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Shakespeare has inspired countless and varied performances, works of art and pieces of writing. He has also inspired music. In this 400th year since Shakespeare's death we asked five composers 'how did you approach setting the Shakespeare text you chose for your recent work?'

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Richard Causton’s studies took him from the University of York via the Royal College of Music and the Scuola Civica in Milan, to King’s College, Cambridge where he is Lecturer in Composition. In addition to composition, Causton writes and lectures on Italian contemporary music and regularly broadcasts for Italian radio. In our occasional series, in which we ask Oxford composers questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, and challenges, we spoke with Richard Causton about his writing, new music, and his desert island playlist.

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The extraordinarily innovative American composer Henry Cowell took Europe by storm as a touring pianist in the 1920s, playing his unforgettable compositions that often required using the entire forearm to play dozens of keys simultaneously. In later years he returned to give talks about his music and American music under the auspices of the State Department.

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Even though I recently turned sixty and have taught at colleges and conservatories, when I hear the words “back to school,” the image that springs to mind is of my teenage self as a Juilliard student in the 1970s. If I ask that self what my main educational breakthrough from those years was, the answer surprises me: discovering what actors learn. Actors study their own emotions.

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By Rhiannon Mathias

My father was a man of exceptional energy. Warm and generous in character, he lived several different kinds of musical lives. First and foremost, of course, as a composer, but also conductor, pianist, public figure, Professor of Music at Bangor University (1970-88) and Artistic Director of the North Wales Music Festival (1972-92). All these different strands amounted to a phenomenal workload, and took up a great deal of time, but he felt that he couldn’t write music 24 hours a day, and that he could give something meaningful to society and move it on. It did mean that he had to be extremely well organized, but I think that he found that all the different aspects of his life helped him to produce the music he wanted to write in the end. Much of his music was composed in our family home in the town of Menai Bridge on the beautiful island of Anglesey, and our house was also ‘mission control’ when he was planning his Music Festival.

His working day usually started at 9 a.m., and he often drove me to school in the mornings in his ‘English red’ (actually, bright orange) Mercedes on his way to the University. I think he quite enjoyed his time at the University. There was not as much paperwork as there is these days, and he enjoyed the lecturing and was very popular with his students. He was affectionately known as ‘Prof’, and my mother, who was head of singing at the Department, was ‘Mrs. M’. His office took up the entire top floor of the music building. I recall a grand piano (model D, of course), bookshelves weighed down with the history of Western music, and an enormous desk bearing scores and papers.

There is a story about him which dates from his time when he was a young lecturer at Bangor in the 1960s. He would begin his lecture, and after about ten minutes would reach for his pipe and light a match while still enthusing about his subject. The students would watch the match burn down, whereupon he would put it out and place it in his jacket pocket. Without breaking his speech, he would reach for another match, light it, and the process would repeat until, by the end of the lecture, he was left with one unlit pipe and a pocket of spent matches. Later, when he became a Professor, he rarely made negative comments about concerts given at the University, but if he was not, how shall I say, fully musically engaged, he would take his glasses off and wipe them with his tie. We all came to realise that this was the ultimate critical comment!

When he got home from the University, my mother would have a delicious meal ready for him. His day was far from over, however. Unless my parents were hosting a dinner party – my mother is an excellent cook – he would go to his studio after supper and compose until the early hours of the morning. These regular, ‘golden’ hours, enabled him to compose nearly 200 published works, including three symphonies, several concertos, chamber music, a great deal of choral music, and a full-scale opera, The Servants. Such a routine seems extraordinary, but it is important to understand that music was an ever-present force for my father. I was aware from a very early age that the creative process was something always present for him — even when he was doing something else — and that it was a force which he could turn in any desired direction or channel at a given time. Hence his ability to compose a wide variety of orchestral, choral, instrumental or chamber music, as well as music for the church and for young people.

I could always tell when a piece was gestating in his mind because he would become intensely thoughtful and preoccupied. When the time was right, he would roughly sketch the piece, trying out a few ideas on one of the two pianos in his studio, and then attend to the detailed work of producing his meticulously tidy manuscripts — always in black ink (this was in the days before Sibelius). The majority of his works were written to commission, and from as far back as I can remember, he usually had to plan two, often three years in advance in order to meet the demand of commissions he wanted to fulfil. He told me that sometimes, after finishing his composition in the early hours, he used to pop into my bedroom when I was very young and find me standing up in my cot, waiting for him to come and say goodnight.

