Sheldon Harnick, who died on Friday at the age of ninety-nine, is considered one of the great lyricists of 1960s Broadway, known for Fiorello!, She Loves Me, and above all, Fiddler on the Roof. Born in Chicago, Harnick was—like most of the other leading creative minds in American musical theater in his day—Jewish. Jesse Green praises his lyrics as “models of humor, elegance, and compassion.”
I use the word “profound” to describe those shows, and Harnick’s best lyrics, not because they offer earth-shattering insights but because they are perfect expressions of ordinary ones. A jaunty waltz like “Matchmaker, Matchmaker,” from Fiddler, could not, after all, be more conventional in its framing: two poor young sisters dream of being fixed up with perfect husbands.
But notice how the agenda-like structuring of their wish list, along with the click-lock rhymes, captures in a few lines what “perfect” means to several people involved. . . . By song’s end, though, alerted to the dangers of overreaching, the girls have turned the image inside out.
Once heard, Harnick’s lyrics seem like the last word on their subjects. In part that’s because of their concision—he typically writes short lines and never too many—and in part because they build an almost impenetrably tight argument through structure and sound. The important words all land on the right beat; the grammar is never distorted to squeeze over a melody. With so little space, every syllable does at least double duty.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/theater/sheldon-harnick-appraisal.html