John McGlinn, 55, Restorer of Musicals, Is Dead
John McGlinn, a conductor and musical historian who delved deep into neglected archives to recreate musicals like “Show Boat,” “Anything Goes” and “No, No, Nanette” in their original form, died on Saturday at home in Manhattan. He was 55.
His brother, Evan, said that no official cause of death had been determined but that he had probably had a heart attack.
Throughout his career, Mr. McGlinn breathed the intoxicating air of the early Broadway musical, with special attention lavished on what are known as the Princess Musicals — giddy, innocent confections devised by Jerome Kern, with assistance from P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, in the first two decades of the 20th century at the Princess Theater.
Working backward through time, he pared away accretions to original scores, returned to original orchestrations, reinstated lost songs and, in concerts and recordings, exposed audiences to the primal versions of musicals that had been roughly treated over the years. His most ambitious reclamation effort was “Show Boat,” by Kern and Oscar Hammerstein 2d, which he restored to its original length of nearly four hours. Among other changes, he reinstated two songs whose scores had languished for decades in a Warner Brothers warehouse in Secaucus, N.J.
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His brother, Evan, said that no official cause of death had been determined but that he had probably had a heart attack.
Throughout his career, Mr. McGlinn breathed the intoxicating air of the early Broadway musical, with special attention lavished on what are known as the Princess Musicals — giddy, innocent confections devised by Jerome Kern, with assistance from P. G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, in the first two decades of the 20th century at the Princess Theater.
Working backward through time, he pared away accretions to original scores, returned to original orchestrations, reinstated lost songs and, in concerts and recordings, exposed audiences to the primal versions of musicals that had been roughly treated over the years. His most ambitious reclamation effort was “Show Boat,” by Kern and Oscar Hammerstein 2d, which he restored to its original length of nearly four hours. Among other changes, he reinstated two songs whose scores had languished for decades in a Warner Brothers warehouse in Secaucus, N.J.