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Verse speakers and opera singers could learn a great deal if they listen to all forms of popular music from Billie Holiday to Edith Piaf, where the passion, the feeling, the intonation, the tempo all arise from the word. In Broadway jargon, this is called ‘reading’ a song. I once asked Richard Rodgers, composer of Oklahoma! and countless other musicals, whether he had a stash of melodies in a top drawer, waiting to be used. ‘Of course not!’ he said. ‘I need the words.’ Like every composer of songs, it is the words that are proposed by a lyric that awaken the tune”.
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