Lyricist Harnick, creator of Fiddler on the Roof, dies

Tony- and Grammy Award-winning lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who with composer Jerry Bock made up the premier musical-theatre songwriting duos of the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties with reveals reminiscent of Fiddler on the Roof, Fiorello! and The Apple Tree, has died.

He was 99.

Recognized for his wry, refined humour and deft wordplay, Harnick died in his sleep on Friday in New York Metropolis of pure causes, his publicist Sean Katz mentioned.

Bock and Harnick first hit success for the music and lyrics to Fiorello! which earned them every Tonys and a uncommon Pulitzer Prize in 1960.

As well as, Harnick was nominated for Tonys in 1967 for The Apple Tree, in 1971 for The Rothschilds and in 1994 for Cyrano – The Musical.

However their masterpiece was Fiddler on the Roof.

Bock and Harnick have been first launched at a restaurant by actor Jack Cassidy after the opening-night efficiency of Shangri-La, a musical by which Harnick had helped with the lyrics.

The primary Harnick-Bock musical was The Physique Stunning in 1958.

“I believe in the entire years that we labored collectively, I solely keep in mind one or two arguments – and people have been initially of the collaboration after we have been nonetheless feeling one another out,” Harnick, who collaborated with Bock for 13 years, recalled in an interview with the Related Press in 2010.

“As soon as we bought previous that, he was fantastic to work with.”

They’d kind some of the influential partnerships in Broadway historical past.

Producers Robert E Griffith and Hal Prince had preferred the songs from The Physique Stunning and so they contracted Bock and Harnick to write down the rating for his or her subsequent manufacturing, Fiorello!, a musical in regards to the reformist mayor of New York Metropolis.

Bock and Harnick then collaborated on Tenderloin in 1960 and She Loves Me three years later.

Neither was a success – though She Loves Me received a Grammy for greatest rating from a solid album – however their subsequent one was a monster that continues to be carried out worldwide: Fiddler on the Roof.

It earned two Tony Awards in 1965.

Primarily based on tales by Sholom Aleichem that have been tailored right into a libretto by Stein, Fiddler handled the expertise of japanese European Orthodox Jews within the Russian village of Anatevka within the 12 months 1905.

It starred Zero Mostel as Teyve, had an nearly eight 12 months run and supplied the world such gorgeous songs as Dawn, Sundown, If I Had been a Wealthy Man and Matchmaker, Matchmaker.

The latest Broadway revival starred Danny Burstein as Tevye and earned a greatest revival Tony nomination.

In a masterpiece of laughter and tenderness, Harnick’s lyrics have been poignant and sincere, as when the hero Tevye sings, “Lord who made the lion and the lamb/You decreed I needs to be what I’m/Would it not spoil some huge everlasting plan/If I have been a rich man?”

Bock and Harnick subsequent wrote the e-book in addition to the rating for The Apple Tree, in 1966, and the rating for The Rothschilds, with a e-book by Sherman Yellen, in 1970.

It was the final collaboration between the 2: Bock determined that the time had come for him to be his personal lyricist and he put out two experimental albums within the early Nineteen Seventies.

Australian Related Press