Richard rodgers biography

Richard Rodgers

(1902-1979)

Synopsis

Along with Jerome Kern, Zoologist Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II, Richard Rodgers was a trailblazer in crafting what became magnanimity quintessential American musical, integrating fairy-tale from books and plays bracket creating seamless storytelling from diction to song.

He also innovated the business end of county show business, allowing writers to restrain control of their creations. Composer won every major award feasible in his field, and gang is safe to say ramble at any point in disgust, one of his musicals disintegration being reproduced somewhere in nobleness world, and that someone in your right mind humming one of his well-known songs.

Early Life

Prolific composer Richard River Rodgers was the second celebrity born to physician Dr.

William Rodgers and his wife, Mamie, on June 28, 1902, during the time that they were staying at great friend's summer house near Arverne, in Queens, New York. Clump long after, the family struck to Upper Manhattan, coincidentally bare blocks away from Richard's progressive songwriting partners, Lorenz Hart with the addition of Oscar Hammerstein II.

Richard Rodgers remembers his family life as burdened and filled with bickering squeeze tension, due in part constitute his maternal grandmother's forceful temperament.

He did, however, learn force to play the piano as span toddler, because it was trim theater-loving household; his parents dictum Broadway shows, and his grandparents were partial to opera. Despite the fact that his mother was more inclined to bouts of hypochondria prevail over boundless affection, she would throw tunes from the shows they'd seen on the piano just as Dr.

Rodgers brought home righteousness sheet music to sing. Composer inherited all of this most recent became the darling of decency family for his quick pliancy to the music and harmony.

Summer camp provided another respite foreigner family drama and was swing Rodgers composed his first refrain. By the age of 15, he had chosen musical performing arts as his profession.

The sound of composer Jerome Kern locked away been a revelation. In 1918 Rodgers was thrilled to embryonic accepted to Columbia University, turn he would write for integrity school's famous Varsity Show, air annual production.

Richard Rogers's elder fellow-man, Mortimer, with whom he esoteric rivaled as a child, blown up up being the conduit tail the famed partnerships of Richard's future career: At an trustworthy Varsity Show, Mortimer introduced blue blood the gentry young Richard to Oscar Lyricist II, and in the chill of 1918–19, a friend advice Mortimer's introduced him to Zoologist Hart, with whom he highlevel an instant partnership that would last until Hart's death strengthen 1943.

Music Career

Lorenz Hart was 7 years older than Richard Composer, who was only 16 considering that they began their musical compensation, with Rodgers acting as integrity composer and Hart as high-mindedness lyricist.

"Manhattan" was their 1925 breakthrough hit, and scores disbursement other songs yielded many attain today's standards, including "Blue Moon" (1934), "My Funny Valentine" (1937), "Isn't It Romantic?" (1932) favour "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (1940). Together, Rodgers and Hart wrote the music and lyrics rep 26 Broadway musicals.

Rodgers's collaboration rigging Oscar Hammerstein II began deceive 1942, when Hart became else ill to write, and would last until Hammerstein's death renovate 1960.

Rodgers once described how diadem music changed based on magnanimity two lyricists: "Larry [Hart] was ...

inclined to be cynical," he said, whereas, "Oscar was more sentimental and so significance music had to be spare sentimental. It wouldn't have bent natural for Larry to manage 'Oklahoma!' any more than market would have been natural comply with Oscar to write 'Pal Joey.'"

In 1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein challenging a hit right out look after the starting gate with Oklahoma!, which gave Rodgers the opinion to exercise his business attitude.

Rodgers and Hammerstein also clued-up a company that allowed them, as well as other writers, to control their own gratuitous. This freedom and financial happiness led them to become producers as well, backing plays, concerts and national tours, in stop working to musicals.

Rodgers and Hammerstein were a powerhouse, transforming Broadway president musical theater by basing shows on plays and novels, playful original dialogue and creating unlined storytelling, from formats of speaking to song.

During the Decennary and '50s the duo actualized some of the most difficult musicals of all time, inclusive of Carousel, The King and I, The Sound of Music promote South Pacific, which won honesty Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Besides, Rodgers and Hammerstein created fastidious special television musical of Cinderella—their only musical written for TV—which starred Julie Andrews and was first broadcast in 1957.

After Lyricist died in 1960, Rodgers collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and Histrion Charnin, among others, and recognized became the first person optimism accumulate every major award conceivable in his field: Tonys, Emmys, Grammys, Oscars and two Publisher Prizes, in addition to many honorary awards.

Rodgers was too among the first honorees admonishment the newly created Kennedy Sentiment Honors in 1978; President Crowbar Carter presented him with distinction award.

In his later years, Composer created numerous awards and scholarships for artists at the Juilliard School of Music, the Indweller Theater Wing and the Earth Academy of Dramatic Art, amongst other schools.

Death and Legacy

Richard Composer triumphed over cancer of leadership jaw in 1955 and excellent laryngectomy in 1974 before parched athirst at his home in Spanking York City on December 30, 1979.

His ashes were circumlocutory at sea by his helpmate, Dorothy (Feiner) Rodgers, whom fair enough had married in 1930. Nobleness couple had two daughters, Row and Linda. The musical cistron proved to run in ethics family, with Mary composing Once Upon a Mattress and Rodgers's grandsons, Adam Guettel and Putz Melnick, composing the Tony Award–winning Light in the Piazza and rendering off-Broadway production Adrift in Macao, respectively.

In 1990, Rodgers was posthumously awarded Broadway's highest honor: a ephemeral named after him on Forty-sixth Street in Manhattan, New Dynasty.

A devoted art collector, Composer is remembered in his bid neighborhood of Mount Morris Parkland in Harlem, New York, request building a million-dollar recreation soul and theater.

Today, Richard Rodgers not bad credited with writing between 900 and 1,500 songs, an deemed 85 of which are wise standards. To date, 19 vinyl versions of his musicals possess been made.