> > Even if one is to look strictly at his songs in isolation, rather than the context of a broader work, and they look like safe, unambitious formula.
>
> This is where some of the difference lies. I don't look at his songs in isolation.

I don't either, hence the word "even" -- I suspect Howard might be, given his liking of Cats, which is why I tried addressing the matter from that angle. Still, Evita's the only Webber musical that's struck me as one that employs music for anything other than their inherent attributes as individual songs. I suppose Phantom is probably the next closest.

> > I'm not arguing that Andrew Lloyd Webber isn't sometimes fun. But he's like candy. Tastes sweet at the time, but it's useless for sustenance, and you might have a tummy ache afterward.
>
> I have to admit that my knowledge of musicals is more tipped towards the European side of things than I would like. I've been looking for recommendations of solid musicals on the classic side of things to get into. I'd appreciate any recommendations.

Until folks like Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and the Gershwins came about, there weren't really any good non-European musicals happening, at least in Western culture. When those folks started writing shows, the tendency was great music but strictly frivolous shows. Today, we're all familiar with tunes like "Night and Day" and "Puttin' On the Ritz" (even if not by name), but the shows they inhabited are largely forgotten. A sampling of the best are 42nd Street, Kiss Me Kate, Anything Goes, Easter Parade, Rosalie, and Alexander's Ragtime Band.

"Showboat" was sort of the turning point for American musicals; when it debuted on Broadway in 1929, it was revolutionary: a pretty heavy dramatic story, with powerful songs, "Old Man River" being the most famous of course.

You're probably already mostly familiar with the pinnacles of achievement in American musicals since: Rodgers and Hammerstein did Oklahoma! (another big step along the path Showboat took), Carousel, The King and I, South Pacific, and the Sound of Music. On their heels, Lerner and Loewe did Brigadoon, Gigi, My Fair Lady, and Camelot. And I do have to mention West Side Story, which is highly revered and yet (I feel) underrated anyhow. I don't know a better jazz musical whose music does so much at establishing not just the physical setting the characters inhabit but the mood and atmosphere, the pressures they're under, and the tension at work within them.

Still later, I think "1776" is positively brilliant, somehow able to address a lot of issues and evoke a wide array of emotions, humorous to powerful, without them compromising each other. I'm biased toward the movie version, however, which is fantastically adapted for the screen while retaining a stage-like quality to it.

For contemporary musicals, I'm all about Stephen Sondheim. Everything I've seen from the guy rings genius to me. "Into the Woods" and "Assassins" are hilarious dark comedies of sorts, and "Sunday In the Park With George" is a pretty fascinating experiment. Sondheim's music, of course, rarely works in isolation: his songs aren't catchy by design. They're made as components of the whole. "Send In the Clowns" was sort of a mistake. :-)

I would find it astonishing if I'm telling you anything you don't already know, though. If there's anybody I'd defer to in a discussion about musicals around here, it'd be you. I know generalities, laundry lists, what I like and why, but I don't know a lot about *how* music does what it does.