Each month, Jason Fortner spotlights one or more musical theatre composers and/or lyricists, offering his own unique perspective on the songwriting legends of musical theatre. Send your comments/questions on this column to happgood@aol.com.

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Pitter-Patter may be the title of a song from Hugo & Luigi’s MAGGIE FLYNN, or even part of the lyric to Raining In My Heart from DAMES AT SEA, but for our purposes it serves as an introduction to the world of the patter song. For 130 years or so the patter song has delighted audiences with rapid fire deliveries of lyric after lyric, often at increasing speeds. As an aficionado of the patter song, let’s take a look at some of the standouts.

Of course the great-grandfather of all patter song lyricists is William S. Gilbert, who when paired with Arthur Sullivan in the latter half of the nineteenth century, created the modern patter song and inspired generations of lyricists to come. Although clever wordplay abounds in all of their works, three patter songs stand out among the rest. The first is their most famous, I Am the Very Model Of A Modern Major General from THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE in which "Major General Stanley" tries to wrest his daughters from the pirates’ grasp by proudly proclaiming his various achievements, and slyly ridiculing the team’s previous hit H. M. S. PINAFORE. [Humorist/songwriter Tom Lehrer created a minor sensation with his reworking of The Modern Major General into a listing of The Elements from the Periodic Table. Many others have reworked the number as well, in myriads of ways.]

The second great patter song from the G & S canon is My Eyes Are Fully Open from RUDDIGORE. This song is so much fun it was interpolated into the New York Shakespeare Festival revival of PIRATES and also (with new lyrics) placed into THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE as The Speed Test for typing.

Finally comes the wildest and most difficult of the G & S patter songs, The Nightmare Song from IOLANTHE. Here’s just a taste of the "Lord Chancellor’s" tongue twister:

I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in, without impropriety;

For your brain is on fire - the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you:

First your counterpane goes, and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you;

Then the blanketing tickles - you feel like mixed pickles - so terribly sharp is the pricking,

And you’re hot, and you’re cross, and you tumble and toss till there’s nothing twixt you and the ticking.

And on it goes for another 3 minutes or so! Most lyricists give a lot of thanks to Gilbert for creating a world of clever wordplay, and through the decades since the G & S operettas, have created many a charming patter song of their own.

Composer/lyricist George M. Cohan used snappy patter in many of his songs, though usually just in sections rather than the whole number. Notable examples of his fast paced lyrics can be heard in I Want To Hear A Yankee Doodle Tune from MOTHER GOOSE, The Yankee Doodle Boy from LITTLE JOHNNY JONES, and The Barnum & Bailey Rag from HELLO, BROADWAY!

A few years later Lorenz Hart indulged in clever wordplay in his many collaborations with Richard Rodgers. Although not always at a zippy pace, songs like At The Roxy Music Hall from I MARRIED AN ANGEL are indeed a mouthful to sing. Across the pond and here in the USA Noel Coward was devising clever patter songs himself which, like Gilbert, exposed his very particular point of view. Chief among these are the wonderful Mad Dogs & Englishman (about the British insistence in going out in the midday sun) and the Latin flavored Nina the musical story of a girl from Argentina who refused to dance and eventually settled down with a one legged sailor from Venezuela! Over the years many performers sang Noel’s clever songs, but the writer himself was the best at selling these fastidiously crafted high speed numbers.

When speaking of patter performers, the number one example is always Danny Kaye. Mr. Kaye zoomed into the spotlight rattling off the names of dozens of Russian composers at lightning speed Ira Gershwin & Kurt Weill’s Tschaikovsky, a showstopper from LADY IN THE DARK. A few years later Cole Porter wrote him an equally showstopping piece entitled Let’s Not Talk About Love for the musical LET’S FACE IT. Once Hollywood beckoned Mr. Kaye became the king of celluloid tongue twisters, with most of his specialty material written by his composer wife, Sylvia Fine Kaye.

