To Parade Naked Across the Printed Page
I presented some of my songs for children one evening while in residence at the MacDowell colony, and for one of the songs, I read aloud a verse and a chorus before playing it at the piano. Trish reacted noticeably right away, upset, I learned later, by the idea of lyrics being heard alone. She was assuaged moments later when I put the lyrics back into their rightful musical dimension. In the introductory note to his 1978 memoir The Street Where I Live, lyricist Alan Jay Lerner cautioned against this sort of stripping of lyrics from their music:
Lyrics, no less than music, are written to be heard. A lyric without its musical clothes is a scrawny creature and should never be allowed to parade naked across the printed page. Nevertheless, for purposes of reference, that is precisely what I am heartlessly allowing mine to do.
Should the reader be interested in reading any of the lyrics discussed in the following pages, he will find them shivering in toto at the end of the book.
