Peter Howard, who arranged the dance music, composed the incidental music or conducted the orchestra for many of Broadway’s biggest hits of the last half-century, died April 18 in Englewood, N.J. He was 80.
He died of pneumonia, said his son, Jason.
Mr. Howard made his most significant mark as the dance music arranger for 23 of the 38 Broadway shows he worked on from 1949 to 2000, including productions of “1776,” “Chicago,” “Annie,” “The Roar of the Greasepaint — The Smell of the Crowd,” “The Tap Dance Kid,” “Carnival” and “Hello, Dolly!”
The dance music arranger is “the unsung hero of a Broadway show, and Peter was the greatest dance arranger,” the Tony Award-winning director and choreographer Susan Stroman said. “All other arrangers today measure their work against Peter Howard.”
Other major choreographers with whom Mr. Howard worked were Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, Danny Daniels and Baayork Lee. He worked in various capacities on, among other shows, “Harrigan ‘n Hart,” “Barnum,” “How Now, Dow Jones,” “Subways Are for Sleeping,” “I Can Get It for You Wholesale,” “The Sound of Music” and “My Fair Lady.”
For “My Fair Lady,” Mr. Howard was assistant to the conductor, Franz Allers, with an unusual assignment. He spent many hours in a hotel room with the British actor and non-singer Rex Harrison, coaching him to speak resonantly through six songs, including “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”
In recent years he toured the United States and Europe with a one-man show, “Peter Howard’s Broadway,” singing, playing the piano and telling tales in an overview of his half-century not quite in the limelight.
Mr. Howard took pride in even modest musical accomplishments, his son said. For the 1960 television production of “Peter Pan,” starring Mary Martin, he played a small keyboard instrument that produces bell-like tones — as the voice of Tinkerbell.
