Bernstein's Broadway, the road not taken

But what exactly was the history being made? When you look at the timeline of musical theater, it was the lyricist, Sondheim, who would go on to rewrite the rules of the genre. Bernstein, the great melodist, would concentrate instead on a distinguished career in classical music. Not counting the hybrid "Mass," he would write only one more music-theater piece, his mostly forgotten 1976 collaboration with Alan Jay Lerner, "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

Sondheim, in the meantime, as both lyricist and composer, would lead the Broadway musical in a new direction with the likes of "Company," "Follies," "Sweeney Todd," "Sunday in the Park With George," "A Little Night Music," and "Passion."

But with both "West Side Story" and "Candide" being revived locally this week -- "West Side Story" at the North Shore Music Theatre, "Candide" at the Boston Conservatory -- and with Bernstein's 1953 musical "Wonderful Town" being revived on Broadway next month, it's worth asking what would have happened if Bernstein, rather than Sondheim, had been the major influence on the next generation of Broadway composers.

For all the musical adventurousness in "Candide" and "West Side Story," Bernstein worked very much in an established tradition. His predecessors were artists whose music had grown out of the Jewish immigration and assimilation experience of the first half of the 20th century. Before Bernstein, they included Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, and Richard Rodgers. They were heavily influenced by European classical music, Jewish folk music, and operetta or light opera, as well as American jazz.

"Candide," which applies the satire of Voltaire's novella to McCarthyism, consumerism, and other concerns of the '50s, is also something of a salute to operetta, particularly Cunegonde's riotous "Glitter and Be Gay." Working with a group of lyricists that would come to include Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, Lillian Hellman (who also wrote the original book), Dorothy Parker, and Sondheim, Bernstein was drawing on his own love of classical music and his belief in the power of liberal democracy -- not to mention a realistic and satirical appraisal of the limitations of same.

This can also be said for "West Side Story," which combined the best of Broadway with Bernstein's respect for jazz and other forms of popular music. At the heart of both these scores, though, is the hope that assimilation will triumph -- the poor peasant Candide will win the heart of the rich but spoiled Cunegonde; the Jets will some day lie down with the Sharks, even if it is too late for Tony and Maria. Tony's belief that "something great is coming," like Candide's belief that we can make a democratic garden grow, echoes the aspirations of the heroes and heroines of Broadway musicals from Kern to Rodgers and Hammerstein to Lerner and Loewe. Every Eliza Doolittle is the equal of every Henry Higgins. Anything you can do, an uncouth, unschooled young woman like Annie Oakley can do better. Bernstein not only followed in this tradition, he and his collaborators perfected it with "West Side Story."

As the optimism of the 1960s faded, Sondheim's more pessimistic view of the universe took hold. Demon barbers lived on the outskirts of humanity, and fairy-tale characters actually died, as did the woman who becomes the unlikely embodiment of "Passion." Lovers were no better than clowns, and bachelors could not break out of a cycle of sexual adventures that led only to greater loneliness.

The difference between Bernstein and Sondheim is reflected as much in their music as in their philosophies. One reason "Candide" never won audiences' affections lies in the conflict between Hellman's adaptation of Voltaire and Bernstein's score. Lies and deceit are everywhere, says Hellman. Live life to the fullest, say the gorgeous and exuberant melodies of "Glitter and Be Gay" and "The Best of All Possible Worlds." From beginning to end, the music delivers a sense of celebration.

Even in a satire of optimism, Bernstein couldn't help being hopeful himself. As Humphrey Burton writes in his biography of Bernstein, "Voltaire's skepticism is finally subverted . . . when Bernstein's incurable optimism turns `Make Our Garden Grow' into a stirring and positive hymn full of hope for a better world."

Bernstein's perspective might strike present-day audiences as naive and sentimental, but Neil Donohoe, head of the Boston Conservatory's theater department and director of "Candide," says, "What's really interesting is that he chose two pieces that had a certain dark contour to them, and then he adds a buoyancy and sense of optimism that broadens the palette."

Burton goes on to explain the critical difference between Bernstein's worldview and Sondheim's. He quotes Bernstein as saying, "Man's capacity for laughter is nobler than his divine gift of suffering." You'd be hard-pressed to apply that formula -- which could also serve as the formula for the pre-'70s musical in general -- to any of Sondheim's scores after 1962's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."

