a full-fledged career in the theater” and he began to replace cabaret numbers with dramatic pieces; eventually the transition was made from

63 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 127. 64 Ibid. 137. 65 Ibid. 138. 66 Ibid. 137. 67 Ibid. 68 Ibid. 140-41. 18 cabaret to “legitimate theater.”69 In its short existence, before changing directions and moving into experimental theater called the Kleine Theatre, the Schall und Rauch was instrumental in creating one new direction unique to German cabaret—the satirizing of other literature.70

Munich

Like Die Brille and the Schall und Rauch and the Hydropathtes and the Chat Noir in France, the cabaret in Munich continued to function as an artistic laboratory for a key figure in German cabaret—Frank Wedekind.71 Segal refers to Wedekind as the “enfant terrible of contemporary German literature” because he wrote plays that were considered scandalous and provoked thought about subjects such as human sexuality.72 At the turn of the 20th century, Munich was the German bohemian center and thus was the natural home for cabaret in the country.73 It was in Munich that the satirical weekly,

Simplicissimus, originated. In addition, Munich was the home of Fasching, a carnival before the start of Lent that featured music, mime, street acting, parades, masquerades, and freedom from sexual inhibition as well.74 The festival, with its inclusion of various arts, a variety of spectacles, and mockery and spoof, captured much of the cabaret spirit.

Appignanesi suggests that “it is possibly the coincidence of creative talent with the native

69 Ibid. 141-42. 70 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 39 71 Segal. Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret. 143. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid. 74 Appignanesi. 40. 19 experience of carnival which [sic] resulted in Munich’s producing one of the most fertile and interesting European cabarets.”75

The Lex Heinze was the strict morality law in Munich, which allowed the police to interfere in art, in spite of opposition from the bohemian crowd. This law allowed police to confiscate books or magazines, delete parts of performances, or even arrest offending artists. A group of artists, painters, and students formed to protest the Lex

Heinze and called themselves the Goethe Alliance for the Protection of the Free Art and

Science, which staged protest activities during Fasching in 1901. Following the carnival, some of the members decided to form a cabaret to continue to combat “archaic morality and the conventions of the establishment.”76 They called themselves Die Elf

Scharfrichter, meaning “the eleven executioners,” and what they were to execute was

“social hypocrisy itself.”77 In order to avoid censorship, they called themselves a club, which was open only to invited guests once a week; however, every program stated how anyone could obtain an invitation.

Die Elf Scharfrichter opened in April 1901 and featured Marya Delvard, whom

Appignanesi calls “the first stage vamp of the century.”78 Delvard was the daughter of a

Parisian professor and came to Munich to study music, where she met Marc Henry.

Henry, also French, was one of the founding members of the Executioners and had been active in the Parisian cabaret scene, including performing at the Chat Noir. Delvard was

75 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 42. 76 Ibid. 43. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid. 46. 20 the hit of the opening night program at Die Elf Scharfrichter and she and Henry would travel Europe with their cabaret act.

Another talent the Executioners possessed was Frank Wedekind, who joined the group after several months and became a core member after one of the founding members left. His style was “harshly ironic…brittle and abrasive,” with a satanic tone, and was later imitated by Bertolt Brecht and it “became the mark of German cabaret song style.79

Indeed the widespread influence of Die Elf Scharfrichter was great, despite the fact that they only continued to perform in that capacity into 1903. However, the touring some members did were instrumental in bringing cabaret to other parts of Europe, most notably

Vienna.80

Vienna

In the early years of the 20th century, Vienna “sparkled with ideas and artistic activity,” and all aspects of the arts were flourishing, from architectural revolution to

Mahler’s “symphonic extravagances.”81 Comic theater, operetta and song, and the feuilleton (an addition to a newspaper devoted to entertainment, in this case described as chatty, witty, and whimsical topics growing out of café talk) were all thriving ingredients that made Vienna ripe for the cabaret.82 The first Viennese cabaret opened in 1901, as did cabarets in Berlin and Munich. However, this first Viennese attempt by Felix Salten,

79 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 49. 80 Ibid. 51. 81 Ibid. 52. 82 Ibid. 52-53. 21 who was a literary and dramatic critic, and who oddly enough is today best known as the author of the famous children’s story Bambi (of Disney fame), failed to thrive. Salten’s idea was to incorporate his cabaret group into the program of an existing theater, which was a miserable failure.83 Nearly five years passed before the next serious attempt at cabaret in Vienna was undertaken.

In 1906, Marya Delvard and Marc Henry opened a Viennese cabaret—Nachtlicht

(night-light)—along with composer Richard Weinhöppel. Henry was responsible for artistic direction and Delvard assumed the role of principal performer.84 Weinhöppel was in charge of musical direction. Nachtlicht was not hugely successful, with the location and the lack of any distinct style working against it.85 In 1907, the Nachtlicht was relocated and its name changed to Fledermaus (bat). The new location was more sophisticated and elegant. The program included sketches, monologues, poems, songs, and plays. Viennese cabaret was marked with “elegant, tart humour and imaginative flights.”86 Appignanesi asserts that Vienna was a “multicultural centre within a multinational state” that drew artists from all over the region; in addition, it served as sort of gateway to the rest of Austro-Hungary.87 This trend remained true in regards to the cabaret as well.

83 Segal. 183-84. 84 Ibid. 185. 85 Ibid. 186. 86 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 56. 87 Ibid. 58. 22

Zurich

Zurich, still known today as the great neutral city, was a haven for those during

World War I who Appignanesi calls émigrés—those who objected to the war or those who were fleeing from its brutality after experiencing it.88 Zurich therefore benefitted from the artists who fled the horrors of war, including a young German poet named Hugo

Ball, who came in 1916 with his mistress (singer and poet Emmy Hennings) after he was discharged from military service for health reasons. Ball convinced the owner of a

“somewhat seedy bar,” the Meierei, to let him open an artistic cabaret there, promising increased sales.89 That cabaret was the Cabaret Voltaire.

Music was an integral part of the program, with the opening night featuring

Emmy Hemmings singing chansons accompanied by Ball on the piano. Ball spread the word with an announcement to local newspapers:

Cabaret Voltaire. Under this name a group of young artists and writers has formed with the object of becoming a centre for artistic entertainment. The Cabaret Voltaire will be run on the principle of daily meetings where visiting artists will perform their music and poetry. The young artist of Zurich are invited to bring along their ideas and contributions.90

So the artists came, and not just from Zurich, but from all over Europe. The Dada movement was born. Much debate exists over what “Dada” was intended to mean. There are many ideas: dada the Slave affirmation, dada the French hobby horse, dada meaning

88 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 108. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 109. 23 daddy, or just childlike nonsense syllables.91 Appignanesi asserts that Dada was all of these things—an “incarnation of the unsystematizable spirit of creativity—which aimed to rebel against anything remotely related to war or the conventional.92 To Dadaists, cabaret was a living entity, never something that placed art into a box on a wall at a dusty museum to be quietly admired or theater that was something on a stage far away to which one politely applauded at appropriate places. No, cabaret was alive—creators were physically present as performers, spectators often became part of the action, and the program was “an unsystematic collage” with “various pieces that could be randomly rearranged and altered, in an ongoing flux of creation.”93 A Cabaret Voltaire performance was marked by audience provocation and protest, utilizing shock and surprise to “liberate the imagination from the shackles of tradition.”94 The performers included “aggressively anti-logical” poetry or prose, wild masks and costumes, unconventional dance, and bruitistic elements (ones that played with sound).95 This level of presence and relationship with the audience is something that would influence future cabaret and some theater artists immensely.

Pressure from local protests caused the Cabaret Voltaire to close in 1916. Dada activity continued in the area regardless for several years. Dada did not however, begin and end in Zurich; rather, it would travel abroad and take on new shapes with other artists. The ideas of experimentation and “radical negation of the past” had opened up

91 Ibid. 109-10. 92 Appignanesi. Cabaret. 110. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 111. 95 Ibid. 24 new ideas about performance, music, design, poetry, and graphics, and would have an impact throughout the century.96

96 Ibid. 114. 25

Chapter 4: Between the Wars

The time following World War I brings us back to Paris, the city that gave birth to cabaret and was no stranger to the avant-garde and artistic scandal. Still, Appignanesi asserts that “nothing yet could match the sheer tumult the Dada ‘happenings’ produced.”97 Parisian Dadaists functioned outside a designated cabaret, staging events that maintained artists’ public performances and a variety of acts. What began in Zurich as something witty and playful had become, after the war, more “violently militant” and rife with “rabidly anti-bourgeois slogans.”98 This is rather ironic, given that Dada grew from an anti-war sentiment. This tendency later would cause splits in the movement.99

Still, the war had changed people and transformed that which in the decades before had been light hearted entertainment into something full of much more vitriol.

Berlin experienced the Dada revolution as well. Germany was a violent place during the First World War, leading it to a time of socio-political chaos, into which the

Dada movement came. Dada embraced the cause of the anti-German culture revolutionary, which Appignanesi says was “battling against a mental attitude that could accept and rationalize the carnage of war.”100 While the Dadaists considered themselves

“the cabaret of the world,” they preferred the streets or rented spaces for their

97 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 114. 98 Ibid. 115. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 117. 26

“happenings.”101 However, this period really marked what many call the end of the forty year life of the artistic cabaret that had begun in Paris in 1881. The Dadaists may have labelled themselves the world’s cabaret, but they were moving in a direction that became something unrecognizable as the artistic cabaret. Still, this was not the end of a broader, perhaps more generic definition of cabaret that continues today.

Jazz Dances Across the Pond

The fusion of jazz with modernist composition is something that certainly became part of the cabaret scene, and Gendron focuses at great length on a work by Darius

Milhaud—Le Création du monde (1923)—in his discussion of what he deems “part of a new movement in modernism’s recurrent alliances with popular culture.”102 Jazz came from the United States, specifically springing from black American traditions and musicians. Like the term “classical” or “cabaret,” to provide a definition for jazz is a bit of a challenge, given that it includes a wide array genres that while they share many traits, cannot individually represent jazz.

While cabarets were spreading like wildfire throughout Europe in the prewar years, jazz was rising out of New Orleans and gaining popularity. Dixieland jazz spread north and some bands performed and recorded in New York and other metropolitan centers, and according to Mark Tucker in his article on jazz in the New Grove, exposed urban audiences up north to “an energetic, blues-tinged musical idiom derived from

101 Gendron. Between Montmarte and the Mudd Club. 78. 102 Ibid. 83. 27 southern black performing traditions.”103 Tucker goes on to roughly describe what began to define early jazz:

The foundations of jazz were established by black Americans in this urban environment before the music had a name, or when it was still referred to as ragtime or ‘ratty’ music. The process unfolded as musicians gradually developed new ways of interpreting a varied repertory that included marches, dance music (two-steps, quadrilles, waltzes, polkas, schottisches and mazurkas), popular songs, traditional hymns and spirituals. What might be called a nascent jazz sensibility arose from the loosening of performance strictures and the adoption of an individualistic, defiantly liberating attitude that has remained at the core of this musical tradition.104

The wide diversity in cultural background in New Orleans led to the integration of many different musical idioms from places such as the Caribbean, Haiti and Cuba. In the years after the First World War, the late teens and early 1920’s, jazz spread all over the country, where people were moving for better employment opportunities. The recordings that began to appear from these cities helped launch jazz into the international arena.