Patter songs have continued to pop up in musical theater scores over the years, though not nearly as often as in the days of Gilbert & Sullivan. Often times modern writers will embrace the style of patter and incorporate elements into their scores. Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe used the patter style to create a showstopper for "Meg Brockie" in BRIGADOON entitled My Mother’s Wedding Day. A few years later they created a whole style of patter singing for Rex Harrison’s "Henry Higgins" in MY FAIR LADY, with numbers like Why Can’t The English, I’m An Ordinary Man and A Hymn To Him filling the stage with words. Lerner would continue to play with patter numbers throughout his career, incorporating fast patter whenever he could into shows like COCO and ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER.

Meredith Willson took a fancy to the patter song and created several patter numbers in THE MUSIC MAN, most notably the Rock Island salesmen opening, and three numbers for Harold Hill: Ya Got Trouble, the Seventy Six Trombones verse and sections of The Sadder But Wiser Girl. He later put patter into sections of THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN and less successfully, incorporated a very Harold Hill-ish number into HERE’S LOVE entitled She Hadda Go Back.

Stephen Sondheim, always a fan of clever wordplay, created a truly challenging number for COMPANY, frazzled "Amy’s" plaintively manic Getting Married Today. Other examples of Sondheim’s deft use of patter can be found in Buddy’s Blues in FOLLIES, Putting It Together in SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, Your Fault from INTO THE WOODS, Franklin Shephard, Inc. from MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG and the Gilbert & Sullivan section of Please, Hello from PACIFIC OVERTURES.

Cy Coleman and his collaborators used the patter song in several of their shows too, often playing up the Vaudevillian/showbiz aspects of the story. The most notable example is the Museum Song from BARNUM (lyrics by Michael Stewart), a musical list of all the delightful sights one might see at P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. Other Coleman scores with patter elements would include She’s A Nut! from ON THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (lyrics by Comden & Green), Big Time and Favorite Son from THE WILL ROGERS FOLLIES (Comden & Green) and several numbers from I LOVE MY WIFE, again with lyrics by Michael Stewart.

John Kander & Fred Ebb created their own set of patter numbers over the years, again often employing a Vaudeville pastiche. Notable among these would be The Money Song from CABARET (not to be confused with the film’s Money, Money), the daffy The Caper from 70,GIRLS,70, the title number from THE RINK, Dressing Them Up from KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN, and the always entertaining We Both Reached For The Gun from CHICAGO. Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick also put some patter into their shows from time to time, a little bit in The Name’s LaGuardia from FIORELLO and a lot in Try Me from SHE LOVES ME. In another Bock & Harnick turn, the character of "Adam" has a patter style number in THE APPLE TREE entitled It’s A Fish in which he contemplates just exactly what their new baby is.

Finally there are a few standouts from writers who have not had such a well-known overall track record, but have created great patter numbers themselves. Lionel Bart’s OLIVER! provides a czardas style patter song in Reviewing the Situation, in which "Fagin" sizes up his future possibilities as the music increases in speed. The Victorian delight CHARLOTTE SWEET had a terrific patter number in it entitled Vegetable Reggie, a veritable greengrocer’s guide to love with music by Gerald Jay Markoe and a libretto by Michael Colby. The New York Shakespeare Festival had another hit with Rupert Holmes’ THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, a show that featured the tongue twisting duet Both Sides of the Coin, deftly performed by Howard McGillin and George Rose. And speaking of showstoppers, Maria Friedman stopped the show every night in London’s THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, singing a number called Words, Words, Words. In this patter number with music by Dana P. Rowe and lyrics by John Dempsey, shy librarian "Sukie" lets loose with a torrent of prose that is nearly impossible to stop, thanks to a devilish influence.

And no look at patter songs can be complete without a nod to the animated TV series the ANIMANIACS. This Steven Spielberg produced cartoon show (ostensibly for kids but entertaining to any age) resurrected the patter song for young audiences and taught millions of children such facts as All the Countries of the World, the US State Capitols, The Presidents and more, all in clever patter song fashion.

Thanks to these wordy numbers, the tradition will continue…until then I leave you with a favorite patter lyric from Noel Coward’s Nina:

She said I hate to be pedantic but I’m driven nearly frantic when I see that unromantic sycophantic lot of sluts…

Forever wriggling their guts…It drives me absolutely nuts!

She refused to Begin the Beguine when they besot her to…

And with language profane and obscene she cursed the man who taught her to…

She cursed Cole Porter, too!