“
Having settled on the Shavian style of Higgins’s songs, Lerner and Loewe weave two other levels of musical style into the score—just as Rodgers and Loesser wove multiple musical styles into mirrors of class and character. Eliza, the lowly flower seller whom Higgins turns into a lady, could sing with the conventional fire and passion of operetta and musical heroines. The passionate, full-throated sound of her songs—the longing of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” the anger of “Just You Wait, ’Enry ‘lggins,” the joy of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” the insistence of “Show Me”—contrasts with the dry wit of Higgins’s talk-songs. This contrast not only gives the score musical variety and color but embodies the essential dramatic conflict between intellect and emotion. The third musical style belongs to Alfred Doolittle, Eliza’s working-class dad, who, like Higgins, is an unconventional moralist—resisting such constraints of middle-class morality as work, sobriety, thrift, and marriage. Lerner and Loewe saw Doolittle as a refugee from the English music hall—literally, since the veteran music-hall performer, Stanley Holloway, created the role. Doolittle’s “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me to the Church on Time” are bouncy, raucous music-hall numbers, oom-pah marches with conventional major harmonies and not a trace of American syncopation.
”
”