Richard Rodgers, the world renowned composer and lyricist, died at his East Side home in Manhattan at 10:28 P.M. last night after a long illness. He was 77 years old. A spokesman for the family said funeral services would be private. "The Garrick Gaieties," "A Connecticut Yankee," "Babes in Arms," "The Boys From Syracuse," "Pal Joey," "Oklahoma!" "Carousel," "South Pacific," "Flower Drum Song," "The King and I," "The Sound of Music." What binds together these disparate musical comedies is a single phrase spanning 55 years of Broadway: "Music by Richard Rodgers." The phrase connoted the seemingly endless flow of wonderfully singable, danceable melodies that poured out of Mr. Rodgers. And coupled with the names of his two principal lyricists, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein 2d, the phrase also symbolized the evolution of American musical comedy into an art form of stature, in which plot, music and dancing were closely integrated and frequently employed to explore serious, even tragic, themes. Remarkably, too, "Music by Richard Rodgers," which was totally professional and businesslike, climbed virtually uninterrupted from triumph to triumph for decades. It was the stuff of which legends are nurtured. These successes brought Mr. Rodgers, his musicals and films a cascade of awards, prizes and honorary degrees. "Oklahoma!" won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1944 and "South Pacific" earned the Pulitzer Drama Prize in 1950. That musical also gained Mr. Rodgers an Antoinette Perry Award, one of seven "Tony" awards given to him; and the music for "Carousel" received the Donaldson Award. Moreover, he won an Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1946 for "It Might as Sell Be Spring," from "State Fair." Last year, he was honored by President Carter at a White House reception and, with Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine and Arthur Rubinstein, was among the first recipients of the annual Kennedy Center Honors. Last June, at the "Tony" Awards ceremony, he received the Lawrence Langner Award for a "lifetime of distinguished achievement in the American theater." The Rodgers career spanned more than 60 years and unfolded in three phrases--his collaboration with Mr. Hart from 1918 until shortly before Mr. Hart's death in 1943; his collaboration with Mr. Hammerstein from 1942 until Mr. Hammerstein's death in 1960, and his less notable collaborations after 1960. Mr. Rodgers, in an interview some years ago, cited some of the distinctions between his two principal collaborators. "Larry was much gayer and lighter than Oscar," he said. "He was inclined to be cynical, where Oscar never was. Oscar was more sentimental and so the music had to be more sentimental. It wouldn't have been natural for Larry to write 'Oklahoma!' any more than it would have been natural for Oscar to write 'Pal Joey.'" Though his work with Mr. Hart and Mr. Hammerstein was highly successful, his contributions to the growth of musical comedy were particularly marked in the Rodgers and Hammerstein partnership. Unlike many musicals of the 1920's and 1930's, which sandwiched thin and improbable stories between pretty girls and bursts of singing, the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows strove to offer full-dimensioned human beings as the principal characters and to project somewhat probable plots. Beautiful girls remained, of course, but instead of kicking in chorus lines, they performed dances intricate enough to be choreographed into ballets. The composer struck off the formidable total of 1,500 songs, at least 85 of them regarded as "standards," or popular classics, in the music publishing industry. They ranged from "Manhattan," the hit from "The Garrick Gaieties" of 1925, to the tunes of his last Broadway show, the musical version of "I Remember Mama," which opened last summer. His best songs - those that generations hummed, sang and danced to - included these: "The Blue Room," "Mountain Greenery," "My Heart Stood Still," "With a Song in My Heart," "There's a Small Hotel," "Funny Valentine," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "This Can't Be Love," "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," "If I Loved You," "June Is Bustin' Out All Over," "Bali Ha'i," "I'm in Love With a Wonderful Guy," "Some Enchanted Evening," "Getting to Know You," "My Favorite Things," "Climb Every Mountain," "Isn't It Romantic," "Easy to Remember," "It Might as Well Be Spring" and "It's a Grand Night for Singing." There