Gershwin–OK, Do, Do, Do, Gertie

We are about to return to hear more from the score of the Gershwin’s Oh, Kay! However, we need to answer some questions first.

Visitors write that they don’t necessarily feel the power of this musical and ask us to explain why. After all, they admit that the songs are lovely.

This is not an easy question to answer, because we need to understand the nature of performing art. Think about any show that you have ever seen and loved. Now, imagine that you hear some music from that show. The first thing that pops into your mind is musical familiarity. You say, “I know that song. It came from a musical that I saw.”

The second thing that happens, but is not as apparent, is the fact that your mind recalls the stored images of the scene from the show when the song was sung. In truth, you are back in the audience, and you start to experience the same set of emotions that you felt originally in the theatre.

And this tends to explain the power of performing art: it is visual and aural and it may or may not work its magic in the theatre. But if you have seen it and loved it, you have brought this memory into your very being forever. It doesn’t matter if your seat was on Broadway on opening night or in a school auditorium for a high school performance, if you fell in love, you will remain in love.

Few of us have ever seen a performance of Oh, Kay!

And while the music is charming, the story is lighthearted and artificial, at best. There is no dramatic attachment; no moral battle; no ultimate resolution that reaffirms our belief in good. When Rodgers and Hammerstein collaborated for the first time, they blew the barn door off of the barn because they put on shows that made us care about the people on the stage and their happiness. While the R&H shows achieved much more, they established one salient fact: you came out of the theatre a different person.

They made us care and because of that we owe them much. Keep this in mind and don’t expect that you will react this way to every show and every song that is posted. You would be asking too much. Just enjoy the material and hope that one day someone will put on a new version of Oh, Kay! and you will fall in love.

Back to our regularly scheduled performance music.

Recall that Kay asked Jimmy to let her stay at the house so that they could continue their pretense of being man and wife if the Revenue Officer returned. The next day, he returned. And Kay and Jimmy put on a puppet show for the officer, making him storm away in anger.

They sang a lovely duet, called “Do, Do, Do.”

Our first clip is from the Victor recording of the song, sung as a single by Gertrude Lawrence. It was recorded on October 29, 1926, prior to the opening of the show on November 8, 1926; but the disc was not released until 1927, after the song was an established hit.

Beside her beautiful diction, we hear a very slow tempo on this recording. In his notes accompanying the youtube upload, James T. Maher says that the “tempo marking should have settled that matter [of tempo]. It read: ‘Gracefully’–as it is sung by Miss Lawrence.”

With all due respect to Mr. Maher, “gracefully” is not a term that can be used indiscriminately to set a slow tempo. We use Italian tempo markings, in the main. Here are the terms used:

From slowest to fastest:

Larghissimo – very, very slow (24 bpm and under)
Adagissimo – very slowly
Grave – very slow (25–45 bpm)
Largo – broadly (40–60 bpm)
Lento – slowly (45–60 bpm)
Larghetto – rather broadly (60–66 bpm)
Adagio – slowly with great expression[8] (66–76 bpm)
Adagietto – slower than andante (72–76 bpm) or slightly faster than adagio (70–80 bpm)
Andante – at a walking pace (76–108 bpm)
Andantino – slightly faster than andante (although, in some cases, it can be taken to mean slightly slower than andante) (80–108 bpm)
Marcia moderato – moderately, in the manner of a march[9][10] (83–85 bpm)
Andante moderato – between andante and moderato (thus the name) (92–112 bpm)
Moderato – at a moderate speed (108–120 bpm)
Allegretto – by the mid 19th century, moderately fast (112–120 bpm); see paragraph above for earlier usage
Allegro moderato – close to, but not quite allegro (116–120 bpm)
Allegro – fast, quickly, and bright (120–156 bpm) (molto allegro is slightly faster than allegro, but always in its range)
Vivace – lively and fast (156–176 bpm)
Vivacissimo – very fast and lively (172–176 bpm)
Allegrissimo or Allegro vivace – very fast (172–176 bpm)
Presto – very, very fast (168–200 bpm)
Prestissimo – even faster than presto (200 bpm and over)
Additional terms

A piacere – the performer may use his or her own discretion with regard to tempo and rhythm; literally “at pleasure”[11] Con moto – Italian for “with movement”; can be combined with a tempo indication, e.g., Allegro con moto
Assai – (very) much
A tempo – resume previous tempo
L’istesso, L’istesso tempo, or Lo stesso tempo – at the same speed; L’istesso is used when the actual speed of the music has not changed, despite apparent signals to the contrary, such as changes in time signature or note length (half notes in 4
4 could change to whole notes in 2
2, and they would all have the same duration)[12][13] Ma non tanto – but not so much; used in the same way and has the same effect as Ma non troppo (see immediately below) but to a lesser degree
Ma non troppo – but not too much; used to modify a basic tempo to indicate that the basic tempo should be reined in to a degree; for example, Adagio ma non troppo to mean ″Slow, but not too slow″, Allegro ma non troppo to mean ″Fast, but not too fast″
Molto – very
Poco – a little
Subito – suddenly
Tempo comodo – at a comfortable (normal) speed
Tempo di… – the speed of a … (such as Tempo di valzer (speed of a waltz, dotted quarter note. ≈ 60 bpm or quarter note≈ 126 bpm), Tempo di marcia (speed of a march, quarter note ≈ 120 bpm))
Tempo giusto – at a consistent speed, at the ‘right’ speed, in strict tempo
Tempo semplice – simple, regular speed, plainly
Tempo primo – resume the original (first) tempo

The Word Gracefully settled nothing.