Posted
9:59 AM
by Gene
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.