For avant-garde artists in Europe, this new music was “an elaborate metaphor for cutting edge modernity and the robust vulgarity of America.”105 Indeed, Gendron goes on to assert that jazz created a “new bohemia” and credits it for being an essential component of the Parisian Roaring Twenties (in French cultural history called les années folles, literally, “the crazy years”).106 One group of artists that embraced the jazz aesthetic was those of Les six, which included Milhaud, Georges Auric, Louis Durey,

103 Mark Tucker and Travis A. Jackson. "Jazz." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed April 23, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/45011. 104 Ibid. 105 Gendron. From Montmartre to the Mudd Club. 84. 106 Ibid. 28

Arthur Honegger, Francis Poulenc, and Germaine Tailleferre. At various times during the movement, Stravinsky and Satie were also involved in this circle; the heights of the jazz activity of the group were “the inauguration of [Jean] Cocteau’s trendy jazz club, Le

Boeuf sur le Toit (The Ox on the Roof) and the performance of Le Création du monde.107

Jean Cocteau, a “poet turned impressario,” was the head of this movement, which contrary to the tradition of cabaret, was “unapologetically bourgeois” and “manifestly upscale.”108

Strip club versions of cabaret, which is a widely known version that still exists today, multiplied in Paris in the twenties, and Montmartre still had its chansonniers; however, according to Appignanesi, these “seemed a little old-fashioned” in a post-Dada era.109 She asserts that the chanson returned to the cultural mainstream later at the end of the decade as poets began once again to use it as a vehicle for political protest.110 Paris in the twenties brought a shift in interest from verbal satire to cinema and music; accordingly, Paris became the city of jazz and dance.111 American jazz led to musical experimentation and parody, of which Cocteau’s Le Boeuf sur le Toit was a prime example.

In Le Boeuf we can see a cabaret that once again functioned as a meeting place for artists who wanted to experiment and share ideas. However, as time and place change, so it seems cabaret evolves. American jazz was a huge part of this scene. What

107 Gendron. From Montmartre to the Mudd Club. 84. 108 Ibid. 109 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 123. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 29

Appignanesi calls the “traditional American bar” had come to Paris and been remade into something new.112 The assimilation of jazz into the artistic avant-garde most certainly led to a new Parisian form of cabaret in Le Boeuf. However, Germany was the place where cabaret would emerge in “the fullness of its post-war satirical and artistic potential.”113 Indeed, Appignanesi describes it:

A heady mixture of sekt [sparkling wine] and smoke, jazz and pornography, song, sport and stinging satire—such was the post-war German Kabarett.114

From Cabaret to Kabarett

Germany was quite a different place after World War I. With the armistice came relaxation of both moral and political censorship, and “a new permissive air pervaded the city” of Berlin.115 For a brief moment in history, Berlin, the seat of the new Weimar

Republic, welcomed all. With some breathing room, newspapers and the entertainment industry flourished. Cabarets “mushroomed” and thrived without the former censorship; however, most of them “had little in common with the artistic or literary cabaret.”116

Appignanesi asserts that these cabarets had a “radically different” intent—erotic entertainment and those out for profits found a home in strip clubs, and cabaret journals with pornographic texts, drawings and pictures flourished.117 The term Amüsierkabarett describes this type of cabaret, which distinguishes it from the artistic Kabarett.

112 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 125. 113 Ibid. 114 Ibid. 164. 115 Ibid. 125. 116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 30

In addition to this cabaret for entertainment’s sake, the same permissiveness of spirit allowed for the rise of a group of “serious left-wing critics—intellectuals and artists—who chose to use popular forms, newspapers and journals, as well as the small cabaret stage, as a medium for exposing, satirizing, or evaluating the conditions of

German society.”118 These were serious artists who, using satire as their vehicle, performed song, poem, sketch or monologue, and bridged the “ever-widening gap” between high and low art.119 The self-appointed “conscience of German society,” they conveyed the dream of a world where personal freedom, equality and peace would prevail.120 These men included people whose names most outside Germany would not know, save for Bertolt Brecht, but their brilliant songs sought to fight Germany’s

“continuing militarism and glorification of war.”121

Berlin’s first major postwar cabaret was a revival of Reinhardt’s Schall und

Rauch. This new version opened in December 1919 and its premiere was rife with mixed reviews, primarily because of a poor cellar location that had large pillars interfering with sight lines, and poor sound.122 In addition, the political satire of the above mentioned artists was met with a tepid response, at best.123 Kurt Tucholsky, one of those left leaning political humorists, described it as thus just three months after the opening of the new

Schall und Rauch:

118 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 128. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid. 121 Ibid. 138. 122 Jelavich. Berlin Cabaret. 130. 123 Ibid. 135. 31

Everything is so sad: even here pandering to the consumer, that is, the audience, which is mostly loathesome [sic]. A truly literary cabaret would not work. It is very, very sad.124

Later in 1929, Tucholsky’s views had not altered much, when he said, “…cabarets are gripped by the strange ambition of wanting to be aggressive without offending anyone.”125

Friedrich Holländer did not take nearly as long to become disenchanted with the

Schall und Rauch, leaving in December 1920 full of criticism of the cabaret for making too many concessions and being too concerned with profit. Still, the Schall und Rauch may have failed to “achieve a balance between ideal and practice,” but its attempt to draw together art, entertainment, and politics pushed artists toward the revitalization of

“smaller, less profit-oriented locales.”126

So, while the Schall und Rauch may have fallen short by some estimations, Trude

Hesterberg’s Wilde Buhne (Wild Stage) attempted to “find a modern, relevant voice for the stage and develop a contemporary art form.”127 Indeed it was Hesterberg who introduced Bertolt Brecht to the Berlin public at her cabaret. Brecht, the most famous playwright of the period, was greatly influenced by cabaret, and through him, so was 20th century theater.128 Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (known as the alienation effect) is most assuredly connected to cabaret tradition. This Alienation Effect aimed to:

 Break down traditional approach to consuming theater  Shatter the “fourth wall,” or the illusionary aspect of the audience

124 Ibid. 125 Jelavich. Berlin Cabaret. 135. 126 Alan Lareau. The Wild Stage: Literary Cabarets of the Weimar Republic. 60. 127 Ibid. 70. 128 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 168. 32

 Engage audience immediately and intellectually129

One can easily see the parallels between this approach to the stage and the traditions of cabaret artists, who engaged their audiences directly in a more intimate space.

Brecht’s collaboration with Kurt Weill brought forth a specifically sentimental and satirical song as a key element to his dramas.130 However, while he primarily is known for his dramas, Brecht was significantly engaged in the cabaret scene. Many of his actors came from the cabaret stage, and in 1922 he even opened his own cabaret in

Munich—Die Rote Zibebe (The Red Grape).

Back in Berlin at the Wilde Buhne, Hesterberg saw her purpose as one of educating her audience. Thinking on a guest appearance she had made at the Schall und

Rauch prior to launching her own cabaret venture, she recalled, “that incredibly good chansons, wonderfully performed, often had little success.”131 She deemed this the fault of ignorance among the audience members:

Now I suddenly knew what I had to do, for if I wanted to keep the modern literary note, according to my inner wishes, then I had to try to bring the chansons closer to the listeners, to make it easier for them to understand.132

So Hesterberg wanted her audience to be involved in the learning process of cabaret. The

“modern chanson” was a focal point, with “theatricalized presentation.”133 Her cabaret programs also included prose readings, plays, poems, and even Wedekind ballads. She

129 “Brechtian Techniques” USX Artsworx, accessed April 23, 2013. http://www.usq.edu.au/artsworx/schoolresources/mothercourage/Brechtian%20Techniques 130 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 170. 131 Lareau. The Wild Stage. 72. 132 Ibid. 133 Ibid. 74. 33 varied the order so that “sophisticated literary numbers” were interspersed with “lighter entertainment-style pieces.”134

The Wilde Buhne closed after less than three years, which comes as little surprise.

This rapid closure is an overall trend in cabaret history, as fashions and tastes change. In addition, inflation at the time was making maintaining such an enterprise long term a challenge.135 Schall und Rauch and the Wilde Buhne were certainly not the only literary cabarets met with success in the Weimar Republic, but they are examples that illustrate its resurgence during this time of relative peace and free thinking.

Many of the cabarets in Berlin between the wars were more in the vein of

Amüsierkabarett, yet the Kabarett certainly had great impact on society, despite its smaller numbers. The rising Hitler regime must have thought so, for the cabaret artists in the 1930’s “numbered among the first victims of the Nazi terror”136 including Erich

Kästner, an established journalist and also a poet who came to Berlin in 1927. Kästner coined the term Gebrauchslyrik, which described all the “topical, socially critical, humorous and colloquial verse which made its way into the cabaret and its chansons.”137

Accordingly, these types of chansons were his specialty in the cabaret world. Kästner once stated that a writer must experience how his nation acts in a time of adversity; indeed he went on to say that it was his professional duty “to take all risks in order to be

134 Ibid. 135 Lareau. The Wild Stage. 113. 136 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 162. 137 Ibid. 136. 34 an eye-witness and one day to be able to bear testimony.”138 Bear testimony he did, when his works were included in an early Nazi book-burning in 1933:

…in the year of 1933 my books were burned with dark, festive splendor in Berlin, on the large square next to the opera, by a certain Mr. Goebbels. He triumphantly called out the names of twenty-four German writers, who symbolically had to be eradicated for eternity. I was the only one of the twenty- four who had appeared in person to witness this theatrical insolence. I stood in front of the University, jammed between students in SA uniforms, the flower of the nation, saw our books lying in the flashing flames and listened to the sentimental tirades of the little consummate liar. Funeral weather hung over the town… It was disgusting. Suddenly a shrill woman’s voice called: “But that’s Kästner standing there!” A young cabaret artist, pushing through the throng with a colleague, had seen me standing there and had given exaggerated expression to her astonishment. I became ill at ease. But nothing happened.139

Indeed nothing happened there, but many things “happened” on other occasions as the

Nazi regime took charge. Kästner’s work was performed in cabarets through 1934, but in that last year under a pseudonym.

Spin-offs of the Literary Cabaret

As exemplified in the Weimar Republic with the distinction between the entertaining Amüsierkabarett and the artistic Kabarett in the Weimar Republic, the cabaret produced a number of spin-offs. One such offspring of the cabaret came in the mid-twenties—what Appignanesi calls “the cabaretistic satirical revue.”140 She describes it as such:

138 Ibid. 139 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 136-7. 140 Ibid. 187. 35

Abandoning intimate space so as to gain a slightly larger audience, these revues incorporated the satirical tone of the cabaret, often softened its sharpness and political critique just a little, dropped the improvisational flavour, and introduced a loose, thematic continuity into the sequence of acts and sketches. Verbal wit generally, but not always played a secondary role to dance and music.141

This musical revue would forever color the rest of cabaret history, and it is often confused with the idea of what the original cabaret was. Today, many people have this image when they think of cabaret performance, though it is more a relative of the original idea of the artistic cabaret that began in France so many years before it. Still, the revue has in some circles become synonymous with the cabaret, and thus it is important to understand. Many modern cabaret-style acts we see today are presented as a connected series of sketches or numbers—vignettes in a story that has a common thread.

