“The Sid Ramin Collection at Columbia University Archive and the Study of Broadway Orchestrations”
Sid Ramin (b. 1919) was a commercial composer and arranger who worked in television, Broadway, film, and the recording studio. His first theatrical work was on Wonderful Town (1953), and the height of his Broadway career came in orchestrations for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959). Drafts of arrangements on these latter two shows have been consulted by such scholars as Steven Suskin, but more detailed work in the Ramin Collection of his orchestrations will increase our understanding of these scores, as will be demonstrated in this paper. In West Side Story, a draft score for “America” prepared by Ramin and Irwin Kostal includes over 100 markings in composer Leonard Bernstein’s hand, graphically illuminating his role in the process, including changing which Latin American percussion instruments should be used and rescoring a prominent passage from solo trumpet to three piccolos. Ramin worked with fellow orchestrator Robert Ginzler on Gypsy; composer Jule Styne trusted his specialists. Their large brass section—three trumpets, three trombones, and one horn—shines through in Ramin’s manuscripts to the Overture and Louise’s “Gypsy Strip.” In these excerpts one sees in the hands of the orchestrators how they wrote for brass, with many grace notes, glissandos, and an improvised trumpet break that smack strongly of burlesque. The role that orchestrators have played in the Broadway sound world has only started to be considered; the topic comes truly alive when we enter the orchestrator’s workshop, as we can in the manuscripts from the Sid Ramin Collection.