The Sound of Music 60 Years On – The Britishness of Rodgers and Hammerstein with Professor Ian Bradley

It is sixty years ago this year since the film version of The Sound of Music was released. The last collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, it remains one of the most popular and iconic musical films.  Ian Bradley is Emeritus Professor of Cultural and Spiritual History at the University of St Andrews. Among his proudest accolades is the Honorary Life Presidency of the St Andrews University Gilbert and Sullivan Society, with whom he has sung principal bass-baritone roles.  In this lecture, Professor Ian Bradley presents Rodgers and Hammerstein as the true heirs of Gilbert and Sullivan and argues that they took up and developed the concept of the plot-driven, dramatic, carefully crafted musical which the British pair created.  Using hitherto unpublished archive material, Ian Bradley also shows how much
Hammerstein owed to his Scottish Presbyterian grandparents and how seriously Rodgers researched the Roman Catholic liturgical music used in the show.

This light hearted but informative lecture celebrates the 60th birthday of an evergreen popular cultural icon while at the same time shedding new light on its creators and locating them in an essentially British theatrical and musical tradition.