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The Collaborators. No excess of wives, girl friends, possessions or noise has ever seriously interfered with L. & L.'s work. The composer-librettist relationship can produce some extraordinary cases of love-hate, as in the case of Gilbert and Sullivan. Professionally, Lerner and Loewe are marvelously meshed, and Fritz even goes so far as to say of Alan, "I love him." But friendship is not really necessary for artistic partnership or for marriage.
Their methods have not varied over the years. Lerner starts off by thinking up a title for a song, usually the first line; Loewe then writes the music, almost always in Lerner's presence, and announces to anyone within earshot: "I've got Alan pregnant." Lerner delivers the balance of the lyrics, working with obsessive intensity ; when he is really going strong, he feels ice-cold, has been known to light a fire in the middle of a heat wave while writing. Over the years he has set up a number of semi-fast rules for himself: avoid s sounds, avoid eer sounds above A above middle C, etc. As a lyricist, Lerner lacks the ultrasophistication of a Cole Porter, on the other hand would never commit the more cloying sentimentalities of Oscar Hammerstein. At their best, his lyrics are like expertly cut glass, as in these lines from My Fair Lady:
A pensive man am I
Of philosophic joys;
Who likes to meditate,
Contemplate,
Free from humanity's mad, inhuman noise.
More sentimentally, he can wave banners as well as the men of Harlech:
Ask ev'ry person if he's heard the story;
And tell it strong and clear if he has not:
That once there was a fleeting wisp of glory
Called Camelot.
Proudly, Lerner points out that he avoided rhyming "Camelot" with "swam a lot" or "Lancelot" with "dance a lot" but he did bring off such a rhyme in My Fair Lady when he lined up "Budapest" and "ruder pest" (it had to be changed after Soviet tanks in 1956 made the line less amusing). At his worst, his pudding is awfully hasty:
Let them damn! Let them jeer!
But why burn Guinevere?
As for Loewe's music, his emotional temperament has yielded some of the best popular tunes of his day (7 Could Have Danced All Night; On the Street Where You Live). They spill over the battlements of Camelot. His present score is as melodious as any he has done, from brightly lighted marches (Then You May Take Me to the Fair) to pastels of love (If Ever I Would Leave You) and the gules-and-argent portrait of Camelot itself.