His enormous work commitments meant that we, as a family, rarely went on holiday during the summer. There were, however, regular trips to Whitland in South Wales, my father’s home town, to visit my grandmother Marian, and I recall a wonderful holiday in Greece – impressions of which partly became the inspiration for his Melos for flute, harp, percussion and strings (1977) and Helios for orchestra (1977). In 1982, we went to America where my father embarked on an immensely successful tour of the East coast involving lectures, performances, and workshops in Boston, New York, Athens in Georgia, and San Antonio in Texas. The connection with the States was a lasting one and, after my father’s retirement from Bangor University in 1988, it became usual for him to visit America twice, often three times a year.

At the beginning of 1992, my father was commissioned to write a symphony (his fourth) by the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra. Sadly, the new symphony was not to come to fruition — he passed away in July 1992 — but the true, creative artist has an uncanny ability to transcend mortality. He would have been 80 in November, and it is wonderful that his anniversary is being celebrated this year by a series of concerts, festivals, and new publications. His vibrant character – full of vitality, optimism, and joy – very much lives on in his music.

Rhiannon Mathias is a musicologist, broadcaster, and flautist. She is the author of a book about the music of Elisabeth Lutyens, Elizabeth Maconchy, and Grace Williams (Ashgate 2012) and lectures on Twentieth-Century Women Composers at Bangor University. She is also a Trustee of the William Mathias Music Centre in north Wales.

William Mathias was born in Whitland, Dyfed. He studied at the University College of Wales, and subsequently at the Royal Academy of Music. From 1970-1988 he was Head of the Music Department at the University College of North Wales, Bangor. Mathias musical language embraced both instrumental and vocal forms with equal success, and he addressed a large and varied audience both in Britain and abroad. He was also known as a conductor and pianist, and gave or directed many premières of his own works. He was made CBE in the 1985 New Year’s Honours. In 1992, the year of his death, Nimbus Records embarked upon a series of recordings of his major works.

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We asked our composers a series of questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, challenges, and various other things on the theme of music and their careers. Each month we will bring you answers from an OUP composer, giving you an insight into their music and personalities. Today, we share our interview with composer and cellist Aaron Minsky. Visit his YouTube channel for an insight into the man and his music.

Which of your pieces are you most proud of and holds the most significance for you?

I am most proud of my concerto, The Conqueror. It utilizes the experience of 30 years of cello performing and composing plus a lifetime of study of the great orchestral works. Written during the immensely threatening Hurricane Sandy, it is imbued with drama and power. The piece is loosely based on the life of Genghis Khan and contains Mongolian-type melodies synthesized with rock cello concepts. I am thrilled with the prospect of seeing it performed in major concert halls. I gave the world premiere this spring in New York City with the Staten Island Philharmonic.

Which composer were you most influenced by and which of their pieces has had the most impact on you?

My solo cello works reveal my debt to J. S. Bach. I considered his Cello Suites the ‘Bible’ of cello composing and loved how he utilized the range of the instrument to create self-standing contrapuntal gems. As great as his suites are, I wanted to create new suites with modern musical influences to carry on the tradition. I knew I could never match the loftiness of Bach, but I felt I could fill a gap in the repertoire with new techniques and styles, and do it with an emphasis on joy!

Can you describe the first piece of music you ever wrote?

Most of my early pieces were songs, but my very first composition was in the style of Mozart. I was aware of the great composers even before I became influenced by the music of my generation.

Have the challenges you face as a composer changed over the course of your career?

The biggest challenge is staying relevant. It’s hard to believe that my first publication with OUP dates back to the 1980s. The Cold War was ending, the dollar was strong, and the Soviet Union was in shambles. The popularity of the United States was at a high and American culture was embraced around the world. In this climate, Ten American Cello Etudes was a perfect fit. Then globalization took hold, multiculturalism became the byword, and Ten International Cello Encores reflected this change. Most recently, Pop Goes the Cello proposes a new popular style of cello playing beyond the confines of any particular region.

If you could have been present at the premiere of any one work (other than your own) which would it be?

The most inspiring premiere that ever took place had to have been Beethoven‘s Ninth. A previous OUPblog describes it this way: ‘Back to the audience, facing the orchestra, the composer steadily marked the tempo with his hands. He was not conducting, though — he was deaf. Thus it was that, when the orchestra and chorus finished, he could not hear the applause and cheers of the Vienna audience. When a musician turned him around so he could see the joy on listeners’ faces, Ludwig van Beethoven bowed in gratitude — and wept.’

