Richard Rodgers' Death

The composer Richard Rodgers died at the age of 77. Here is all you want to know, and more!

Biography - A Short Wiki

Broadway composer with Oscar Hammerstein II and Lorenz Hart. He composed over 900 songs and 43 musicals, including “Oklahoma!,” “The King and I,” “The Sound of Music,” and many other immortal classics.

He was born into the upper-class German Jewish family of Dr. William Abrahams Rodgers, a respected physician. He married Dorothy Rodgers in 1940, and they had two children together.

Quotes

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“Whenever I get an idea for a song, even before jotting down the notes, I can hear it in the orchestra, I can smell it in the scenery, I can see the kind of actor who will sing it, and I am aware of an audience listening to it.” (Richard Rodgers)

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“It may be that that we can sing what we often cannot say, whether it be from shyness, fear, lack of the right words or the passion or dramatic gift to express them. More souls have rallied to more causes by the strains of music than by straining rhetoric.” (Richard Rodgers)

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“If a composer is to reach his audience emotionally – and surely that’s what theatre music is all about – he must reach the people through sounds they can relate to.” (Richard Rodgers)

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“If somebody wants to sing my songs after I’m gone, nobody will be happier than my dead body.” (Richard Rodgers)

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“A song is a lot of things. But, first of all, a song is the voice of its time. Setting words to music gives them weight, makes then somehow easier to say, and it helps them to be remembered.” (Richard Rodgers)