He somehow managed to make his songs sound both of the period and still contemporary. The audition tape showed that Flaherty, who had demonstrated a gift for melody in his earlier shows, was well-schooled in and agile at the American musical styles (rag, cakewalk, waltz, march) of the turn-of-the-century era in which Ragtime was set. It was called Gliding and introduced one of Doctorow’s most important images – a flip-book of a girl skating, an invention of Tateh’s that would serendipitously alter his and his daughter’s destiny. (The song was based on Doctorow’s lovemaking scene between Evelyn and Younger Brother, which would not make it into the show and so neither did this song.) The last song was a lilting and aching waltz for the Latvian immigrant, Tateh, to sing to his daughter at a troubled time. Thaw, shot and killed her lover, the famous architect, Stanford White. She became America’s first sex symbol when her husband, Harry K. And another slow rag called You Don’t Know for Evelyn Nesbit. Next on the tape was a gospel number entitled Till We Reach That Day. By its end, you had been introduced in words and music to each character who would enter as the evening progressed. Within a catchy rag-inspired melody, the team had aggressively seized upon a dramatic device invented by bookwriter Terrence McNally in the treatment that would serve as a blueprint for the show McNally boldly brought the principal characters forward to narrate their own lives in the third person, and this became the basis for the song. As in “We Dance” for their musical Once On This Island and “Twenty Million People” from their adaptation of My Favorite Year, this table-setter put the whole evening on course. Two things you need to know about Ahrens and Flaherty right off the bat: (1) as songwriters they ate astute dramatists, and (2) they write showstopping opening numbers. The first song on the tape – which was well-produced and featured the voices of many recognizable Broadway musical actors – was an opening number and title song. In October of 1994, composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens delivered a cassette containing four audition songs for the musicalization of the novel Ragtime to Garth Drabinsky, CEO of Livent Inc., and producer for the planned musical. Oops, looks like your browser doesn't support HTML 5 audio.
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