141 Ibid. 36

Chapter 5: Nazi Loss is the World’s Gain

The repression by the Nazis in Germany in the thirties and into the Second World

War made it impossible for contemporary art to thrive. Naturally, given its history of controversy and protest, the Kabarett under the Third Reich was a place of political satire.

Interestingly the conférenciers emerged as key figures in the Kabarett at this time, evoking images of what we might see in a modern comedy club today. They became much more than mere masters of ceremony whose job was to introduce acts and draw the audience into the spectacle; indeed the conférencier had to be all of the following:

 well versed in literature  a master of improvisation  well informed of current news  a forecaster of what may come tomorrow142

The role of conférencier became so important that it was really a satirical act all its own, and could be considered a part of the program. Below is an example of bold, witty conférencier humor:

A conférencier raising his arm to the level of a ‘Heil’, looks up at it questioningly and says, “That’s how high we are in shit…”

Still, only so much could survive under the oppressive Nazi rule.

142 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 195. 37

Under the Nazis, public satire was an impossibility, and as evidenced by

Kästner’s experience, so was the publication of much literary work. Most leading contemporary artists in Nazi Germany were considered degenerate; accordingly, most of them fled. Germany’s loss was the gain of the rest of world. Exile cabarets began to appear all over, including Vienna, Prague, Zurich, Paris, and London. These artists continued their criticism of the Nazi regime and “exposed its horrors,” revealing the full extent of the situation in Germany.143 Yet, the cabaret seemed to thrive in hard times.

According to Appignanesi the cabaret has certain qualities that make it suitable to such times, including:

 its smallness  its live contact between artist and public, which supports continuity of artistic activity, innovation and community  its performers ability to give additional nuance to speech that make criticism and satire possible where it might not be in print  its improvisational quality, which allows shifts in content when needed to comment on current events  its adaptability to various physical and moral climates144

Thus, cabarets appeared in various unexpected places through the years of World War

Two—from Canadian internment camps to various parts of Europe. United States audiences were “inhospitable territory for Berlin-style cabaret, but at least it provided the exiles with a safe haven for the duration of the Third Reich.”145 Even in exceptionally unsafe places, perhaps where it was needed most, cabaret was able to thrive, which is

143 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 205. 144 Ibid. 205-6. 145 Jelovich. Berlin Cabaret. 258. 38 evidenced in Jewish cabaret art from the Westerbork and Theresienstadt concentration camps.

London was one specific place that benefitted from German cabaret artists in exile, but with one exception, cabaret never really took hold in Britain. One possible explanation is that “perhaps political cabarets were simply not necessary: for the time, institutions in Britain were genuinely more democratic and this tended to defuse socio- political satire of the more acid and ideological sort.”146 In addition, British newspapers were not as obviously agenda-drive, and so the need for cabaret as a place for people to spread current events was not there, as opposed to German Kabarett, where “oppositional journalism” was a key component.147

Prior to World War Two, England featured many music halls, which were more akin to Amüsierkabarett; they had plenty of slapstick comedy, but lacked much political satire or artistic innovation.148 There were pubs featuring entertainment, but those too

“rarely metamorphosed into anything more than entertainment.”149 However, from the end of the 1930’s and throughout the war, London became for a time the center of “fully fledged continental cabaret…with German and Austrian refugees and [it] played for several years both to members of the émigré community and, once English had been mastered, to the public at large.150 These cabarets served to maintain morale among

146 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 208. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. 149 Ibid. 209. 150 Ibid. 39 refugees and to give the world around them a realistic view of life in Germany under

Hitler, and they used witty chansons and acerbic satire to accomplish those goals.151

Following World War Two, Europe was in shambles, ravaged by the destruction of war. In devastated post-war Germany, as the country was trying to put itself back together, many former cabaret figures returned to the small stage—“a public place for thinking through the politics of peace.”152 One aspect of these cabarets was a desire for social democracy. West German cabarets also included a comic approach to the serious issue of analyzing that which had allowed the rise of Nazism and all its atrocities. In addition, cabaret provided a place for humor at a time when it was greatly needed.153

Interestingly, in Eastern Europe cabaret also thrived behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary,

Poland, and even the DDR (Deutche Democratische Republik), or informally in English,

East Germany. Perhaps that is not particularly shocking given that, as previously mentioned, cabaret tended to flourish in hard times when the need for it was the greatest.

151 Ibid. 152 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 218. 153 Ibid. 218-19. 40

Chapter 6: Cabaret Across the Pond

In the United States there was cabaret-esque activity early in the 20th century, but it was much more in the vein of the Amusierkabarett of the Weimar Republic. Its objectives were much more associated with commercialism, spectacle, and popular consumption—things so opposite from the modernist, avant-garde cabarets in Europe at the time that one can see why they are often left out of most accounts of cabaret history.

However, taking a more liberal approach to the cabaret definition in his book, The Scene of Harlem Cabaret, Shane Vogel asserts that cabaret was, in fact, a “central institution” of nightlife in the United States that brought together late-night performance and dining to create an atmosphere that brought people together in new public formations of intimacy and sociality.”154

Vogel acknowledges that many people leave early American cabaret out of the discussion of the artistic cabarets of Europe. Often this American nightlife is disregarded because it is thought to function mostly as popular entertainment, but Vogel asserts that to think of it as non-political is a mistake.155 He points out that the use of the blues in performance as both “an explicit instance of both a formal challenge to dominant musical aesthetics and a thematic critique of gender, racial, and labor relations in the United

154 Shane Vogel. The Scene of Harlem Cabaret. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. 46. 155 Ibid. 57. 41

States.”156 Further he asserts that what he calls cabaret’s “other performance”—the social interaction with the audience—often provided an outlet for expression for sexual and racial minorities, urban lower classes, and “those who otherwise find themselves rendered incomplete by the public sphere’s dominant narratives.”157 He certainly makes a compelling and valid argument for the inclusion of this nightlife in the historical story of the cabaret. Furthermore, if it was called cabaret throughout those days, then it at least requires a look into why. The definition of cabaret was morphing into something wider and more generic in the United States earlier than it did in Europe.

The first two decades of the 20th century were a time of a large scale migration of southern blacks to urban areas of the north seeking employment opportunities; they brought their cultural traditions from every facet of life, including music and entertainment. Harlem became a mecca for migrants from the south, and the area in these decades was alive with a cultural explosion of activity, from all areas of the arts, as

African American fought for racial equality. The Harlem nightlife scene was alive with activity. New York continued to have an active scene for decades and as this evolved into acts that more resembled revues than literary cabaret, they are nonetheless remembered as cabarets. The fact that this nightclub activity more resembled spin-offs of the original cabaret may exclude them from many discussions, but they deserve a mention if for no other reason than to understand that, already at the turn of the century in

156 Vogel. The Scene of Harlem Cabaret. 57. 157 Ibid. 58. 42 the United States, there were clubs being marketed as cabarets, and that impacted the future and present impression of American cabaret.

The Big Satire Boom

Both the United States and Great Britain experienced a period of interest in satire on the stage in the 1960’s, the likes of which had not been seen since the eighteenth century.158 This wave came not in revolutionary movements or rooted in a cause for freedom, but in what Appignanesi calls the traditional targets of satire—rigid dogmatism, antiquated beliefs and lifestyles, and “all those institutions, political forms, moral or philosophical systems,” which together with the people in them, act as if their principles

“are more significant than ordinary people.”159 This marks a time in history when native

English-language artists finally took up the cause of satire in the way that those in Europe had decades before.

The American beat scene is one place where the people involved used satire to protest against what they deemed to be uptight traditional American values. This movement adopted jazz as its music of choice—the sound of the beatniks—and

Appignanesi suggests that this was a pivotal moment when jazz finally “came home to white America.”160 Small clubs around the country emerged where the beatniks would read poetry, sometimes accompanied by jazz and sometimes alone, and along with them,

158 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 228. 159 Ibid. 160 Ibid. 229. 43 key figures of the scene emerged who took on the role of conférencier, who American audiences might consider stand-up comics.161

Several characteristics that made these entertainers unique when compared to mainstream nightclub comics like Bob Hope:

 they wrote their own routines  they adopted a casual manner and interacted directly with the audience, as if the stage did not exist  they engaged deliberately in topical political satire, which was not done in this setting typically in America, despite lax libel laws in the United States162

This scene perhaps lacked the variety of programming found in its European predecessors, but one can see clearly that it shared the acerbic political satirical wit. It pushed the boundaries of what was taboo in the words spoken concerning sexuality and other accepted values of the traditional American bourgeoisie.

The artists of the beat scene in the United States, such as Lenny Bruce, would impact Britain as well. An influential theater critic named Kenneth Tynan returned home from a trip to the United Sates in October 1960, and launched an appeal in The Observer for the establishment of a cabaret that could function as “a training ground for satire at large and serve as an incubator of non-conformism.”163 Tynan introduced the British public to the artists of the American scene, and eight months later four men answered the call: Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennet, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore. In 1961, they

161 Ibid. 162 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 229. 163 Ibid. 234. 44 brought satire to the “dusty, tired, West End revue” and in doing so, “threw London into convulsive laughter.”164

While different political stimuli prompted the members of the movements—the civil rights movement in the United States and in Britain the campaign for nuclear disarmament—political satire met entertainment in both instances. After their initial cabaret-style revue, a cabaret called the Establishment was opened, and it launched “a vitriolic attack on the whole class charade.”165 While these movements echoed the artistic goals of earlier literary cabarets, there seems to be a noticeable split at this point from a strong focus on song. The song was left behind in the musical revue and club scene it would seem.

Cabaret Remnants Today

In present day, we see plenty of examples of experimental theater. Comedy clubs draw in good crowds, and Appignanesi makes a strong argument for calling the stand-up comedian one of the best remaining examples of that original artistic cabaret:

Perhaps the most enduring of the cabaret’s progeny has turned out to be the stand-up comedian whose often self-scripted barbs are aimed at political or personal hypocrisies, in short, at the way we live.166

164 Ibid. 235-36. 165 Appignanesi. The Cabaret. 237. 166 Ibid. 239. 45

These comedy clubs really began to come to life in the 1970’s and continue in the present, but where is the cabaret song? Did it die along with the artistic cabaret of its

European past?

Composers were impacted by political movements and the satire boom as well, though they lacked the acerbic tone of comedians in most cases. Take, for example,

Benjamin Britten’s attempt at cabaret songs. They were written in the 1930’s—those important between-the-wars years as the jazz age was booming. They lacked political content, but certainly pushed the envelope of what generally was accepted in the concert hall as topically appropriate. They also pulled from popular musical styles that were coming out of the United States, such as the blues.

