Sharpe 1

Patrick Sharpe

Scott Richards

Acting for the Singer II

3 October 2017

“In Praise of Women”

from A Little Night Music

A Little Night Music tells the story of a summer night at a Swedish country estate on

which a group of unhappy lovers, wives, and husbands are unmatched and then re-matched to

form three happy couples. The number of couples—three—is actually very important. As the

musical’s orchestrator, Jonathan Tunick, writes in his introduction to the libretto, the musical is

entirely based on the number three. To begin with, every character is involved in a love triangle:

Frederik loves Anne, but also Desiree; Anne loves Frederik, but also Henrik; Desiree loves

Frederik, but is involved with Carl-Magnus. Not only are the relationships based on the number

three, but so is the score: Sondheim wrote the entire score in triple time, in order to recreate the

style of the turn-of-the-century Viennese operettas, which provide an appropriate historical

backdrop for the musical. Finally, the pivotal summer night that unites the lovers is said by

Madame Armfeldt, the wise elderly grandmother, to smile three times: once for the young, once

for the fools, and once for the old.

This last group of three (the smiles of the summer night) was not created by Stephen

Sondheim, the musical’s composer and lyricist, nor by Hugh Wheeler, who wrote the book, but

by the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman, who wrote the film Smiles of a Summer Night

(1955), upon which A Little Night Music (1973) was based.

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One of the unhappy lovers caught up in the musical’s romantic entanglements is Count

Carl-Magnus Malcolm, a pompous military officer. On his 24-hour leave from maneuvers, he

visits his mistress, the famous actress Desiree Armfeldt, but finds her with another man. He is

outraged at his mistress’s apparent infidelity, but she and the stranger make up a story to justify

their appearances: He was a lawyer, so he was there for her to sign some urgent papers; he

tripped and was soaked in the hip bath, so he had to borrow a bathrobe. At the opening of “In

Praise of Women,” Carl-Magnus is moved into song by the terrible question of whether his

mistress was actually faithful, or whether she was not, in which case he must challenge his rival

to a duel to save his pride.

In addition to being in triple time (like the rest of the musical), “In Praise of Women”

also has three sections. The song takes the form ABABCCA. In each A section, Carl-Magnus

goes back and forth over whether or not Desiree has been unfaithful to him. His thought process

is expressed in short fragments of speech, which rapidly trail off as a new idea dawns on him:

“She wouldn’t… Therefore they didn’t… So then it wasn’t… Not unless it… Would She?” This

fragmented, jolting train of thought is mimicked by the melody line, which is made up of short,

separated phrases. The jarring effect of each new, contradictory thought is created musically by

the use of 16th notes followed by dotted 8th notes. The back and forth (fidelity or infidelity) of

Carl-Magnus’s train of thought is also mimicked in the melody line, which literally goes back

and forth between two notes on certain lyrics that express his uncertainty, such as “Not unless

it...”

While the melody line gives us clues about Carl-Magnus’s confused state of mind, the

accompaniment tells us about the man himself. Both the rhythms and the orchestration of the

accompaniment have a proud, military feel, perfect for underscoring the pompous, formal,
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dragoon. The rhythm is like a marching beat, while the heavy use of horns mimics the cavalry’s

bugles.

In each B section, Carl-Magnus succeeds in convincing himself of Desiree’s fidelity. He

stops asking jealous questions, and starts making pronouncements about a man’s right to a

woman’s fidelity. As a result, the music modulates into a new key, and the jerky melody line is

replaced by longer more streamlined phrases. In addition, the melody stops bobbing back and

forth between two notes, and swells gracefully: he is no longer stuck in a rut, as he was in the A

section.

As the melody gains momentum in the B section, so does the accompaniment. The low

strings and brass are joined by a light, bouncing violin line, reminiscent of a Strauss waltz. In

addition, the rhythmic brass chords become much more harmonious. The dissonance of the A

section, where accidentals littered the page, is replaced by a series of charming chord

progressions in the B section.

After the first B section, Carl-Magnus is once more plagued with doubts about Desiree’s

fidelity, which send him spiraling back down into another uneasy A section. He once again

manages to convince himself of her fidelity in the second B section, however, in which he also

remarks on the convenient fidelity of his actual wife, Charlotte. In fact he is so moved by this

thought that he embarks on a C section: the meditation on the virtues of women for which the

song is named.

The tone of the C section is totally different from that of the A section, or even the B

section. Having convinced himself that Desiree is faithful, Carl-Magnus is now confident in the

knowledge that he has both a faithful wife and a faithful mistress—his pride is restored. This

change of mood is reflected in the accompaniment by the total disappearance of the harsh brass
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section. Instead, the vocal line rests on a soft bed of legato strings, supplemented by the

occasional strumming of a harp1.

Although Carl-Magnus “praises” women, he does so in the most insensitive way

imaginable. He loves women because they “know their place,” and because, although

“insufferable,” they are “gentle.” He concludes with the generous admission that although the

world would be purer without women, it would also be poorer. The condescending tone Carl-

Magnus uses to describe women is of course highly ironic, because every female character in the

musical is smarter than he is—most notably his wife, who actually has a very sharp wit, even

though he totally ignores her.

At the end of the second C section, Carl-Magnus is interrupted from his musings on the

female “race” by another round of doubt, which sends him back into one last A section, before

he once more convinces himself that Desiree is his. As a sign that he has finally regained his

confidence and his lost pride, Carl-Magnus ends the song powerfully on a high F, the tonic,

which lasts no fewer than five measures.

1
Although this change in accompaniment is noticeable with full orchestration, the nuance is lost in the piano
reduction, as the piano accompaniment remains staccato throughout the C section. As the orchestrator for A Little
Night Music, Jonathan Tunick, writes: “When the orchestral score is reduced by the copyist to a short score or piano-
conductor part, thereby reversing the orchestration process, the written notes, now reflecting orchestral rather than
piano idioms, suffer in effect when played on the piano.”