Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies), McHugh, Dominic [fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

odd way, and “Higgins” to a tee. We wrote a new song, which frames an entire interlude of a soliloquy that contains bits of “I Can See Her Now” and “I’m an Ordinary Man,” all with new lyrics, of course. We want to let it marinate for a few days after it’s finished, which is our custom … [T]he melody itself is very simple (only twenty bars).58

Lerner later claimed that “By the first week in December, Fritz and I had … begun work on what was eventually to become ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.’… We finished ‘Accustomed’ a few days before Christmas.”59 Clearly this is not completely accurate, since Lerner’s letter is explicit in both having found the “Accustomed” theme (lasting “only twenty bars”) and having decided to return to existing themes. They must have begun work in mid-October or November.

That fits in well with Outline 4 (from around September 1955). Scene 6 of act 2 is set on the Embankment of the Thames at sunset, with Higgins and “Passersby (number to be determined).” The reference to the “Passersby” becomes clear in the rehearsal script. Between the sixth and seventh scenes of the second act is a page describing the scene change:

(In the darkness the female voices of the Ensemble are heard singing gaily)

GAY FEMALES

There’ll be spring every year without you.

England still will be here without you.

I can still have a dream

And it’s liable to seem

Even more like a dream

Without you.

I can do … I can do … (repeat)

Without you … (repeat three times)

(The voices trail off, as the next scene begins)

This was rather an odd transition—anonymous voices floating out of nowhere—though psychologically it illustrated how Eliza’s song was echoing round Higgins’s head. This little reprise was kept in the show until a fairly late stage: it is included in the copyist’s piano-vocal score of “Accustomed to Her Face” used in rehearsals (several copies survive in the Warner-Chappell Collection), and there is also a five-part choral score (SSSAA) for the number, consisting of the “Without You” reprise.60 The original version of the song began with the same two-bar flourish that the published version begins with; but instead of going to “Accustomed” via a short orchestral blast of the “Let a woman in your life” theme, the original had the “Without You” reprise, in G major (ex. 5.8). The repeated cries of “without you” at the end were written a cappella and ended on a G-major chord followed by a fermata. From there, Higgins was to launch into “Accustomed” without further introduction or transition.

Notably, the original version does not contain Higgins’s opening words from the definitive version: “Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!” A photocopy of a copyist’s score marked up by Rittmann for Bennett’s use shows that initially, although the “Without You” reprise was to be removed, it was not yet replaced by the thirteen-bar orchestral passage and Higgins’s cries of “Damn!” (lasting three bars, making a total of sixteen). Rittmann simply crossed out the “Without You” material and above the first bar of the melody of “Accustomed” wrote: “orch. alone, rich but mellow.” This brings the bar into line with the published version, in which Higgins says “I’ve grown accustomed to her face!” during a tacet, before the orchestra plays the first bar of music; then Higgins sings the next line (which Rittmann also indicates with “He sings:”).61 A separate two-page score, with “Intro to ‘Accustomed’” on the front in Loewe’s hand and the music in Rittmann’s, gives the entire revised introduction including Higgins’s opening blasts of “Damn!”62

Ex. 5.8. “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” original introduction.

The copyist’s score contains even more unfamiliar material. Originally, Higgins’s mid-song speech in which he introduces the idea of Eliza marrying Freddy was delivered over thirty-two bars of orchestral music that anticipated the “I can see her now, Missus Freddy Eynsford-Hill” section, which immediately follows (and which had also appeared in the cut “Come to the Ball”), rather than during an orchestral tacet.63 Perhaps the most significant excision occurred to the reference to “I’m an Ordinary Man.” Originally, Lerner and Loewe used a whole verse of the song:

I’m a most forgiving man:

Not inclined to be vindictive

Or to harbour any spite;

The sort of chap who when he’s needed

Will come through with all his might.

A lenient man am I,

Who never bears a grudge;

The sort who never could,

Ever would,

Take a position and staunchly never budge.

Just a most forgiving man.

In the final version, lines two to seven (in italics) are cut, leaving a brief, five-line reminiscence. This allows the song to wear its looseness of form more lightly: by connecting the material more smoothly and lingering less on the “Ordinary Man” theme, it does not stand out so obviously and gains its own character rather than seeming too flagrantly pasted in from elsewhere.

There was one additional small change to the lyric, but otherwise the copyist’s score runs in line with the published version up to the end of the sung section.64 It does not, however, include the orchestral verse of “Accustomed” or the underscored reprise of “I Could Have Danced” that heralds Eliza’s return. This material was provided by Rittmann in a handwritten piano score.65 She addressed Bennett in a couple of sentences at the start: “Russell: At end of Soliloquy: one full chorus of “Accustomed” in F (strict Tempo di Rodgers—ma molto espressivo!!) for scene change into study (last scene of show).”66 She then wrote out the last two bars of this full chorus and moved onto “I Could Have Danced,” which is roughly in its final state. Below this, she wrote the familiar “Higgins: ‘Eliza, where the devil are my slippers,’” but the final six bars of the show remain in B-flat major rather than moving to the definitive key, E flat. In Bennett’s orchestration, however, the final phrase has already been changed to this key, so Rittmann or Loewe must have told him separately to do this. The orchestral score follows the copyist’s score in terms of the lyric anomalies,67 but there