Kurt Weill, who spent the first part of his career in his native Germany, came to the United States with the flux of artists who fled the Nazis in the 1930’s. His collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, who was involved in the cabaret scene, greatly influenced the world of music theater. While Weill’s music was never itself part of the cabaret scene directly, he was collaborating on theater projects with Brecht during the

Weimar Republic, and he has written much music in the cabaret style that is very often associated with cabaret song, despite the fact that his songs never appeared in cabarets in the Weimar Republic.

In the United States, a very popular example of cabaret song by art song composer comes from William Bolcom’s collaboration with Arnold Weinstein. These were written “as a cabaret in themselves,” in which “the scene is the piano, the cast is the

46 singer.”167 Bolcom began writing his cabaret songs in the 1970’s, and the first two volumes were published in 1979 and 1985. Two more volumes were published in 1997.

He collaborated with Weinstein on all of them, and they all were written for his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris. They borrow from many popular musical traditions and in the forward to his second published volume of cabaret songs, Bolcom gives insight on just how these songs should be sung:

These songs are intended to be sung in “diseur or diseuse tessitura” [speaking tessitura or range]… “A more speaking tone is recommended in order to give the words equal value to the notes.”168

This trend of classical composers who dabble in the world of cabaret was a trend that did not stop with Bolcom, as we see examples by contemporary American composers

Ben Moore, and of course, Richard Pearson Thomas, among others. Some of these more current composers did not necessarily intend their works to be cabaret songs when they were writing them, as is the case with Richard Pearson Thomas, but they have been performed in nightclub and concert hall alike and have become part of the ever evolving history of the cabaret song—that elusive chanson, perhaps described best by Arnold

Weinstein as “this elusive form of theater-poetry-lieder-pop-tavernacular prayer called cabaret song.”169

167 Weinstein, Arnold. “What Is Cabaret Song?” in Cabaret Songs Complete. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2009. viii. 168 Marlene Titus Bateman. Diss. 53. 169 Weinstein. “What Is Cabaret Song?” viii. 47

PART TWO

Chapter 7: Who is Richard Pearson Thomas?

Richard Pierson Thomas was born August 2, 1957 to Tom and Marilyn Thomas in

Great Falls, Montana. Thomas does not describe his family, which consisted of his father

Tom, a civil engineer, his mother Marilyn, who was once a school teacher, and his older sister Marlie, as particularly musical, but he does recall they were avid listeners of music.

His early listening experiences mostly included music theater.170 He had always been an active listener and recalls his early interest in music stemming from his parents’ record collection, which he used to play himself and to which he danced around “all the time.”171 At seven Thomas began taking piano lessons and though his older sister also studied piano, she did not have the same interest and never became the accomplished musician that her younger brother did. Of his sister’s music, Thomas says:

She started, maybe took a year or two of piano lessons when she was a child, but I think she sort of felt like she was being overshadowed by her little brother, and she was just not going to fight that battle.172

So it began for young Thomas. His instrument has remained piano, though he also studied clarinet for two weeks, to which his reaction was “Ew. I don’t like this.”173 He

170 Laura Faith Bateman. Diss. 214 171 William Clay Smith. Diss. 5 172 Ibid. 5-6 173 L. Bateman. 214. 48 also played the string bass in high school, badly by his own estimation, because in order to play piano in the festival one had to be in one of the ensembles, so he “faked it for a while,” which was the extent of his “non-piano sort-of work.”174

Thomas recalled drifting toward classical music, not because someone steered him in that direction, but because he was naturally curious about more complex music.175

His early piano teacher, Claire Domke, emphasized the necessity of mastering his technique and certainly exposed him to more classical music. Still, as it does with most musicians, his musical journey evolved through many styles. He recalled that when he was in his preteen years he was enamored with pop music for a year or so:

I think I went through a period when I was maybe ten, when I was really into pop music. And so in my estimation, pop music basically appeals to the ‘ten year old’ in most people’s musical lives, and most people get stopped there. By the time I was eleven or twelve, that music no longer spoke to me in the same way—I was much more drawn to something more complex.176

Thomas wrote his first composition at ten, though he recalled making up music long before:

…I would spend hours noodling around on the piano but most of it just never got written down… If anything it hindered my development as a pianist because I would sit and noodle for hours and my parents would think I was practicing. But at some point…I began to think of myself, even at a very young age, as a composer, therefore I had to figure out how to get it on paper.177

Thomas began his collegiate years after high school at the University of Montana studying composition and piano, but after two years there, and at the advice of his

174 L. Bateman. Diss. 215 175 Smith. Diss. 7 176 Ibid. 6. 177 Ibid. 7. 49 composition professor he transferred to the Eastman School of Music. While he still studied piano, his major was composition. During his senior year at Eastman he studied accompanying Robert Spillman and that year “opened up a whole new world.”178 To that point in his life his compositions had been all piano works, and this was when he began to develop an interest in classical vocal music.

In the spring of 1979, Thomas graduated magna cum laude from Eastman with a double major in composition and piano. He spent the summer working at Cape Cod

College Light Opera. Afterward, he travelled about Europe and the Middle East. Upon returning stateside, he went back to Eastman in the spring of 1980, but not as a student— the opera department produced a cabaret show of his songs.

He spent the summer of 1980 at the Aspen Music Festival as an accompanist and made invaluable contacts. Reading about Thomas’s life during the 1980’s is a whirlwind of travel, commissions, and learning. Between 1980 and 1985 he annually went to the

Banff Centre in Canada and worked as a coach and a composer. Thomas said this was one of the most significant connections of his early career and they commissioned several shows from him.179 He began to study collaborative piano with Martin Katz and opera coaching with Joan Dornemann in New York in 1981. Working as an opera coach also led him to study languages both at home and abroad. 1987 marked the year he began working with the Gold Opera Project, which works with children in New York City schools to compose operas. To date he has composed more than 90 operas with students

178 L. Bateman. Diss. 217. 179 Smith. Diss. 10-11. 50 through the project.180 In April 2013, Thomas spent nearly a month in Fullerton,

California working on an opera he wrote for them with the students and faculty of the music department of California State University at Fullerton.

His Music

When asked recently about his present compositional style, Thomas said:

Well I usually start at the piano and… a lot of times I begin by improvising a bit. Usually I have an idea obviously what the song is gonna be and I kinda let my fingers do the talking a little bit. I trust my subconscious and things bubble up. There certainly were composition instructors along my path who said, ‘Oh you should never compose at the piano,’ but I think everybody is different, so like I said, I kinda trust what starts to bubble up, and then I can turn a more critical eye towards that. A lot of times also when I’m writing lyrics to a song, they will evolve as the music evolves, so even if I’ve sketched out a basic lyric to begin with, it will usually change as I get further into writing the music.181

So it would seem the compositional seeds were sown quite early in Thomas and as he has grown the music has also. Still, his initial compositional technique is rooted in his past.

He lists among his cabaret and theater writing influences: Weill, Bernstein, and

Sondheim, though with Sondheim not as much musically, but “as a lyric writer, there’s no doubt.”182 He considers his music to be “tonal-centered” and writes “in the tradition of tonal linear music.”183

180 “Biography.” Richard Pearson Thomas Composer/Pianist, accessed April 5, 2013, http://richardpearsonthomasbio.com 181 Richard Pearson Thomas. Phone interview with author. March 15, 2013. 182 Ibid. 183 L. Bateman. Diss. 217. 51

The ear can certainly hear this tonally centered structure when listening to his music, but it is often colored with dissonance, bitonality, and modulations to unexpected and unrelated keys. He may begin a song in G major, and somehow work his way through another key to end in G♭ Major. He manages this in a way that does not sound remotely odd to the listener; yet, when one looks at the page, determining how he got there is a challenge. While his songs can be called tonal, one cannot expect to analyze them in the same way he or she might traditional western music of the common practice period.

His cabaret songs utilize both classical and popular music idioms from the past and present. As is the trend in his other vocal works, they often move through and to unrelated and unexpected tonal centers. The vocal lines tend to be accessible with medium to medium-high tessituras. However, one consideration to be taken in assigning or performing these songs (or any Thomas works) should be given to the pianist. Given

Thomas’s solo piano background, it is not surprising that his piano parts are often quite difficult. They are integral to the song, frequently providing interludes and carrying important melodic moments.

52

Chapter 8: The Cabaret Songs, Volume One

A perusal of the cabaret songs of Thomas, published by Portage Press Publishing and sold by Classical Vocal Reprints, shows that they are not in chronological order by date of publication. So when asked about the ordering, Thomas recalled that the reason these six songs were grouped and published in Volume I was simply because they happened to be some of the songs that were the most popular. He recalled that he determined the order for the songs, but that there was no rhyme or reason to it; accordingly he encourages singers to excerpt songs if desired and sing them in whatever order makes sense for them programmatically. He also was very liberal in regard to transposition: “You know, I don’t have problems with transposition as long as it doesn’t make the piano part too murky… If a singer sounds better in a certain key, they should do it.”184 Beyond that he does not appreciate changes made to his songs and singers should avoid taking too many liberties. He explains his thoughts:

…because these are not like pop songs where you can kinda do what you want with them. They live in that world that’s somewhere in between… The accompaniment has really been written out. It’s not just a bunch of chords; I’ve thought about it. So I do want the performing artist to get as close to that as possible.185

He is understandably passionate about his work, so singers should remember that these are written with a great deal of thought and intent. They are not pop songs, despite the

184 Thomas. Phone interview with the author. March 15, 2013. 185 Ibid. 53 fact that these, like others in the cabaret genre borrow plenty of themes and stylistic nuances from popular music over the years.

Interestingly, although these songs are published as “Cabaret Songs,” Thomas did not label them as such. He recalled that it was Glendower Jones of Classical Vocal

Reprints who encouraged this title for the songs.

So, though some of the songs in the collection were envisioned in a cabaret setting, this does not necessarily remain true for all. These are versatile songs that can be performed appropriately in any number of settings—from the concert hall to a night club—with ease. As part of a trio comprised of the composer, soprano Patricia Prunty, and baritone Bruce Rameker under the name Trillium Ensemble, Thomas himself has performed them in night clubs and concert halls alike. The six songs in this first volume were published individually at various times between 1989 and 1996. The entire volume was published in 2006.

Oddly, although Thomas says there was no specific reason for the order in which the songs were published, they flow nicely as a unit. With one exception, the songs are presented in this edition a whole step down from their original keys, which can be found in the high volume. The exception is “My German Boyfriend”; however, whether conscious or not, the songs transition smoothly in this order both textually and harmonically.

The range of these songs is moderate, and in trickier melodic passages, the piano often doubles the singer’s line. They are available in both medium and high keys. (In the following discussion, the medium volume was used for analysis). Though the rhythms at

54 first glance can seem tricky, they flow so beautifully with the text that one might never notice. None of the songs is gender specific, and though the composer may have envisioned a certain character singing a song when he wrote it, singers need not be restricted. Both male and female singers have successfully performed all the songs in this volume.

