One of the first pieces of truly American music (West Side Story - Soundtrack)

Member Name: tom391

Product:	West Side Story - Soundtrack
Date:	03/04/03 (146 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fisrt of its type - completely unique

Disadvantages: none

West Side Story was instantly hailed as a masterpiece of modern American theatre (and, later, cinema). It created a completely new concept, a fusion of American and European traditions, a cross between opera and musical comedy.

The use of delicate voice harmonies was borrowed from the European school of theatre, along with the idea of using music as a way of advancing the plot.

The obvious influence of American styles in the score is the definite sense of exotic jazz and latin rhythms.

All of these ideas were bundled together for the first time into what Bernstein labelled "Symphonic Dances". Indeed, as proof that he was among the first to implement jazz in orchestral music, he had to write it in compound time, which to all you non-musical folk out there, means that for every slow beat, there are three 'sub-beats' inside. Jazz is usually written in plain-old 'four-in-a-bar', which is much more common.

As many of you may know, West Side Story is a modern stage adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The two rivalling families of the Shakespeare play are represented as two warring street gangs of Manhattan's lower west side: the Jets are Americans, born and bred; the Sharks are Puerto Rican immigrants.

There are many musical gems in this soundtrack, including the Jet Song, Maria, America, Tonight, I Feel Pretty, Officer Krupke, and Somewhere, which are all very famous pieces of American music, so much so that, although you may not recognise them from their titles, I would wager that you would be familiar with at least 80% of the music on this CD.

My personal favourites have to include Somewhere, Officer Krupke and the Jet Song, due to the fact that I performed them in a play, and never had more fun in my life. Having to go through choreography, word learning and harmony learning, nothing makes you appresiciate such a great piece of music. Performed well, Krupke is nothing
short of hilarious, and the visual comedy coupled with the great music makes you realise how special this music is.

Although this is the soundtrack to a film/theatre production, the music is of such a quality that it makes great listening even if you have never seen the visual side of things, but if you ever have the opportunity, I urge you to go see it.

Leonard Bernstein was one of the first real American composers. He, along with Aa
ron Copland and a few others, were the first to make an actual genre of music America's own, rather than a spin-off of European music. This is a superb piece of music. Please buy it, put it in your CD player, and appreciate a master of modern composition.

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