ABSTRACT
The 1930s were vibrant and exhilarating years for the music scene in New York City. A wealth of musical diversity flourished, embracing the wide variety of ethnicities and social differences among the city's residents. Despite its origins and influences, the music being created in the Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo Theatre by the black musicians was not, for the most part, the music that was being heard by the rest of America. The return to musical comedy in Wonderful Town gave Leonard Bernstein the opportunity to demonstrate his skill in writing pastiche, recreating the sounds of the 1930s and earlier: swing, blues, Latin American and Irish music, hill-billy ballads and novelty piano pieces. In contrast to the preceding musical theatre works, the song forms used in this show are those of Broadway and Tin Pan Alley, not the highbrow structures seen in Trouble in Tahiti, and in the dances of On the Town.