The piano parts of these songs are at times challenging, with extremes in range

(“When I Kiss You”), frequent often key changes (“You Do Not Understand”), and time signature changes (“How Many Churches?”) several times in a song. Changes in tempo are common (“It Doesn’t Matter) and sometimes all the aforementioned elements present themselves in combination with tricky passages of runs (“I’m Yours!”).

The life of a song can go through several phases in interpreting meaning—from composer to performer to audience—and Thomas most certainly does not rely solely on a singer to create emotional expression in his songs. “I find that if I feel something when

I’m writing it [a musical work], the audience will feel something when they are hear it.”186 The only reservations this author has for younger singers concerns the subject matter; many of these songs speak from a level of life experience that a younger singer simply will not yet have, and so perhaps these songs should be reserved for singers with a little more life behind them to truly do them justice. On what can one reminisce when life has barely begun?

186 Smith. Diss. 14. 55

My German Boyfriend

Range: C4 – D5 Tessitura: Medium low Meter: ¾ Tempo: quarter note = 126 Difficulty: Vocal-moderate; piano-moderate

Marked “sweetly,” the singer begins a somewhat unpredictable melodic descent in a ¾ time waltz. Thomas wrote no introduction, so the singer must be prepared to begin after hearing just two C’s on the second half of beat two. The lilting waltz in the accompaniment supports the singer, often doubling the melody in the right hand of the piano.

Ex. 1. mm. 1-4

The pattern in the vocal line is not as predictable as it first seems. The first two measures have a descending minor sixth interval, followed by an ascending minor sixth; however, in the third measure it does not follow the pattern of the first two measures on the ascent.

Rather than returning to a B♭ on the third beat, the ascending leap is a tritone from a D to an A♭. The vocal line then resolves on the dominant G in a tonic C chord. The 56 accompaniment’s waltz evokes images of a music box—not a traditional one with a predictable melodic theme; rather, this music box has a broken, twisted theme, albeit one that is not altogether unpleasant. It paints the picture of the love affair the singer describes—one that is less about love and more about sex.

A piano interlude of eight measures that echoes the vocal line follows the first verse. This interlude is interrupted by the singer’s spoken exclamation, reminiscing,

“God, he was beautiful!” The second verse is like the first in the vocal line, altered only slightly to accommodate different text. The accompaniment however is different; it still doubles the voice, but this time up an octave. The left hand of the piano plays chords, as opposed to the quarter notes found in the first verse.

Ex. 2, mm. 25-28

The last four measures of the second verse are melodically varied from the first. As was the case with the first verse, the second verse is followed by an eight-measure piano postlude, at the end of which the singer repeats her exclamation in German, but now in

German, “Gott, war er schön!”

57

The overall tonal structure of the piece centers around the key of C Major.

Thomas begins in C and waltzes chromatically, moving through somewhat unexpected chords to arrive and rest briefly on other tonal centers. For example, measures 7 and 8 mark a move to D♭, but measure nine enters with three octaves of D before reestablishing

D♭, as seen below, before descending back to C by measure 16.

continued Ex. 3, mm. 5-16

58

Ex. 3 continued

How Many Churches?

Range: B♭4 –D5 Tessitura: Medium low Meter: 9/4, 6/4, 7/4 Tempo: quarter note = 126; moderato Difficulty: Vocal-moderate; piano-moderate

The piano begins with a serenely simplistic two measure introduction, setting the key of G major. One key challenge for singers is to be very aware of frequent meter changes. At first glance, the music and the text of this song may not seem to match.

When just reading the text, the singer may seem exasperated, perhaps even irritated with the subject of the story, as she recalls laughing at her partner’s naivety. However, this idea is in opposition to the sweet, almost reverent feeling in the music. Thomas offers a different perspective that reveals his initial idea when writing and an approach to the

59 piece that will help the performer make the two seemingly opposing concepts a cohesive song.

The song was originally part of a cycle he wrote as a young composer called

Ladies of Their Days and Nights. He collaborated with different singers while the cycle was developing and it was staged, each song depicting a different woman in a different

European city. The last singer with whom he worked on the cycle wanted to have a story line that tied them all together, and they came up with the idea that she would be reminiscing as she flipped through a box of old pictures, remembering a time in her past where she travelled with a previous boyfriend.187 So when a singer approaches this piece with the idea of remembering a time in the distant past, rather than something more recent, she can think about it more objectively, remembering a time that in the moment might have been exasperating, but in the present can be recollected almost fondly.

Thomas suggests approaching not with exasperation, but with more of a mixed feeling,

“like, well maybe this wasn’t so bad.”188

The two measure introduction is in 9/4 and the last six beats of each measure are a held open G major chord with a major 7th, so while it is the tonic it lacks a sense of stability and the length of the sustained chord leaves the space the performer needs to reflect upon her memories before she begins to sing—a pregnant pause in the action.

The third measure, in which the singer enters, follows an identical pattern in the piano part, while the voice sustains a D4 for the last five beats of the measure.

187 Thomas. Phone Interview with the author. March 15, 2013. 188 Thomas. Phone Interview with the author. March 15, 2013. 60

Ex. 4, mm. 1-3

As the memories begin to return to the singer, the music begins to move forward as well. Occasional pauses continue to appear throughout the piece. G remains the tonal center until the end of the second page, when in the last two measures the singer sustains

7 two 9/4 measures of G4, but the piano plays two measures that rest on a Dm chord, which makes an interesting transition to the top of page three, where the voice strongly emphasizes E and the piano seems to move through A.

Ex. 5, mm. 17-20

61

The piano then moves through D minor and at the bottom of the third page retains the sense of D in a pedal tone in the bass clef while the treble clef and the voice begin the transition to the new key signature on the next page—G♭ minor—by emphasizing an A♭ chord with a minor 7th, which acts as a secondary dominant. G♭ does not fully establish until the last page of the song.

This decision to mark the fourth page with the key signature of G♭ seems an odd choice because the entire page so emphasizes the A♭. D♭ might have been a clearer choice to this author’s mind.

Ex. 6, mm. 21-25

62

Regardless, the fourth page builds to a climax as the singer remembers the ludicrousness of her Baptist boyfriend dragging her Catholic self to various churches and shrines. The final page comes subtly down from the climax, and the singer brings herself back to the present, remembering the time perhaps somewhat more fondly than she did as the song began.

You Do Not Understand

Range: B♭4 –E♭5 Tessitura: Medium low Meter: 4/4 Tempo: half note = 72 Difficulty: Voice-moderate; piano-somewhat easy

Marked “with intensity” this piece begins with an a cappella section in which the singer presents the first statement of the melodic theme. Thomas mentioned that when he wrote this song he was very interested in playing with that octave leap in the voice.189

189 Thomas. Phone interview with the author. March 15, 2013. 63

Ex. 7, mm. 20-23

Indeed the octave leap recurs in the beginning of each verse and Thomas continues to emphasize those notes even as he moves to and from them with other fourth and fifth leaps, and in this verse, which is repeated twice more, the entire melodic line begins with

B♭5 and ends on B♭4, further highlighting that octave leap.

The singer begins this number attempting to present her case, kindly, to a partner in a relationship that is clearly on thin ice. The singer must remain rhythmically consistent in this first section to establish the beat solidly without any accompaniment.

When the piano enters it echoes the frustration of the singer with a four measure interlude of syncopated B♭ octaves.

In the second verse the singer retains control of her emotions as she tries to lay out her case diplomatically for what she is doing and why she is doing so, but clearly feeling as if she is not getting through to her partner, and perhaps feeling guilty as well, changes tactics. Musically, the singer’s line is nearly identical to the first, but the piano becomes increasingly complex as the verse progresses, from syncopated octaves to adding chords in both hands.

64

Ex. 8, mm. 24-27

At this point Thomas has written what can be described as a bridge, which is a feature more common to popular than classical music. However, and not for the only time in these cabaret songs, bridge seems to be the best way to describe what Thomas does.

The bridge changes to a new tonal center rather abruptly, moving from B♭ to G♭.

65

Ex. 9, mm. 33-40

This seems to fit the mood, as the singer abruptly opts for a change of tactic. Perhaps she does this out of guilty conscience, as she begins to share with her partner all the things she appreciates about him. In the second part of the bridge, Thomas moves back to B♭; then, as abruptly as he transitioned before, the mood and the key shift from B♭ to A.

66

Ex. 10, mm. 57-64

In this section the singer recalls what made her so feel so angry and emotionally smothered in the relationship, and the audience gets a glimpse at the reason for the pending separation. Marked “a little faster” and “più f”, the rhythmic pattern returns to that of the syncopated beginning, but the melody has yet to return to the octave play. The singer becomes increasingly agitated throughout this section, and as she does so, though it is not explicitly indicated, the music and text lend themselves to also increase in tempo and dynamic until she reaches a climactic shout of “Not ours,” which should be ff as marked. Even with the faster tempo and louder dynamic, caution should be taken not to reach frantic extremes. 67

Ex. 11, mm. 65-74

A long pause, marked by a measure with a whole rest, a fermata and the word

“long” tells the singer just how long a pause Thomas intends. This gives the singer a chance to emotionally recover from her outburst. As she composes herself, she returns to the original theme from the verses, and to her controlled approach to the separation.

68

It Doesn’t Matter

Range: A4 – E5 Tessitura: Medium Meter: 4/4, 2/4, 3/2 Tempo: quarter note = 90, half note = 72 Difficulty: Voice-moderate; piano-moderate

Of all the songs in this collection of cabaret songs, this one is the most like what this author imagines when thinking of cabaret. Marked “Stately, subdued,” it evokes images of old American music, reminiscent of 1920’s jazz standards.

Ex. 12, mm. 1-3

Like a slow rag, with a bass pattern on beats one and three and a syncopated melody in the treble, one can almost hear this song playing on an old Victrola. This comes as no surprise since the composer himself envisioned for this song “a woman of a certain age, very elegant,” performing in a smoky nightclub.190 The song begins abruptly, with no

190 Thomas. Phone interview with author. March 15, 2013. 69 introduction. The singer gets a downbeat and must enter immediately, so it is of prime importance that he or she establishes the rhythmic pulse well in the first measure.

The song is of a moderate range, and must capture not only a sense of an earlier musical style, but also a mature elegance. The singer, whether male or female, must express above all sincerity as he or she, first with humor, then with wistful sentiment, engages the audience. The ambience the song creates must bring the audience members to a dim cellar cabaret, in an intimate space, where they can connect to the singer personally. Given this, the singer must take care not to over-sing; this is not a song that should be sung in a full operatic voice.

The style demands that the accompaniment not be rigid. Both the singer and the pianist have some rhythmic liberty, not to change it, but to sing it with a relaxed sense of swing. As is a common theme in these cabaret songs, the piece begins and ends in the same key—in this case C major, with modulation into a contrasting section before returning to the original theme.

The first verse presents a quiet, subdued declaration of circumstances, while the second repetition of the melodic and harmonic material inserts a bit more passion into the apparent unfairness in life. The contrasting section leaves the old jazzy style and the tempo is a good bit faster. The harmony is more is also more modern and not at all predictable, visiting E♭, but never actually settling on the tonic for nine measures. Then the next four measures play between C♭ and D♭ major chords. Then the singer’s D♭ enharmonically becomes C#, which the composer uses to shift to an A major chord.

