Lehrer Records TL-102 (1959)

Reprise 6199 (1990) Lehrer Records TL-202S

Rhino 72776)

MMT LP001 (1980)

The Vocal Score

While a student at Harvard University in the late-1940s, Tom Lehrer started writing irreverent parody songs, such as "Fight fiercely, Harvard" (a send-up of his alma mater) and "The Elements," a setting of the periodic table to the tune of "I am the very model of a modern Major-General."

After a while, Lehrer found he'd developed a small cult following among the Harvard community and figured he had enough material to make a record. Songs by Tom Lehrer (1953), published at Lehrer's own expense, became an international sensation and eventually sold 100,000 copies. (A live performance of the same material was later issued under the title Tom Lehrer Revisited).

Six years after Songs By…, Lehrer recorded another, even more popular, album called More of Tom Lehrer (1959), which included "The Elements" and "Clementine," a sketch about how various composers throughout history, including Gilbert and Sullivan, would have treated the famous folk-song.

Lehrer also performed the material from More… in a live stage show, a recording of which was released as the album An Evening (Wasted) with Tom Lehrer. This album included Lehrer's spoken introductions to the songs and became the best-known recording of the material. It was re-issued on Reprise Records in 1966, and it is this version that is available on CD.

Lehrer's other major album, That Was the Year that Was (1965), contained no specific references to G&S, but is particularly Gilbertian in the fiercely political nature of the satire. Some people consider Lehrer a twentieth-century Gilbert, which would be even more true if Lehrer had written plays as opposed to detached songs.

Tom Lehrer's career as a songwriter and performer was basically over after 1965. He did write a few songs after that, but he recorded no more albums. Over the years, he has given various explanations for his sudden retirement. He once said, "What's the point of having laurels if you can't rest on them?"

In 1980, the producer Cameron Mackintosh made a successful stage musical called Tom Foolery drawn from Lehrer's earlier material. "The Elements" was one of the songs included, and it was recorded on the original cast album.

"The Elements" is one of Lehrer's cleverest creations, fitting the 100-or-so (at the time) elements to the tune of the Major-General's song. The versification is perfect, with no awkward "jamming" of words to fit the tune. "Clementine," on the other hand, never struck me as a particularly effective G&S parody, though it is of course vintage Lehrer.

The success of Tom Foolery was the impetus behind Too Many Songs By Tom Lehrer with not enough drawings by Ronald Searle (Pantheon Books, 1981), which included piano arrangements of all but six of the songs from Lehrer's three main LPs, plus a few extras. The artist, Ronald Searle, was also responsible for the G&S-inspired cartoon, Dick Deadeye.

For someone who wrote only about forty songs, Lehrer's discography is incredibly complicated. A full accounting of his recorded output and lyrics of all the songs can be found at the Lehrer Discography website. The table below lists only those records and CDs that include either "The Elements" or "Clementine."