‘If I Were a Rich Man’ from Fiddler on the Roof

Program notes

About the Work

‘If I Were a Rich Man’ is the show-stopping number of Tevye, the poor dairyman at the heart of Fiddler on the Roof, and one of the most famous songs in the Broadway canon. Bock and Harnick wrote it for the 1964 musical, drawing on the Sholem Aleichem stories of Jewish village life in early-twentieth-century Russia. Alone with his thoughts and with God, Tevye daydreams about the life he would lead if he were wealthy: a big house, a fat wife, idle hours for prayer and study, the deference of his neighbours. Bock built the melody on the sounds of Jewish liturgical and folk music, complete with passages of wordless, cantorial-style vocalizing (‘Yidl-diddle-diddle…’) that imitate the ecstatic improvisation of a synagogue cantor. The result is at once comic and deeply touching, a poor man’s wishful prayer that has become a gala favourite for the great bass-baritones, who relish its blend of humour, character, and full-throated singing.

What to Listen For

Listen for the cantorial vocalise, the wordless ‘biddy-biddy-bum’ passages where Tevye’s voice swoops and trills like a synagogue cantor lost in song. The melody leans on the distinctive intervals of Eastern European Jewish music, giving it its instantly recognizable flavour. Notice how the mood shifts between broad comedy and sudden tenderness, especially when Tevye imagines time to study the holy books: the dream of dignity beneath the dream of riches.