70

Ex. 13, mm. 29-36

The next three measures, as seen above, descend, returning to a dominant chord in

C. The third verse returns to the original tempo and an even softer dynamic level, pp.

This repetition of the verse is altered in its final statement on the last page. The eighth measure before the end brings a fermata. The singer should not crescendo into that C; rather, he or she should sing it lightly, possibly moving to head voice in a male singer.

The next two measures are the highest notes in the song and must be sung with the utmost sensitivity and sincerity. Falsetto would not be inappropriate for a male singer here. After a long pause at the fermata, the duration of which Thomas leaves to the

71 performers’ discretion, the music returns a tempo, insisting that “it really doesn’t matter…very much,” perhaps in an attempt to convince herself more than the audience.

When I Kiss You

Range: C4 – E5 Tessitura: Medium High Meter: 2/4 Tempo: half note = 50, “slow 2, almost like a prayer” Difficulty: Voice-moderate; piano-moderate

Thomas recalls writing “When I Kiss You” after he’d written many songs that were about failed love, and he felt inspired to write a song “that’s happy…one that’s actually working.” So his motivation for writing the song resulted in a beautiful, romantic piece that at one point evokes images 1970’s folk rock. As with other songs,

“When I Kiss You” features three verses with a contrasting section between the second and third verse. This formula seems to work very well for Thomas.

Marked “almost like a prayer” the song should indeed be reverent. This song is perhaps about a very new relationship, though not necessarily, and it paints beautiful images of what flashes through the imagination of a person at her lover’s kiss. More than simply fireworks, this song is all at once sweet and passionate as the song progresses.

The accompaniment begins simply, with sustained whole-note chords, in a slow harmonic progression, altering chords at most once a measure for the first nine measures.

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Ex. 14, mm. 1-9

The time signature changes frequently. The key is C major, however a solid cadence in the tonic never occurs. The harmony progresses more quickly in the next seven measures, mostly moving twice a measure with half-note chords and a few moving notes.

The second verse occurs with very little variation for the singer, but a slightly different harmonic progression and a change from the sustained chords in the piano part to occasional broken chords and doubling of the voice.

The contrasting section here increases in dynamic, and the rhythmic and melodic patterns are reminiscent of folk rock. It must be sung legato, smoothly connecting the

73 tied notes and letting the syncopation glide. Given the nature of the music, it is appropriate to sing this in a more popular style, without any sense of heaviness. The tempo slows when the time changes to 4/4; however, because the singer switches from longer notes to the sixteenth notes in this section, it sounds faster to the ear. One must heed the note by the composer to avoid moving too fast in order to retain the relaxed folk-music feeling. The climax of the song occurs in this section, as the singer becomes more descriptive and passionate. Interestingly, unlike other songs in this volume, “When

I Kiss You” does not modulate to a new key until the second half of this contrasting section, where the song touches F major and B♭ major, before using the G in the voice to connect an E♭ major chord to an A minor chord. Now the G in the vocal line functions as the seventh.

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Ex. 15, mm. 38-43

This A minor seven chord then acts as a supertonic chord of G, moves to G, and then resolves back to the key of C with the return of the original melodic theme.

With this third verse, the accompaniment is varied more drastically than in the second. Now there is a very open fifth, with a wide distance between the left and right hand, almost as if describing the vastness of space in Montana—that Big Sky.

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Ex. 16, mm. 44-46

This section returns to the sweet reverence of the opening, but with an even softer dynamic as the singer contemplates the vast beauty and joy of her love. The contentment and calm one can only equate with being alone in the hugeness of the universe in nature is compared to the awe the singer feels when she kisses her love. The singer fades away on a C sustained for three measures. The piano then plays three very quiet measures, fading away on a quiet, and very low, murky C chord, that still leaves some wonder to the piece in first inversion. Thomas has created a remarkably subtle, yet stunningly romantic song in this one.

I’m Yours!

Range: C4 – F5 Tessitura: Medium Meter: 3/4 Tempo: dotted half note = 52, “tempo di valse, rubato” Difficulty: Voice-moderate to difficult; piano-difficult

“I’m Yours!” has a most interesting back story. It was originally written to be sung at a party with different lyrics—more risqué lyrics. Thomas calls them “R-rated or 76 worse.” Sadly, those words no longer exist, and one is left with only imagination to decide just how raunchy they got, because Thomas says they are lost and he does not admit to remembering them. He only notes that he “changed the words to make it [the song] more palatable for public consumption.”191 He feels that this song, because of the level of difficulty and the range, requires a trained voice, and as such, it is more likely to be performed in a concert hall. The current version reflects that.

Also worth noting, the original version of this song begins in the C major. In the medium version it begins in B♭, and Thomas notes that while the pitches flowed nicely in the original key, “it really becomes sort of a gnarly accompaniment” in the lower key and he is apologetic in that regard.

Ex. 17, mm. 1-5

191 Thomas. Phone interview with author. March 15, 2013. 77

He welcomes pianist to “leave a few notes out here and there” in the transposed version if need be.192 He cautions, however, that the tempo not be too slow. The song is marked in a waltz tempo with rubato, but it must be quick enough to maintain a feeling of what

Thomas calls “bounce.”193

Even with less graphic words, the singer begins very politely discussing how she sees someone who sparks her interest from across the room and they move together. By the second verse, the flirtation is getting a little more intimate, moving on to teasing, tickling, and touching. The intimacy continues in the third verse as finally the couple holds one another, kisses, and (gasp) wrestles! If one can wrestle with a lover in a concert hall, we shall have to let our imaginations wonder where it might have gone at

Thomas’s original party.

In the vocal melody each verse is similar to the others. The interesting things musically come in the accompaniment, which differs with each verse. The song begins with a three measure introduction that consists of a melismatic run in the right hand. This is followed by a two measure vamp in the accompaniment, which leaves a perfect opportunity for dialogue or improvisational cabaret plot if one is performing this in such a setting. These two measure are in the traditional style of the waltz, with a strong downbeat, followed by two weak beats.

When the singer enters, the accompaniment doubles the singer’s line in the right hand. This section really sounds more like G minor than B♭ major, however by the end

192 Thomas. Phone interview with the author. March 15, 2013. 193 Ibid. 78 of the verse, when the singer exclaims, “I’m yours!” it resolves in B♭. There are many dynamic changes indicated by the composer that could be easily missed without careful attention, that really add diversity to a repetitive melodic line, so singers should be especially aware of the rapid changes. They also add nuance to the separate emotions or behaviors in the text.

The pianist plays a four-measure interlude and continues this time with the melody still often doubled, but up an octave, which is a tool Thomas also used in “My

German Boyfriend.” In addition to a higher tessitura for the pianist, this second verse also includes more melisma and less doubling than the first. Like the first, it begins in G minor and resolves in B♭ major, only this time instead of a four measure interlude, there is one measure that modulates to a new key, moving in scale wise motion in the right hand with a G♭ in the left, which enharmonically sounds a strong F#, the dominant of the new key—B major/G# minor.

Ex. 18, mm. 71-75

79

This verse is the loudest yet, marked f, and the accompaniment is marked by strong solid chords in waltz rhythm. The piano doubles the voice more again here, and when the singer reaches the wrestling section, the accompaniment is marked, “poco marcato” and every chord in the right hand is accented.

Ex. 19, mm. 96-104

It sounds like a lively wrestling match indeed. As the singer reaches the word “spent,” the accompaniment drops out, and there is a pause marked for both performers. The singer returns, sliding into the word “couple” at a p dynamic level, and marked by a ritard. The singer reenters first with a dramatic portamento on the octave between “I’m” and “all,” before continuing a tempo. On the final page of the song, as the singer repeats 80 all the emotions and actions she’s experienced with her new lover, she begins at a p dynamic level, and both the tempo and the dynamic increase throughout the next nine measures. Then the singer holds an F#5 on the word “I’m,” marked by a short fermata, before continuing, holding three measures and one beat of the same F# on the word

“Yours!” The piano line concludes with a melismatic passage similar to the one from the introduction.

This song begins and ends with a bang, and is well suited to be the last song in a set or on a program. Indeed, Thomas agrees and says that “it’s an ender. It’s always an ender.”194 The audience will leave on a high note, both literally and figuratively, and with a smile on their faces as the singer serenades them away with this song in a risqué tribute to a relationship that is working quite well, at least for the moment.

194 Thomas. Phone interview with author. March 15, 2013. 81

Conclusion

We come to the end of the document. Are we any closer to defining a cabaret song than we were at the start? There is no simple answer to this question. The reason for this lies in the fact that there is no definitive answer. Cabaret songs are an evolutionary process. A cabaret song is more than the musical styles that it uses to share its message and entertainment. Indeed, I would assert that what makes a cabaret song has much less to do with how it sounds and much more to do with what it says. The reason dictionaries and encyclopedias have a difficult time specifically defining cabaret is that cabaret is about the experience. It is about the atmosphere—not necessarily the location—and it means different things at different places and times.

As we can see from the historical development of cabaret, it never fared well when a person just tried to take what cabaret was in one place and translate that exactly in another. The people of Berlin were not interested in a carbon copy of a French cabaret.

The people at the Green Balloon in Poland were not interested in yet another form of theater that only delivered to them more German language shows. Cabaret comes to meet the people.

What defined cabaret song in 1881 Montmartre would fail to shock a 2013 audience in the United States. In an age when we are bombarded by information from every direction—television, radio, internet, print—with agenda, but no real censorship,

82 how could we possibly understand what it was like in Paris in the late 19th century or to live under the Lex Heinze in Germany at the turn of the 20th century? We live in a day and age when the concert is one of the few places remaining with fairly strict standards of protocol when it comes to behavior and content. To my mind, this is what makes it one of the few places where our current definition of cabaret can still delight audiences. The art song recital remains one of the only places that it would surprise an audience to see the performer walk out, lick her lips, and sing about her former German boyfriend, with whom she clearly had a relationship that was more sexual than substantive.

