Richard Rodgers was very involved in music since an early age, he actually started playing piano at age six. He had already written two popular songs before going to University, but his success was heightened after then. He wrote music for two amateur shows before he started working with Lorenz Hart in 1919, but they also wrote many shows. Rodgers and Hart won acclaim for a review in 1925. They wrote nine stage shows between 1935 and 1942, the most famous of these being Jumbo (1935) and On Your Toes (1940). After Hart’s death, Rodgers collaborated with Oscar Hammerstein II. They wrote ten musicals, the most famous being Oklahoma (1943) and The King and I (1951). five of these ten were some of the longest-running, biggest-grossing broadway musicals ever. Although his shows were different from normal, his work enriched and broadened the genre. Oscar Hammerstein II was born into a musical and theatrical family. He started playing piano at age nine. When he went to university, he needed to make money, so he begged his uncle to let him be an assistant stage manager. His uncle let him, on the condition that he wouldn’t try to write anything of his own. Hammerstein gladly agreed, and he
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They got together to write musical plays. This combined Rodger’s very comedic nature with Hammerstein’s musical and lyrical talent. Neither knew that their collaboration would result in some of the most widely-known plays and musicals ever written and performed in the theatre. The first musical comedy they wrote was titled Oklahoma, and was soon followed by more plays like The King and I, On Your Toes, and South Pacific. They also wrote the play The Sound of Music, which was originally a book written by Howard Lindsay and Russell Course, which was based of the memoir of Maria von Trapp. This collaboration included Rodgers writing the music and Hammerstein writing the lyrics, as do most of their musical
They got together to write musical plays. This combined Rodger’s very comedic nature with Hammerstein’s musical and lyrical talent. Neither knew that their collaboration would result in some of the most widely-known plays and musicals ever written and performed in the theatre. The first musical comedy they wrote was titled Oklahoma, and was soon followed by more plays like The King and I, On Your Toes, and South Pacific. They also wrote the play The Sound of Music, which was originally a book written by Howard Lindsay and Russell Course, which was based of the memoir of Maria von Trapp. This collaboration included Rodgers writing the music and Hammerstein writing the lyrics, as do most of their musical