were 42 Rodgers musicals on Broadway over the years, and revivals too numerous to mention. There were also a number of noted television series and specials with his music in the background. Film versions were made of 19 Rodgers musicals, and dozens of the Broadway productions have been revived over the years in theaters across the county and throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. At one point in 1975, 60 productions of "Oklahoma!" were under way in the United States and abroad, and a critic declared: "Probably not a day goes by without a show of his being performed somewhere in the world." Mr. Rodgers's talent for writing unforgettable melodies astonished his friends. "Dick's got that pipeline to heaven that goes through him," Allan Jay Lerner, the librettist, once said. Less astounded was the composer himself, who remarked a couple of years ago: "I admit, with no modesty whatever, that not many people can do it. But when they say, 'You're a genius,' I say, 'No, it's my job.'" To the untutored, Mr. Rodgers seemed to be able to compose instantaneously, an impression that was created by stories about how he wrote tunes over breakfast (he once did that) and by Mr. Lerner's account of telephoning Mr. Rodgers with a suggested title of having him call back within five minutes with a whole tune. "I get no place trying to tell people that story isn't true," Mr. Rodgers lamented. "The song situation had probably been going around in my head for weeks. Sometimes it takes months. I don't believe that a writer does something wonderful spontaneously. I believe it's the result of years of living, of study, reading, his very personality and temperament. At one particular moment all these come together and the artist 'expresses' himself." Mr. Rodgers was sufficiently versatile, however, to write music before the lyrics were fashioned (as he did with Mr. Hart), or oppositely (as was his way with Mr. Hammerstein). In either event, he could compose at any hour, anywhere, with or without a piano. This was a gift that earned the composer well over $100 million, and he returned much of it in kind to the arts. In 1970, he built a $1 million recreation center and a 1,932-seat theater in Mount Morris Park in Harlem, where he grew up. Mr. Rodgers also established scholarships at the Juilliard School of Music, the American Theater Wing and the American Academy of Dramatic Art, as well as a number of awards for young composers, musicians and other theater people. He gave another $1 million last year for an endowment to finance productions of new musicals in New York. Some of his money went for a 14-room duplex apartment on Park Avenue and a country house in Southport, Conn., for a handsome collection of modern sculpture and paintings that included works by Matisse, Vlaminck, Dubuffet and Giacometti, and for a closet full of custom-tailored suits and shirts with which he draped his stocky frame. Indeed, Mr. Rodgers, with his dapperly brushed dark gray hair, medium height, brown eyes and round face, resembled a prosperous financier rather than a harried Broadway showman. A neat briefcase enhanced his nontheatrical appearance. As the Rodgers legend grew over the years, his name became a household word. There were endless newspaper and magazine articles about him and his work, in addition to several books, including an autobiography, "Musical Stages," a 371-page volume published by Random House in 1975. "Rodgers & Hart," by Samuel Marx and Jan Clayton, appeared in 1976. Richard Rodgers was born of well-to-do parents, Dr. William Abraham Rodgers and Mamie Levy Rodgers, in New York on June 28, 1902. Encouraged by his mother, an excellent pianist, and by his physician-father, who liked to sing Broadway operettas at home, Richard learned to pick out tunes with one finger on the piano when he was 4 years old. He composed his first song--"Auto Show Girl"--when he was 14, his first musical comedy--a Columbia student show-- at 17, his first hit show--The Garrick Gaieties"--when he was 23. Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Hart met in 1918. They liked each other immediately, and quickly developed fondness and respect. "Larry Hart," his partner recalled, "was a genius at lyric construction, at rhyming, at finding the offbeat way of expressing himself." "He had a somewhat sardonic view of the world that can be found occasionally in his love songs and in his satirical numbers. But Larry was also a kind, gentle, generous little guy. Working with him, however, did present problems since he had to be literally trapped into putting pen to paper--and then only after hearing a melody that stimulated him," Mr. Rodgers said. Drawn by the flame of Broadway, Mr. Rodgers left Columbia after his sophomore year to work with Mr. Hart. They had a middling success with "Poor Little Ritz Girl" in 1920 and then five years of dross, during which Mr. Rodgers studied under Walter Damrosch and, with Mr. Hart, put on amateur productions for schools and synagogues. Finally, the two men wrote an amateur musical as a fund-raising show for the Theater Guild, from which emerged the guild's "The Garrick Gaieties" in 1925. An immediate success, it ran for 211 performances. It was followed by "Dearest Enemy," and then in 1926 by four Broadway productions--"The Girl Friend," the second "Garrick Gaieties," "Peggy-Ann" and "Betsy"--and one in London, "Lido Lady." By the close of the decade the team had written "A Connecticut Yankee," "Present Arms," "Spring Is Here" and "Heads Up." Although these were marked, as were all the musicals Mr. Rodgers had a hand in, by a perfectionist's attention to detail, they were short on plot. In the 30's, however, significant changes were observable. "On Your Toes," staged in 1936, integrated ballet into the plot; and in "Babes in Arms" the following year each song was a "plot" song. In 1938 the Rodgers and Hart team turned to Shakespeare for "The Boys From Syracuse," a first for musical comedy. Between shows in the 30's the team was recruited by Hollywood for eight films, few of them of great distinction. In fact, Mr. Rodgers said later that he would like to forget all his Hollywood scores except those for "Love Me Tonight" and "State Fair." In 1940 came the Rodgers and Hart "Pal Joey," an engaging tale of the adventure of an admitted cad. It did well in its initial run and even better when it ran for 18 months in a revival in 1952. Shortly after "By Jupiter" in 1942, the Theater Guild asked Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Hart to do a musical version of Lynn Rigg's "Green Grow the Lilacs." However, Mr. Hart was beset by illness (he died in 1943), and Mr. Rodgers sought out Mr. Hammerstein, a friend of many years, to collaborate on what became "Oklahoma!" Compared to Mr. Hart, Mr. Hammerstein brought a wholly different personality to the collaborative effort. Mr. Rodgers once wrote: "Oscar Hammerstein's view of life was more positive, more optimistic. He had a wonderful family. He was a joiner, a leader, a man willing to do battle for whatever causes he believed in. . . . He was as meticulous a craftsman as Larry, and he was extremely versatile. As a partner, he was completely dependable. "As far as his work with me was concerned, Oscar always wrote about the things that affected him deeply. What was truly remarkable was his never-ending ability to find new ways of revealing how he felt about three interrelating themes--nature, music and love. "In 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," the first song we wrote together for 'Oklahoma!,' Oscar described an idyllic summer day on a farm when 'all the sounds of the earth are like music.' "In 'It's a Grand Night for Singing,' he revealed that the things most likely to induce people to sing are a warm, moonlit, starry night and the first thrill of falling in love. "In 'You Are Never Away,' he compared a girl with 'the song I sing,' 'the rainbow I chase,' 'a morning in spring' and 'the star in the lace of a wild willow tree.' "In 'Younger Than Springtime,' another girl is 'warmer than the winds of June' and 'sweeter than music.' In our last collaboration, 'The Sound of Music,' just about everything Oscar felt about nature and music and love was summed up in the title song." When "Oklahoma!" opened March 31, 1943, the critics discerned a marvelous blend of well- integrated dialogue, lyrics, music and dancing drawn from native American sources that told a believable story. "While the songs fit the period of 1900 perfectly in mood and character," wrote Howard Barnes in The Herald Tribune, "they are in no sense derivative. It is strictly a Rodgers score and an extraordinarily varied and beautiful one." Olin Downes, The New York Times music critic, found that "the music is not folk music, but that of a Broadway composer writing in popular vein, free, skillfully and with taste, and a fortunate relinquishment of the jazzeries of previous fashion." The musical ran for five years--2,212 performances. In that period, two million copies of