In his book, The Cabaret Artist’s Handbook, Bob Harrington tackles the challenge of defining cabaret. He discusses at length the troubles with trying to do so:

A truly concise and accurate description of cabaret has always eluded me. It’s an awesomely all-encompassing genre, welcoming with equally open arms singing styles from jazz to country-western, magicians, comics, book shows, reviews, variety acts, and people who just stand there and tell stories. Every working definition I’ve come up with either excludes something that obviously is cabaret or includes something that just as obviously isn’t.195

Harrington, who was a cabaret critic and has been credited with contributing to the cabaret boom that began in the 1980’s, asserts that cabaret has nothing to do with eating and drinking, and less to do with where one performs it.196 By Harrington’s estimations, cabaret success is measured by how well a performer breaks down the invisible fourth wall of the theater:

All art involves the audience, but cabaret acknowledges it… In theater, a performer must make an audience believe in a character. In cabaret, the audience must buy the performer—even when that performer has adopted a persona very different from his or her offstage personality. There is an exchange

195 Bob Harrington. The Cabaret Artist’s Handbook. New York: Backstage Books, 2000. 14 196 Ibid. 83

of trust in cabaret between audience and performer that exists in no other medium… Perhaps that’s because cabaret is so very, very personal. Singers and comics in cabaret are not just performing, they’re relating. And they’re skating close to the edge… In a recital or concert, it’s the music that counts. In a cabaret it’s the words and the attitude.197

So the reason no one can define cabaret is because it is an art form that is not about semantics. It is an art form that is about human experience—interacting with others, relating to others, sharing a part of oneself with others. In cabaret that is a requirement of performer and audience alike. One would have no problem in creating a list of things cabaret is not, but everyone seems to have trouble creating a firm list of things that a cabaret is. A cabaret song is often modern, edgy, funny, and/or taboo, but it is always relatable. One thing is certain—we know what a cabaret song is when we hear it.

Richard Pearson Thomas is one of the gifted composers writing music today who so beautifully dances the line between the classical and popular worlds of song. He writes songs that are highly relatable to the current human experience, but with purpose and intent greater than that of writers of popular music today. His cabaret songs are modern in content, entertaining, memorable, mature, and constantly flirting with pushing the boundaries of what might be considered appropriate for performance in the concert hall. Most importantly, they are relatable. They are songs that evoked something in

Thomas, they are songs to which a performer can personally connect, and they are songs that inspire one to share that connection with others. That is what truly defines cabaret song, regardless of time or place.

197 Bob Harrington. The Cabaret Artist’s Handbook. 15 84

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APPENDIX A: PHONE INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD PEARSON THOMAS

Transcript from interview with Richard Pearson Thomas, 3/15/2013, at 3:05pm.

*A recording equipment error resulted in the loss of the first question and answer, so while that information was jotted down shortly after the interview and will be acknowledged in document, the question and answer will not be included here in the transcript because it does not exist on the recording.

Richard Pearson Thomas (RPT) (In response to a question about his cabaret and theater influences): Uh…Kurt Weill would have been an influence on, on um, in just the way, especially in, in his German things, just the way they just distilled these moments so brilliantly. Um...and um, and of course to some extent Sondheim, although I don’t think musically Sondheim was so much of an influence, but as a lyric writer there’s no doubt.

And then, probably my other American hero would be Leonard Bernstein, who was able to go between styles, and um… you know…but everything he did had a certain theatricality.

Rebecca Mullins (RM): Yeah. No I... yeah that’s great. Um...let’s see…um. Now, one thing I noticed about your cabaret songs is that the order in which they’re published in the set I got from Glendower Jones is not chronological. Um…

RPT: No.

RM: … did you determine this order for printing, or was that him?

RPT: Um, I probably did and there is no rhyme or reason to it. 88

RM: Ok. So, so you didn’t, um, so they’re not at all intended to be performed necessarily in this order or as a set?

RPT: No. Not at all.

RM: So, perfectly fine to sing one or all, or?

RPT: Exactly.

RM: Great. Ok.

RPT: You know, because they were written at different points of my life for different reasons or whatever. No, it’s just. I think the first volume we were sort of… I was publishing some of the most popular ones.

RM: Yeah.

RPT: You know, that’s where I started.

RM: Ok, yeah. That makes sense. Um…how are you, in general, how are your… what are you feelings about people transposing your songs, or, you know, altering something a little bit to make it…you know…easier for them in that way? You know, a soprano…

RPT: You know, I don’t have problems with transposition, as long as it doesn’t make the piano part too murky. If it goes too low, there’s a point where it’s just not good, but I don’t, you know, I don’t have a problem with that at all. If the singer sounds better in a certain key, they should do it.

RM: Yeah, ok.

RPT: Other than that I don’t really like changes in my music.

RM: Mmmhmm.

89

RPT: Um...so I mean I… I mean this is parenthetical, but I had one singer who recorded a song of mine. She put it up on YouTube and she totally changed the ending. And, um,

I had to ask her to take it down. It was like...I hated it.

(Laughter from both)

RPT: You know, and then all of the sudden people were saying, “Oh, I want that version” and I’m like sorry, that’s not my song. Um…so... (laughter)

RM: Yeah, that’s… that’s why I was curious. I was curious about that. I would personally never change something drastically without, you know...the okay of the composer if it’s possible of course. But I was just curious where you stood on that.

RPT: Yeah, because these are not like pop songs where you can kind of do what you want with them; they’re…they live in that world that’s somewhere in between, and therefore I think on that issue we need to err on the side of…they’re really written…I mean, the accompaniment has really been written out. It’s not just a bunch of chords.

I’ve thought about it. So I do want the performing artist to get as close to that as possible.

RM: Absolutely. So, going on to the songs themselves, um, I’m very much enjoying them. I appreciate them a lot, and uh, some of the questions I was thinking about them have already been answered, but um... My German Boyfriend. Now, I’m curious to know, um, you know I know you wrote all the lyrics, so who was this inspired by? Was this about a real person, or was it a story that just came to you, or?

RPT: Um, no it wasn’t a real story. It was…It may have been inspired by some…events, but no, it’s made up.

90

RM: It’s made up. Mmmhmmm. Now, when you were writing did you envision the singer as male or female?

RPT: You know, I really envisioned, for that particular song, I really envisioned a female...um…in a smoky nightclub.

(Laughter from both)

RPT: So we’re getting back to the cabaret thing, you know?

RM: Yeah, this one felt very cabaret to me. This one…this one fit, you know? And of course I was approaching it as a female, because I am, in fact, a female. So… (laughter)

RPT: Right. Right. Um, you know, it occasionally gets sung by a guy.

RM: It could be, yeah.

RPT: You know, in this day and age...things have changed, so um. But yeah, my picture was uh…well you know, I shouldn’t… I mean that’s certainly true. That picture of the woman in the smoky nightclub, I really have that image for “It Doesn’t Matter” actually. You know a woman of a certain age, very elegant, singing that song. But, um, that song has in some ways been more successful being sung by men, so you know, what my original inspiration was doesn’t necessarily cue to the actual…what gets done to the song.

RM: Well that’s part, to me, part of the joy of cabaret songs, you know presenting them not just as an actor with that invisible fourth wall in your face, but you know, right there, in with the audience, a much more intimate communication, so, you know, you take it and make it what it is, but as you. You know, if that makes sense what I’m saying.

RPT: That does make sense, exactly.

91

RM: Um...let’s see. Now I liked the um…When we were first playing around with this I said the accompaniment, in my ear, almost evoked…like a…a broken music box. It sounded like a music box, but kind of a twisted one. Um, and I was just...I was…I don’t know…just curious about if there were any comments, if you had any comments about...um…how you decided to go with that certain style, or…

RPT: Uh, no not really, but I think that’s great. I think that’s...if you had that impression, go for it.

RM: Yeah? (laughter) It just kind of struck me one day. I was like, that kind of sounds like a…a broken music, so I was just curious to see, what you know, always curious to see what makes you go with a certain style of writing and things like that.

RPT: Yeah. No, I can’t see that there was anything in specific, but that makes sense.

That makes sense.

RM: When you compose do you…this is just a general question…um, when you compose, do you hear a melody first and write around that? Do you have a? You know as far as your compositional style, how do you go about that?

RPT: Um…well I usually start at the piano and…um…I um…a lot of times I begin by improvising a bit. Usually I have an idea obviously what the song is going to be and I kind of let my fingers do the talking a little bit. I trust my subconscious and things bubble up. There certainly were composition instructors along my path who said, ‘Oh you should never compose at the piano,’ but I think everybody is different, so like I said,

I kind of trust what starts to bubble up, and then I can turn a more critical eye towards that. A lot of times also when I’m writing lyrics to a song, they will evolve as the music

92 evolves, so even if I’ve sketched out a basic lyric to begin with, it will usually change as I get further into writing the music.

RM: Neat. Yeah. That was just a question that just game to me. I was thinking about, you know, when you start with someone else’s poem, it’s probably a different, um... a whole different game, I guess.

RPT: That is a whole different thing, because in that case, what I do is I read the poem again, and again, and again, and again…you know, and then I start to figure out what sort of rhythmic ideas it suggests to me. That uses a different part of my brain, at least initially.

RM: Neat. That’s cool. Not much of a composer myself, I find it interesting to hear about that. (laughs) Um...now, looking at “How Many Churches”, now this is one of the ones that was confounding me as a cabaret song, but after hearing your comments on that

I’m like, oh ok, well now it makes more sense, because it was necessarily, NOT necessarily ever intended to be a, quote, “cabaret song.” Um…but…because I was trying to get my head around how this fit as a cabaret song. I like it very much…um…was there…

RPT: Yeah…

RM: Sorry, go ahead.

RPT: The story about that particular song is that I…um…I had a cycle of songs called

Ladies of their Nights and Days, which I wrote when I was really young, and um…each song in the set was a different woman in a different European city, and it was staged, and

I wrote it…It sort of evolved over time with a couple of different singers and it was done

93 in Virginia and then we did it in nightclubs here in New York. And the last singer with whom I collaborated on the piece, she really wanted some sense of a story—a through line—so we came up with this idea of like a woman going through a box of pictures or whatever, and remembering travelling with somebody, travelling with her boyfriend at the time. And, so I wrote several songs that were contemporary for her remembering, and it then would be like wherever she was, she would become the character in that city.

And “How Many Churches” was one of the songs that I wrote for that set.

RM: Do you mind sharing with me who that singer was?

RPT: Her name was Lynnen Yakes, L-Y-N-N-E-N. And the last name is Y-A-K-E-S.

RM: Ok. Thank you. I was just curious.

RPT: Yeah, so, and the reason that it’s in this cabaret volume is that…it was tending to be one of my more popular songs. You know, I had a friend to record it and all we sang and blah blah blah, so that’s why we made sure to put it in this first volume.

RM: Ok. Yeah, cause it was one of those, and it’s um...I’ve been trying to find exactly where I want to put it in my head, because the music itself is almost reverent and solemn, and then um…she seems exasperated, when I’m reading the lyrics they feel exasperated to me.

RPT: Uh huh, well it might be different if you put yourself in the mindset of somebody who is remembering something…

RM: Mmmhmm

RPT: …and then maybe it’s a little less exasperation, and... then it’s more of a mixed feeling.

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RM: Yeah.

RPT: Like, well maybe this wasn’t so bad after all.

RM: Yeah. Actually that helps quite a lot. That makes a lot more sense now. Well, great! And this, so um…what was I going to ask you about this… So, moving on to

“You Do Not Understand,” again, was this about or for a real person?

RPT: No, it wasn’t. No. That particular song was not. Um...and…yeah.

RM: So, where did you get the idea for this? Was it something you wrote for…

RPT: You know I don’t really remember. I vaguely remember working with someone and he was going to do something on a concert, and I really liked the idea of playing around with that octave leap in the voice…and to do something that was a little more…um…angry, strong, uh… you know…NOT wistful, not memory tinged, and not necessarily happy. I think we were playing around with something that was a little more dramatic in those terms.