Jon Kimbell, the artistic director and executive producer at North Shore Music Theatre and an admirer of both artists, puts the difference this way: "Bernstein came to us from that extraordinary classical background and Sondheim did not, so the comparison is somewhat apples and oranges. Sondheim intellectualizes the art form, which is perfectly valid. He's a wordsmith and mathematician who loves puzzles and plays with the characters in the stories. My own personal feeling is that Bernstein has an emotional base, and the reason his music is so lasting is that it goes straight to the heart and bypasses the intellect, even though the content is certainly intellectual. Sondheim's purpose is more the idea."

And there is no doubting Sondheim's genius. No one has ever used words so meticulously. The excellent productions of his musicals locally -- "Company" at the Huntington Theatre, "Assassins" and "Sunday in the Park with George" at the Lyric Stage, "Sweeney Todd" at the New Repertory Theatre, "Pacific Overtures" at North Shore, and SpeakEasy's "Passion" at the Boston Center for the Arts -- are testament to Sondheim's brilliance, along with the artistry of the companies involved.

Many of Boston's best singer-actors will be gathering at John Hancock Hall Nov. 14, 21, and 22 for Overture Productions' concert version of Sondheim's 1971 marvel, "Follies," which predicted the end of the traditional Broadway song-and-dance show. Sure enough, one musical after another went on to mine darker regions. This later generation of composers -- Edward Kleban, William Finn, Jonathan Larson, Jason Robert Brown, Adam Guettel, Ricky Ian Gordon, and Michael John LaChiusa -- seemed to have little in common with the sons of immigrants and their optimism. Their reference points lay in Vietnam and Watergate, and their hero was Sondheim.

Bernstein had noted, in a 1956 program he did for the television show "Omnibus," that the trend in 20th-century musical theater was going from variety show to opera. And it was inevitable that creative composers coming along in the 1970s would gravitate more toward Sondheim's darker, dramatic sensibility than to their parents' favorites. The assimilation experience was not theirs.

But while their approach might have been fine for Off-Broadway or regional theaters, was it right for Broadway? Could anyone have expected audiences to flock to a series of musicals about lynching Jews ("Parade"), killing children ("Marie Christine"), killing husbands ("Thou Shalt Not"), killing lovers ("Sunset Boulevard"), or meaninglessness ("The Wild Party")?

This kind of pop opera might wow critics but very rarely wowed audiences. As Marc Shaiman, the composer of "Hairspray," said to The New York Times, "It's not that I don't adore Sondheim. . . . I just don't know why everyone else felt they had to emulate him so."

To wonder what would have happened to the musical if it had followed in Bernstein's more upbeat tracks is not idle speculation, because in a sense, for reasons both cultural and economic, the genre has come back toward him. While no one is in his class as a composer who could wed the sophistication of classical music with the vernacular of popular music, three of the more successful musicals recently -- "Ragtime," "The Producers," and "Hairspray" -- are more in the Bernstein tradition than in the Sondheim line.

In "Ragtime," despite the deaths of the two main African-American characters, there's still a sense of joyfulness in anthemic themes such as "Wheels of a Dream" and a sense of optimism that things will be better for the next generation. The zaftig and African-American characters in "Hairspray," like Candide, are outsiders who will ultimately prevail against the establishment. "The Producers" revels in the mischievous buoyancy that typifies "Candide." (If only Mel Brooks and collaborator Thomas Meehan had written the book for "Candide," instead of Hellman.) And that bouncy sensibility is everywhere in the music.

Why shouldn't it work? After all, when you take such qualities out of the musical, "West Side Story" becomes "The Capeman," Paul Simon's dour, unsuccessful attempt to crack Broadway.

In 1973 Bernstein came to Harvard to deliver a series of lectures on classical music entitled "The Unanswered Question." He argued that music, like language, needed to obey certain universal laws, and that while the atonal avant-garde -- Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Boulez -- was not without interest, tonality was an essential ingredient of music. The notion seemed conservative, if not reactionary, in its time. Now that tonality rules again, the lectures seem way ahead of their time.

Perhaps there are certain laws for the Broadway musical as well. If so, there's a lot to learn from "West Side Story" and "Candide."

Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com.