Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Tuesday, November 23, 2010


We did not mean to neglect Jerry Bock's death, but Steven Suskin's excellent cast-album column affords us a perfect opportunity to correct this, for he comes up with a typically fine observation: Bock and his partner Sheldon Harnick

were basically dramatists, who wrote scenes with music. Scenes with music don't make, and aren't intended to make, pop hits. Fiddler, oddly enough, proves the point.

He confirms what we said about Tevye, the first-rough-draft version of Fiddler: the two men "were thinking things through in music", and they thought up enough inspired moments to make a great musical. It is true Bock virtually retired when he fell out with Harnick, but Fiddler never did, and that is monumentally enduring enough.

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