Ira Weitzman: What is the first Rodgers & Hammerstein song you ever heard?
Lin-Manuel Miranda: It was probably "My Favorite Things," because the annual Christmas event at my house was The Sound of Music. (Laughter) That was the movie we watched. And I wasn't even aware of Rodgers and Hammerstein as people. They were just part of Christmas.
John Bucchino: My Mom had Carousel, the boxed set of 45s. Other than that, we didn't have any theater music at all. But that was her favorite music ever, and she played it constantly. I think I just absorbed it by osmosis. At least, I hope I did. (Laughter)
IW: Do you recall the first time you actually saw Carousel?
JB: The first time I saw Carousel was here, at Lincoln Center Theater. My parents came to New York and I got them tickets as an anniversary gift. It was the completion of a very sweet circle.
Jeanine Tesori: In our family it was "Edelweiss," because I played it seventy-two times in a row at the piano. (Laughter) And at the end my mother said, "Okay, give her lessons." (Laughter)
IW: Everybody was very young when they first encountered Rodgers & Hammerstein-that speaks to their enormous cultural influence.
JT: There is an unbelievable purity to their work. In a piece Adam Guettel wrote for the Times, he said that the music of Richard Rodgers outlines its own harmony. I think that's one of the reasons kids respond to it. You can easily sing it. It's similar to the beauty of a folk song.
JB: I started playing piano when I was very little, just by ear. And it was the songs of Rodgers & Hammerstein that I heard, and it found its way through my fingers. It taught me how to create emotions in my own compositions. That profoundly affected my own writing.
IW: Could you speak a little bit about where the emotional quality of the music comes from?
JT: I worked on a music-education series once, and there was a taped interview with Richard Rodgers. It was unbelievable to hear him talk about his own music. And he was talking about the clip, clip, clop and the (singing) bum, bum, bum, bum, ba dah dah dah dah of "The Surrey with the Fringe on Top." He's melodically talking about love, and he's going higher and higher, but the rhythm is this kind of quotidian clip-clop. And he wasn't ever afraid to repeat notes, which is something we have become a little bit afraid of in contemporary musical and lyrical language. Rodgers had a wonderful balance of science and artistry.
LMM: Hammerstein kept his lyrics simple, in the best sense of the word-they feel inevitable and fresh.
JT: There's something about Oscar Hammerstein as a writer-perhaps it is his humanity-which I'm in love with. His songs are open to everybody, and they speak to these universal feelings. There are people who write it and don't seem to believe it the way Hammerstein did.
IW: I remember when I first got the Oscar Hammerstein lyric book. I'd turn to my favorite songs from South Pacific and I just saw how few words he used to explore the depths of emotions.
JB: And Rodgers's well-chosen notes-there was an economy of melody.
IW: Lin, you're the youngest one here-there's an economy in your language, and your style is very contemporary. Have you been inspired by the old show tunes?
LMM: All the time. It can be daunting, too. Right now, "Soliloquy" from Carousel is haunting me because I have a moment in Act I where I have a father singing about his daughter. And I can't help but keep going back to "Soliloquy." How am I ever going to fucking do it better than that? I was just listening to it this morning, actually, and the way that song ends is perfect. I was brought to tears.
IW: Rodgers & Hammerstein elevated musical theater storytelling to an art form at a time when songwriting was still essentially commerce.
JT: These two men conveyed that the world has an elegant design. There is a sophistication to their work that upon analysis shows itself, but upon hearing does not.
JB: I'm new to this whole world of theater writing. I used to want to write a really good song, a little tidy thing, and now trying to write a musical-it's like being a short-story writer and suddenly trying to write a novel.
IW: I see Rodgers & Hammerstein as harbingers of the singer-songwriters whose work is emotionally connected to their lives. Though Rodgers & Hammerstein were writing for characters, all their characters' songs were emotionally personal. The emer- gence of the singer-songwriter generation after the Rodgers & Hammerstein era really kind of separated popular music from theater music. John, you're a bridge between those two worlds.
JB: When I started to write in high school, I would tap into my own feelings and I think somehow, having heard their music and other really well-crafted popular music, I was able to develop my own vocabulary to communicate my deepest emotions. And then to write for theater I used that muscle to communicate the emotions that the characters are feeling.
IW: And how did you approach writing A Catered Affair?
JB: Harvey Fierstein wrote the book. He said, "Let's each go home and think of where songs feel like they would happen. And let's get together and compare our lists." And they were the same. So then I just took his prose and morphed it into lyrics, stealing some of his great lines, of course.
LMM: Yeah, I steal from my co-writer all the time. That's part of the gig. (Laughter)
IW: Something I've observed in all your work, and naturally connect to Rodgers & Hammerstein and to South Pacific, is having a social conscience in the theater. Is that important as a writer in the theater today?
JT: I think it's essential. The reason I wanted to write Shrek was-well, there is the obvious reason-but more importantly is that when I started really looking at the story I realized it's about being "carefully taught." I looked at that South Pacific song, and thought about its legacy: if you play your cards right, you can examine behavior, break it down, and perhaps begin a discussion. Theater can change people, a little bit at a time, or maybe a lot.
IW: John, how has your own political sensibility affected you as a writer?
JB: I'm fascinated by commonality. I'm always asking people, "Have you ever felt this? When this happens to me, I respond like this. How do you respond?" I love exploring that. I love that, in so many ways, we're all the same. I think if you write something as honestly as possible, then it will resonate deeply for other people.

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