What is the last piece of music you listened to?

Whatever was on the radio. I tend to surf around and listen to a wide range of music — from the classics to rock to jazz to world music.

What might you have been if you weren’t a composer?

I might have been a rock star. My early influences were bands that combined classical music with rock such as the Beatles. I was also influenced by improvising bands, like the Grateful Dead. While still in high school I became a professional guitarist. Feeling that Hendrix, Clapton, and a few others had done just about all one could with a guitar I saw the cello as open territory. I was ready to plant my flag when, due to changing musical currents, the curtain fell on experimental rock ending my dream. I remember around that time staring at a picture of Fernando Sor (the great guitar etude writer) and thinking, I may never become a rock star but I bet I could preserve my melodies in cello etudes. Thus the composer seed was planted.

What piece of music have you discovered lately?

After my trip to England last year I was inspired to dig into its great symphonic heritage. I listened to the complete symphonies of Vaughan Williams among others. I have particularly enjoyed Vaughan Williams’s London Symphony (in which I hear shades of one of my heroes, George Gershwin).

Is there an instrument you wish you had learned to play and do you have a favourite work for that instrument?

I wish I had studied keyboards earlier. That would have been helpful for my composing. There are so many great pieces. If I had to pick a favorite I’d say Brahms‘ Second Piano Concerto. But I love many instruments including the french horn, the English horn, the bass clarinet, even the contra-bassoon — all of which are featured in my concerto!

Is there a piece of music you wish you had written?

Of course I wish I had written the Dvořák Cello Concerto. But I am glad to have composed the Minsky and am honored to be following in his footsteps.

What would be your desert island play list? (three pieces)

I would do what I usually do when I travel — listen to the music from where I am. Since this island would be surrounded by the ocean I would listen to the music of the sea! First on my list would be La Mer by Debussy, which captures the bluster of the glorious, churning sea. Then I’d pick A Sea Symphony of Vaughan Williams for its depth and powerful exploration of emotions connected with the sea. Finally, I would pick Jimi Hendrix’s 1983 A Merman I Should Turn to Be for its imaginative depiction of life under the sea.

How has your music changed throughout your career?

This is best answered by taking a trip to my website. I have audio clips of myself as young as 13 years old jamming out on guitar in every rock style I could muster. Some of the songs I wrote at age 14 have held up pretty well. You can hear in the tapes I made from age 16, the onset of classical influences. You can also hear the birth of the ‘celtar’. In the tapes from my college years you hear the influence of jazz, world music, and improvisation. We also hear the early days of my career as a classical cellist. From there my move back into rock can be heard with clips of the Von Cello Band. The website pretty much ends with Von Cello but will soon be updated to show how I have moved back toward classical, especially in my compositions … which brings us back to the first question about which piece I am most proud. I hope my concerto will be just the first step in the next chapter of my life: Aaron Minsky — orchestral composer.

American cellist, Aaron Minsky’s compositions are standard repertoire, his music appearing in the curriculums of the ABRSM, the American String Teachers’ Association, and the Australian Music Examinations Board. Aaron has given masterclasses and performances in the United States, England and Ireland, and has an Australian tour planned for later this summer. Also known as Von Cello, Aaron has appeared on radio and television and has performed with a wide range of artists from David Bowie and Tony Bennett to Mstislav Rostropovitch. Aaron’s ‘celtar’ style (which combines cello and guitar technique) has entered both the popular and classical musical worlds. He had a broad musical education, studying with Harvey Shapiro and Channing Robbins of Juilliard, Jonathan Miller of the Boston Symphony, George Saslow, Einar Holm, and David Wells of Manhattan School of Music where he obtained a Master of Music degree. More at Aaron Minsky’s website.

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Image credit: Image courtesy of Aaron Minsky.

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We asked our composers a series of questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, challenges, and various other things on the theme of music and their careers. Each month we will bring you answers from an OUP composer, giving you an insight into their music and personalities. Today, we share our interview with composer Hilary Tann. 

Hilary Tann, photo credit: Lawrence White.

Praised for its lyricism and formal balance, Hilary Tann’s music is influenced by her love of Wales and a strong identification with the natural world. A deep interest in the traditional music of Japan has led to private study of the shakuhachi and guest visits to Japan, Korea, and China. Her compositions have been widely performed and recorded by ensembles such as the European Womenʼs Orchestra, Tenebrae, Lontano, Meininger Trio, Thai Philharmonic, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, and KBS Philharmonic in Seoul, South Korea.

