1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (musical) - Reuse of Material in Other Works

Reuse of Material in Other Works

As with his previously abandoned projects, Bernstein used portions of the score in subsequent works. In Songfest, for example, the setting of Walt Whitman's poem "To What You Said" as a baritone solo was a reworking of the original prelude of the show, in which the chorus hummed a melody played by the violoncello in the Songfest version. (In the show, this music was moved to the emotional low point of the second act, used as background to a Presidential funeral.) The occasional piece Slava! A Political Overture, written in honor of Bernstein's friend Mstislav Rostropovich, blended two numbers from the show, the up-tempo "Rehearse!" and "The Grand Old Party." Early in the opera A Quiet Place, the music for the aria "You're late, you shouldn't have come" derives from that of "Me," a song that in the original show established the meta-theatrical concept that was eventually abandoned. (Some of the music for "Me" can be heard in the Broadway score, most memorably in the song "American Dreaming.") An instrumental section of "The President Jefferson March" was reused in the final movement, "In Memoriam and March: The BSO Forever," of the Divertimento.