RM: Yeah. Cool, cool. And so this was…you did this originally with a male?

RPT: Yeah. Yeah.

RM: Not that that matters necessarily. I was just curious.

RPT: It doesn’t, and you know, that song has not been sung as much as others, but I do know women who have sung it.

RM: I like the way it feels and fits in my voice, so I’ve been enjoying it.

RPT: Great.

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RM: And I think there’s something very relatable in the text to that feeling, where I see a relationship that’s spiraling, not doing so great, and kind of desperate. Ugh. But yes, I definitely can connect to that one. I like it.

RPT: Good. Good. (laughter)

RM: Well, yeah, that’s always good (laughs). “It Doesn’t Matter” is one of my very favorite in the set. I’m…uh…it kind of evoked a…an old…I don’t k now I was hearing like old twenties style in my head.

RPT: Yes definitely. So you can picture now, like what I was picturing when I was writing it.

RM: Uh huh. Yeah, in fact that was very similar to the picture I already had in my head, so I was delighted to hear you say that. Um, was this one that you wrong for somebody or about somebody?

RPT: No, not really. No. That one. I just remember I just had to…it was like at a time when I just had to write a song like that. You know, I remember having just an impulse of like…oh I want to write kind of a torch song…sort of thing. And that’s what came out.

RM: (laughter) Well, I tell you I’m a single mom, and I related to a lot of these uh…that

I think I’ve been in that exact mental place.

RPT: Uh huh. Well it’s…I particularly did this….I have a friend named Bruce

Rammeker and we’ve done this. He and a soprano named Patricia Brunty and I have done a lot of concerts. We call ourselves the Trillium Ensemble, and he always lands with this song because he…he’s a good looking guy but he’s a little goofy, and he comes

96 out and he sort of starts it and there’s a little comic tinge to it, and then he twists it just ever so slightly at the end, and it..it you know brings a tear to people’s eyes. So, um, it’s great. I love the way he does that.

RM: Is he the one...I know there’s a recording of this one on your website?

RPT: Yeah. That would be him.

RM: Yeah, I love it. It’s great. The way he sings it sounds so dated. You know you could almost believe you’re hearing it from an old radio, you know?

RPT: Exactly.

RM: Yeah, I like that recording a lot. But yeah, I really enjoy this one. I’ve had a good time with it, so that’s…cool. Yeah, very cool. Um, now in “When I Kiss You,” which I think is super romantic, and also at the same time, I now want to go see Montana. Um...

(Laughter from both)

RPT: Uh huh, right.

RM: I was like, I need a vacation. I should get a grant for this or something. It’s research.

RPT: Yes, you should...for research!

RM: That’s what I’m saying! Right! So, uh, I think…this was another one I was trying to get my head around the cabaret aspect of it, but I like that it gets…it starts off very romantic and it gets a little bit more, I don’t want to say risqué, but passionate, as it goes.

Um...

RPT: Uh huh.

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RM: Um… so I’ve really been enjoying it. Was this one one…was there a real person behind this one?

RPT: No, I mean...you know I probably wouldn’t admit to you anyway if that were the case.

RM: (laughter)

RPT: But I do remember writing this song because I’d written some other…maybe even right after “You Do Not Understand,” or some other songs that were so about love not working, and I thought I got to write one that’s happy, you know, like one that’s actually working. So, that was a little more impulse for that song.

RM: Yeah. I like it a lot. I really appreciate it in that way. I think it’s beautiful.

RPT: Great. Thank you.

RM: Yeah, well thank you for writing it! I enjoy it. But yeah, my question with that one was originally kind of the same as the churches. I was like, where does this fit in the cabaret? But now, I’m again…we touched on that already. Um, and then uh, in “I’m

Yours!” which you know has got that waltz feeling…um, what was the background in this one? Is there…

RPT: The background of that song is that it was actually written originally for a party, and the lyrics were really quite, um…R rated or worse. So um…I changed the words to make it more palatable for public consumption.

RM: (laughter)

RPT: And, um that’s where it is. So now it’s kind of naughty and cute, whereas before it was really more risqué.

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RM: That’s funny.

RPT: Yeah, and I mean I actually can’t even find the old version, so it’s gone. It’s gone.

RM: Do you remember some of the original naughty words?

RPT: I really don’t. I really don’t, but it would have been a little more in your face.

And uh, I think it was potentially funny but it certainly couldn’t have been done in a concert hall. It could have been done, you know…

RM: In a night club?

RPT: You know, in a cabaret act where they were really pushing it. But also it’s not that easy to sing, so it needs to be a singer who can really sing, and that means it’s going to be done more in the concert hall, so I had to adjust it.

RM: Interesting. You know, because I love the way it starts out pretty PG. I had be commenting about that to my accompanist, and then he, you know it gets more risqué as you go…a little bit more dancing on the line of appropriate as we’re moving into tickling and touching and teasing and taking and all that fun stuff, so it’s funny to think about…

RPT: Yeah, well it was much more graphic, believe me.

RM: Shoot. I wish I knew!

RPT: It is, but you can use that for subtext now, but it’s not there on the page.

RM: Yeah. Well that’s what we were talking about, because the words are a little cutesy, but we were playing the other day with the idea of doing it a little less cutesy and passionate. I don’t know if that makes sense.

RPT: Yeah—the passion can build over the course of the piece. Um…what…are you a soprano?

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RM: I’m a mezzo, kind of a zwischen. A higher mezzo. So…

RPT: Because I’m not sure which key do you sing it in?

RM: I have it…in this book. It’s the medium volume. So it’s…all the sharps

RPT: Starts in B-flat?

RM: Yeah.

RPT: What’s tricky about that song is that it was written in the key of C Major, therefore all that piano stuff was like, easy. But as soon as you transpose it really becomes sort of a gnarly accompaniment and I apologize for that. So you know, if your pianist needs to leave a few notes out here and there that’s fine.

RM: Ok. (laughter)

RPT: But you just need to be careful it doesn’t…it’s not too slow because it needs to have bounce to it.

RM: Oh yeah. I could definitely feel that. I’m enjoying the heck out of it. I’ts a perfect song to do as the last one in the set. If you were going to all six of these together, is there an order that you might…prefer program…

RPT: I never thought about it.

RM: Yeah? Well since I’m writing on this first volume I will be doing them all at the recital that accompanies the whole doctoral process and such, so I was just… I haven’t really played with the idea of the order yet. I know I would end with “I’m Yours!” anyway…

RPT: Yeah. It’s an ender. It’s always a group ender.

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RM: Absolutely yeah… So I was just curious if you had thoughts or ideas about the rest of them?

RPT: I really don’t. However you guys think it work best for you vocally, and also if you’re trying to tell a little story throughout the course of the songs, how that might flow.

So, that I leave up to you.

RM: Cool. Yeah. Very cool. So that’s neat. It’s funny, because the way they’re printed it’s kind of a more upbeat one and then a slower one, and then a more upbeat one, so just the way ended up being published… I forget…did you select the order for these the way they’re published, or was..?

RPT: I think I did, but like I said it was really arbitrary. And I think we need to update them and I need to get a table of contents in there, because some people have complained to me about that. They’re like, “I don’t know what page “When I Kiss You” is on” and

I’m like “Oh we should have put that on the title page.

RM: Except there are six songs, so it’s not like it’s like… (laughter)

RPT: It’s not like there are a hundred songs, exactly.

RM: I have to say that has not been a problem for me yet, so just so you know…. We’re good there.

RPT: Ok. Good. Alright.

RM: Well those were most of the questions I had just today…just the big things I wanted to touch. Um, now if we could arrange it in some way, would you have any interest or willingness to perhaps coach these with me, if we could work it out?

RPT: I’m sorry, you cut out there a second. What did you say?

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RM: Oh I’m sorry. If you were willing, would you have any interest or willingness to coach these with me if I could get to your vicinity?

RPT: Oh sure. Yeah, that would be great. I’d love to do that.

RM: Are you in New York?

RPT: Yes. Basically. And you’re in West Virginia?

RM: Well I’m in Columbus, OH now, because I’m at Ohio State.

RPT: Oh you’re at Ohio State.

RM: I’m from West Virginia and my phone is still on the family plan.

RPT: I get it. I get it. Yeah, yeah if you’re ever going to be here or whatever that would be great.

RM: Are you doing any big traveling in the near future?

RPT: The main thing is, I think I told you in my emails, that I’ve written this opera for the California State University at Fullerton, so I will back there for most of April. Three weeks I’m going to be out there in April.

RM: Ok.

RPT: Then I’m going to be back in New York. Then I spend a big chunk of the summer in Montana.

RM: Oh fun.

RPT: Yeah it’s good. It’s much better than New York in the summertime, believe me.

RM: I do. New York’s not really my speed. It’s a bit much for me. I guess I’m a West

Virginia girl.

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RPT: With the humidity and the heat and everything it just becomes kind of unbearable…I think.

RM: Well I’m looking to graduate…I’m hoping to defend and do this recital in May, so

I don’t know about the… realistically when we can coordinate schedules, but I’ll give it some thought and see if I can squeeze… make it happen…maybe I can…

RPT: Yeah, you know the other option, I know some people are sort of doing Skype coachings or whatever. I have not done that yet, but it’s maybe an option. Or, alternatively if you guys wanted to record some things and just send me the recordings. I mean, I wouldn’t be able to see you though.

RM: Yeah, that might be something that would certainly be helpful.

RPT: Yeah, I can at least give you my reactions. Maybe some things that might help.

RM: That’s awesome I really appreciate it! Thank you! I’ll talk to James about that and see what we can set up. My poor ancient laptop could never Skype but I’m sure someone else has a good one who could.

RPT: Yeah, I just had to get a new one this year, but I’ve never done it. So I’d have to have somebody come in and help me.

RM: Oh you’ve never Skyped? I’ve done it a few times but the audio on my laptop decided to go kaput, just like everything else on it, so I’m…

RPT: I don’t think it’s hard, it’s just a matter of getting…

RM: Yeah you just have to download it. It’s super easy. But yeah, I imagine coordinating the dates and times and getting the appropriate pieces of electronics, if

103 they’ll cooperate. But yeah, it was really great to talk to you. Thank you so much for taking the time.

RPT: You’re welcome, so good luck with your project and keep me posted.

RM: Thank you very much I will.

RPT: Ok. Cool.

RM: Alright take care!

RPT: I will. Bye bye.

RM: Bye!

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APPENDIX B: CABARET SONGS OF RICHARD PEARSON THOMAS

Entire Collection of Richard Pearson Thomas Cabaret Songs, in Three Volumes

Cabaret Songs, Volume I My German Boyfriend How Many Churches? You Do Not Understand It Doesn’t Matter When I Kiss You I’m Yours!

Cabaret Songs, Volume II Just Another Hour Damaged Why Can’t I Let You Go? When You Sang Your Songs The Thought of Him Move Into the Light

Cabaret Songs, Volume III I’m Gonna Sail Away Vienna The Spinster of Chelsea Embankment Diamonds Wait!

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