Which of your pieces are you most proud of and/or holds the most significance to you?

The large orchestral work, From Afar, comes to mind immediately. I especially enjoyed the Korean Broadcast Symphony performance because it captured the sense of the traditional music of Japan so well. From the chamber music repertory, Nothing Forgotten (piano trio) stands out as an Adirondack piece, and from the choral repertory, The Moor (SA) recalls Wales and my interest in sacred music.

Which composer were you most influenced by and which of their pieces has had the most impact on you? 

In the early days I was influenced by the music of Roberto Gerhard, especially Libra, Hymnody, and the Concerto for Orchestra. In fact, I began postgraduate work with Jonathan Harvey in Southampton University, studying Gerhard’s oeuvre, and it was this work which initially took me to Princeton University in the United States.

Can you describe the first piece of music you ever wrote?

The Wye Valley for piano. When he interviewed me for BBCWales, Ian Skidmore called this “the beginning of my tradition of being inspired by nature”. I responded that at age 6 I wasn’t thinking that I was beginning a tradition!

If you could have been present at the premiere of any one work (other than your own) which would it be?

Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 — all the pageantry, all those timbres, wonderful!

What might you have been if you weren’t a composer?

A geologist. I grew up when plate tectonics were coming into the public eye and, coming from Wales, rocks have always excited me. But actually, writing music has been at the forefront ever since I can remember.

What is your favourite piece of music in the OUP catalogue that isn’t yours? 

Hard to say. . . lots . . . but I loved William Matthias‘s Symphony No. 2 (Summer Music) when I first heard it, and John Buller‘s Theatre of Memory bowled me over on first listening.

Is there an instrument you wish you had learnt to play and do you have a favourite work for that instrument?

Harp — not so much the Romantic harp, but the works of Turlough O’Carolan — Celtic harp. In fact I did take lessons some 20 years ago before writing From the Song of Amergin (fl, va, hp) and I really enjoyed getting to know the 43-string instrument. (My main instruments are piano and cello, but my hands are small for these, whereas I’m told have “good” harp hands. Perhaps one day I can return to this haunting sound world.)

Is there a piece of music you wish you had written? 

The Bach Cello Suites — especially the preludes and sarabandes. I’ve always loved the narrative solo line and enjoy writing pieces for solo instruments. In fact, I’ve just completed Seven Poems of Stillness for Guy Johnston (Gregynog Festival, June 2013).

Welsh-born composer Hilary Tann lives in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York where she is the John Howard Payne Professor of Music at Union College, Schenectady. She holds degrees in composition from the University of Wales at Cardiff and from Princeton University. From 1982 to 1995 she held a number of Executive Committee positions with the International League of Women Composers. She was guest Composer-in-Residence at the 2011 Eastman School of Music Women in Music Festival and will be composer-in-residence at the 2013 Women Composers Festival of Hartford.

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Hearing is clearly the most important sense for a musician, particularly a composer, so the trauma of experiencing difficulties with this sense is hard to imagine. Beethoven famously suffered deteriorating hearing for much of his adult life; an affliction which brought him to despair at times. The cause of his deafness is still unknown, although much speculated upon, but the composer’s feelings about his situation are well-documented: Beethoven kept ‘Conversation Books’ full of discussions of his music and other issues which give a unique insight into his thoughts, and in a letter to his brothers (the Heiligenstadt Testament) he wrote a heart-wrenching description of his sense of despair and isolation caused by his inability to hear.

Despite his catastrophic loss of hearing Beethoven continued to compose — producing some of the greatest works in Western musical history. So how was this possible? How can a musician, particularly a composer, continue without full, or even hyper-sensitive, hearing?

We can get a modern day insight from Michael Berkeley — one of OUP’s composers who, over recent years, has been struggling with hearing troubles himself. Berkeley’s hearing damage was the result of a blocked ear, brought on by a fairly minor cold, which has caused irreparable nerve damage. These days there’s better help available to sufferers of hearing loss. However, sound distortion remains a problem, and hearing aids can only help so far, as Berkeley explains:

“Music was appallingly distorted, and in fact I couldn’t go to concerts as it was just so painful. I got a condition called hyperacusis, where loud sounds are unbearably painful. I got some very good digital hearing aids which made a great difference to speech, but it can only amplify what I’m already hearing so it didn’t help for music.”

