"THE WAITER'S GALOP" from "Hello, Dolly!"
©1963 and 1964 by Jerry Herman
Dance and Incidential Music by Peter Howard

NOTE: This file was originally sequenced in May, 1998--but my computer and its software were new and the song was far to complicated at the time... especially when I tried out the "merge/import" feature for the underscoring--quite horrible (to say the least!) so I basically put the file "on the back burner". In September, 2005, I pulled out the old file and listened to it. Couldn't decide if it was "awful" or "amusing". So now that I have the software down pat I decided to see if I could repair the song. It took much more to repair the song than start it over from scratch--but I'm a stubborn person and this is the result of that trait.

The file is from the score with each vamped underscore played only 1 time because I (once again) did not allow for "script time" (and besides--it would get kind of boring without the dialogue to lead you on). Here is a general idea of the stage business during the number:

Things are abuzz at the elegant Harmonia Gardens Restaurant where the head waiter, Rudolph, has been given a message that Dolly's coming back and she's ordered a chicken for 8 o'clock. Rudolph (complete with German accent) barks to his waiters, "..... zat our lightnink-fast zervice vill be TVICE as lightnink--OR ELSE!" He blows his whistle and "The Waiter's Galop" begins.

Waiters begin to zip back and forth across the stage with as much stage business as the director/choreographer can think of. There are trays, flaming skewers, champagne in ice buckets, tablecloths, etc. all being incorporated into an elaborate production number. The conductor of the orchestra would need cues to be sure he was in the right spot...there were handwritten notes in the original score that ended up on the publisher's press that corresponded to the on-stage action like "First Skewer", "Trips", "First Tuba", "Second Skewer", "Rag Time", "Second Tuba", "Turkey Stab", "Big Downbeat", "Casserole" , "First Freeze", "Second Freeze", "Mice Section" and "End Jumps". I'll let you use your imagination to figure out what happened where in the music.

The number is not one continuous dance--there are two, curtained private dining rooms, one stage left, one stage right. In one is Horace Vandergelder with Ernestina Money (a "large" decoy provided by Dolly to get Horace to the restaurant), and in the other is nearly broke Cornelius and Barnaby on a double-date at the expensive restaurant with Irene and Minnie. There are sudden breaks as the music becomes underscoring and the curtains of one of the private dining rooms opens for dialogue. The dialogue stops, the curtains close and the frantic waiters continue.

In these little breaks, Horace finds out that Ernestina doesn't carry large sums of money in her belt--but two dollars in her garter, Cornelius tries to order four glasses of beer, a loaf of yesterday's bread and some cheese (which is all he could afford), Ernestina orders an appetizer of a roast suckling pig with chestnut-oyster stuffing, cheese fondue and ladyfingers, and Irene wonders what pheasant tastes like.

Towards the end of the number, Ernestina winds up and tells Horace to give the bandleader two dollars to play something refined (because she wants to do the "hootchy-kootchy") and Cornelius tells Barnaby to give the bandleader a nickel and play "To A Wild Rose". Barnaby and Horace both emerge from their respective dining rooms and try to find an available waiter and immediately become embroiled in the melee of waiters. As they move faster and faster, the entire clockwork of crossing waiters moves at lightning precision speed, (just as Rudolph had demanded).

After the end of the number, Barnaby and Horace stagger back to their respective dining rooms, still unaware of each other. At this point, guess who shows up in a glittering red dress at the top of the stairs of the restaurant to make one of the most memorable entrances in musical theater?