Small House of Uncle Thomas Written By A Woman...

The correct fill in the blank would be "Harriet Beacher Stowe" with an upward inflection of the voice on Stowe. But really I was thinking of someone else.

I put aside the lesbian book when I got my Link+ book in at the library. Women in American Musical Theatre.... is a book of essays on all kinds of women and while I've been reading most of it I've been taking notes on the women writers. There are some very interesting essays but the one I've liked the best so far is about female arrangers.

The name Trude Rittman ring a bell? You rock my socks off if you know who she is. So far that would just be Dennis telling me he's proud that I know who she is. Trude Rittman was the arranger/dance composer/underscoring for pretty much the whole Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe cycles. Richard Rodgers would hand her a song and she would create the music. Not that he couldn't do it. She freely acknowledged he was so busy with other things and if he hadn't been he could have done her job. But he didn't. In fact she wrote the "Small House of Uncle Thomas" Ballet. With the exception of the "Hello Young Lovers" strain in the ice skating sequence all of the melodies are hers. She worked closly with Robbins and created all the percusion and everything. Are you kidding me? She is also responsible for the entiring underscoring of South Pacific and all the vocal harmonies in The Sound of Music (and those Nun parts are so gorgeous).

The kicker is she was paid per show (no royalties), never got her name attached to the works, never belonged to the musician's union and pretty much went without credit in everyones account except Agnes DeMille who loved her. Mary Rodgers had to convince the R&H orginzation to give her name credit and a yearly stipend for all her work after her father died. Even Fredrick Loewe who she worked closely with doesn't really mention her much in writings.

So clearly I am now fascinated by her and outraged by her being overlooked in EVERY book I've ever read about musical theatre.

So yes. Small House of Uncle Thomas was written by a women. Trude Rittman.

Pins.