Michael Berkeley explains how he continued to write music:

“If you are trained as a composer you can write in your head: you hear the sounds internally, and you’ve been trained how to get those sounds onto the page without a piano or any intermediary. It’s something you learn to do gradually through lots of hard work and by instinct. The problem is, when the music is played back I can’t comment very usefully: what I hear may not be what the conductor or the rest of the audience hear…it could be my hearing disability is distorting the real sound.

“The extraordinary thing is, I realised after a number of months that I was beginning to hear music more clearly. I remember there was a Haydn string quartet on, and I suddenly realised I was hearing it better: I was so overjoyed that I went to bed with an iPod and played it all night long! Apparently what can happen is that the brain begins to rewire itself. We hear with our brains — the ear is essentially a conduit — so if you have a template of musical knowledge then the brain begins to compensate for the distortions. My brain is learning to reprocess sound, and so it’s like discovering music anew: it’s absolutely wonderful!

“I’ve always thought that less is more. In Beethoven’s late music, particularly the late string quartets, the music is pared down to the absolute essentials, and I now find in my writing, partly because I can hear better when I play it back, that I’m beginning to concentrate much more on the essence of the sound and try to rid it of extraneous notes.

“I do feel that the music I’ve written in these last two years is actually as good as everything I’d written up until then: hopefully better.”

Michael Berkeley is the composer of a substantial number of highly acclaimed works, including three operas which have been produced in Europe, America and Australia. In addition to having been an associate composer to both the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Berkeley has had performances of his works given by many of the world’s finest orchestras, ensembles, soloists and opera companies, and many of his works have been released on CD. He is currently composing an anthem for the service of enthronement of Archbishop of Canterbury-elect, Justin Welby, in March 2013.

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By Kathryn Kalinak

The world of film lost one of the greats on Sunday:  composer John Barry.  British by birth, he carved a place for himself in Hollywood, winning five Oscars over the course of his career.  He cut his teeth on James Bond films – Dr. No, (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965) – and went on to compose seven more.  There was something both elegant and hip about these scores, a kind of jazzy sophistication that connoted fast cars, beautiful women, and martinis, shaken not stirred, that is.  A jack of all musical trades, he turned to Born Free (1966) and gave it a lush symphonic score and hit song.  By 1966, when he won his first Academy Awards (and he won two that year:  Best Song and Best Score for Born Free), he became one of the most high profile film composers in the world.  He was only 33.

He had an eclectic taste when it came to choosing films – small independent films, huge studio epics, and everything in between – coupled with wide-ranging and versatile compositional skill that could produce a twangy country and western-inspired score for Midnight Cowboy (1969), a jazz-infused score for The Cotton Club (1984), an anxiety-filled score for The Ipcress File (1965), a sensual score for Body Heat (1981), a synthesized score for The Jagged Edge (1985), and a symphonic sound for Out of Africa (1985).  He will largely be remembered, though, for those Bond scores – as well he should.  They musically define the texture of those films, their time and place, and above all Bond himself with the electric guitar riff that Barry brought to the 007 theme.

But it is the score for Dances With Wolves (1990) that I will remember him for.  Like Out of Africa, it is lush, symphonic, melody-laden.  But like no other western score that I know of, it manages to avoid the stereotypes for Indians that riddle many of Hollywood’s best western film scores.  And I am certainly not the first or the only one to notice this:  no tom-tom rhythms, no modal harmonies, no use of fourths and fifths, no dissonance to represent the Sioux

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Earlier this week, Jerry Bock (perhaps best known for Fiddler on the Roof) passed away, the day after he was honored with Lifetime Achievement Award from the Dramatists Guild. Below, Philip Lambert remembers the great composer.

By Philip Lambert

After an apprenticeship in early television, and at Camp Tamiment, a summer camp for adults, in the early 1950s, Bock made his Broadway debut with three songs in a revue, Catch a Star! (1955). At that time he wrote mostly with Larry Holofcener, whom he had met at the University of Wisconsin. Bock and Holofcener also teamed with George David Weiss to create a star vehicle for Sammy Davis, Jr., Mr. Wonderful in 1956. But when Bock began working with Sheldon Harnick in 1957 – they were introduced by a mutual friend, Jack Cassidy – his music began truly to blossom and sparkle. Bock and Harnick wrote hundreds of songs of infinite variety in support of disparate stories and characters. Feeding off each other’s formidable talents, the partnership thrived until an array of forces sent them their separate ways in the early 1970s. After that Bock mostly wrote his own lyrics for other new shows, including a very successful series of musicals for young audiences between 2000 and 2007, and music for a feature film (Sidney Lumet’s A Stranger Among Us, 1992). He also worked on personal, private songwriting projects during the last four decades, yielding autobiographical song cycles (Album Leaves, Trading Places) and thematic collections (Noblesse O’ Blues, Three/Four All).

