I'm surprised and kind of sad that TD doesn't hear the evocation of time and place in Richard Rodgers' music to Oklahoma and Carousel. Allow me to point out....
Many a New Day is a minuet, not a style of music used much after the Sooner period. The hard shuffle heard in The Farmer and the Cowman, I Cain't Say No and All Or Nothing is something one only associates with the American wild west. The "make up your mind, Laurie" section of Out of My Dreams is echt period music, and the clip-clop accompaniment of Surrey With the Fringe On Top takes one back to the era of horse-drawn transportation.
The first two chords of If I Loved You's refrain are the tonic and the tonic diminished. This is a harmonic progression popular in 19th century music but rarely used in the 20th. Blow High Blow Low sounds like an authentic whaling song, and the gentility of the chromatic lines in When the Children Are Asleep read as Victorian.
Having a feel for a time and place doesn't involve a slavish imitation of the actual music of what's being depicted. One couldn't listen to actual B.C. Roman music for a full evening. What Sondheim did in Forum's best songs played up the "low comedy" aspect of the evening. One of the ideas behind Forum is to show how classical comedy isn't really all that different from what you'd find in burlesque or the Borscht Belt. Everybody Ought To Have a Maid, Impossible and Comedy Tonight are all examples.
The song I most admire in Les Miserables, Castle on the Cloud, sounds very much like an old French folk song, Allons Gai Bergerers and, amongst the synthesized pop, I, for one, welcomed a touch of verissimilitude