Jerry Bock was the master of what Lehman Engel called the “musical costume.” He could dress up a song in any style, from the nineteenth-century parlor song (for Tenderloin) to the jazz shouter (in The Apple Tree). He would immerse himself in the style and culture of the story he was helping to tell and then transport the audience there with musical references and flavorings. In She Loves Me he took us to Hungary, in The Rothschilds to the power centers of eighteenth-century Europe. In his most successful show, Fiddler on the Roof, he drew from his own background and heritage to evoke a turn-of-the-century Russian shtetl. Of that experience, he said in 2008, “I simply could not stop the brood of melodies and harmonies that waited to be born.”

There was, in other words, no single Jerry Bock “style.” His style was simply an acute sensitivity to the dramatic requirements of the project at hand. He and Harnick would work tirelessly on each of their scores searching for perfect dramatic support, during development, rehearsals, and pre-Broadway tours, usually producing two or three times the number of songs a

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By Philip Lambert

They never had the marquee allure of Rodgers and Hammerstein. They didn’t enjoy the longevity of their contemporaries Kander and Ebb, who wrote songs for shows like Cabaret and Chicago for almost forty-two years. But they are one of Broadway’s most critically acclaimed and commercially successful songwriting teams, and on November 1, 2010, composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick will be honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Dramatists Guild, at a ceremony in New York.

It may be difficult for Bock and Harnick to find room for the new statuettes on their mantels, which are already crowded with Tony Awards (for Fiorello! in 1960 and Fiddler on the Roof in 1965), a Pulitzer Prize (Fiorello!), New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards (Fiorello! and Fiddler), and a Grammy (She Loves Me, 1963), among other honors. But the new award has the extra appeal of recognizing all of their work, not only the prize-winners but also their other Broadway shows – The Body Beautiful (1958), Tenderloin (1960), The Apple Tree (1966), and The Rothschilds (1970) – as well as the shows they wrote with other partners before they met in 1956 (such as Bock’s score for Sammy Davis, Jr.’s Broadway debut, Mr. Wonderful, in 1956), and the work they have done since they went their separate ways in 1970 (including Harnick’s lyrical contributions to Richard Rodgers’s penultimate musical, Rex, in 1976). They have taken their rightful places in the Broadway pantheon.

What were the secrets of their success? Indeed, what are the requirements for any successful songwriting team? Personal compatibility is a plus, of course, but not essential, as Gilbert and Sullivan proved. It’s a matter of debate whether George and Ira Gershwin wrote great songs together because of, or in spite of, their familial bond. And then there are the examples of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Stephen Sondheim, avoiding the issue entirely by writing both music and lyrics. But Bock and Harnick were, and still are, close friends. Their personalities complement each other, from opposite ends of a dispositional spectrum. As Harnick, the self-described pessimist, said in 1971, “Between us, we help bring the other either down to earth, or up to earth.” And it surely helped that each partner was well-schooled in the task of the other. Bock has always had a flair for verse and has served as his own lyricist on many occasions (including a very successful series of musicals for young audiences in 2000–07). Harnick is a classically trained violinist who has written both music and lyrics at various times throughout his career (for instance, the early revue numbers “Boston Beguine” [1952] and “Merry Little Minuet” [1953], and the more recent full-scale musical Dragons [1973–2006], for which he wrote book, music, and lyrics).

Most importantly, and most elusively, Bock and Harnick mastered the art of collaboration, of being productive members of complex creative teams. Working with book writers such as Joseph Stein and Joe Masteroff, and with directors such as Jerome Robbins, Harold Prince, George Abbott, and Mike Nichols, they learned to listen, to adapt, to evolve. They became experts in reading and shaping audience reactions, in knowing where and how music can enhance drama. They learned that a song is only as good as its dramatic context, that their best efforts in the studio might fall short on the stage and need to be replaced by something entirely new. They have estimated that they wrote two or three songs for every one that eventua