its sheet music were sold and more than 500,000 albums of the cast recording. Its backers received a 25-to-1 return on their investment. Revivals, and there were scores of them, added to this figure. The latest revival of "Oklahoma!" opened at the Palace Theater just a few weeks ago, on Dec. 13. While the original "Oklahoma!" was packing the St. James Theater, Mr. Rodgers and Mr. Hammerstein wrote "Carousel" in 1945 and "Allegro" in 1947. At the same time they entered the producing field with "I Remember Mama" in 1945 and followed with "Annie Get Your Gun," for which Irving Berlin wrote the music and lyrics. Perhaps the greatest success of the Rodgers and Hammerstein combination was "South Pacific," the first musical of their joint authorship that they themselves produced in association with Leland Hayward and Joshua Logan, who did some of the libretto. Opening at the Majestic Theater April 7, 1949, it ran for 1,925 performances, while a national company toured the country for five years. In addition, it was made into a movie and revived innumerable times. It was still running on Broadway in 1952 when two other Rodgers shows--"The King and I" and a revival of "Pal Joey"--were playing in theaters on the same block. In addition to "The King and I," the Rodgers and Hammerstein partnership provided two other gargantuan hits in the 1950's--"Flower Drum Song" in 1958 and "The Sound of Music" in 1959. In the period of his two collaborations, Mr. Rodgers also discovered the time to compose 13 hours of music for "Victory at Sea," a television show for the Navy; the score for "Winston Churchill--The Valiant Years," also a television series; a ballet; and a nightclub revue. After Mr. Hammerstein's death in 1960, Mr. Rodgers tried writing his own lyrics--for "No Strings" in 1962, with book by Samuel Taylor--and working with other collaborators--Stephen Sondheim for "Do I Hear a Waltz?" in 1965--but without the grand successes he had achieved in previous years. There were other Rodgers musicals in the last decade, but none were major hits and some were raked by critics, though the Rodgers music was usually spared such treatment. "Two By Two" arrived to mixed reviews in 1970, a production based on the Clifford Odets play retelling the Genesis story of Noah and the Ark. It had lyrics by Martin Charnin and Danny Kaye in the starring role. "Rex," a musical about Henry VIII of England, got an icy reception from critics in 1974. It had lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and a book by Sherman Yellen. There were Broadway revivals of "Pal Joey" in 1976 and "The King and I" and "The Sound of Music" in 1977. And last summer, "I Remember Mama," originally produced by the Rodgers and Hammerstein team as a straight play in 1945, returned to Broadway with music by Mr. Rodgers and words by Martin Charnin. In 1975, a show called "Rodgers & Hart," celebrating the great days of the team, packed 98 songs into what one critic called "a champagne fizz of an evening" and "sheer fun." In 1962 Mr. Rodgers was named president and producing director of the Music Theater of Lincoln Center, which has revived many musicals at the New York State Theater, including, inevitably, the cream of Mr. Rodgers's own works. He spent many of his business hours at Rodgers & Hammerstein, his office on Madison Avenue, which he furnished with paintings by Larry Rivers, Adolph Gottlieb and Pierre Soulages, Directoire furniture, a modern couch, a Biedermeier table and an Empire chair. There was no Twelve years ago, when he was 65, the American Society of Composer, Authors and Publishers gave him a luncheon on the stage of the Alvin Theater. In the evening, Mayor Lindsay presented the Handel Medallion, the city's highest cultural award, to him at a reception at Gracie Mansion. The reception drew most of Broadway, including Diahann Carroll, Alfred Drake, Martha Lright, Ray Heatherton, Dorothy Sarnoff, Kitty Carlisle and George Abbott. Mr. Rodgers was indomitable about his work. Not even an operation for cancer of the jaw in 1955 kept him away from the theater for any length of time, though he spent three months in the hospital in 1956 for a rest cure. His voice was somewhat hoarse, the result of a laryngectomy in 1974. Apart from an occasional game of croquet, his only known diversion was listening by the hour to his own songs. "Each became a hobby of its own for me," he once remarked. "I heard a very interesting definition of work from a lawyer. Work, he said, is any activity you'd rather not do. "I go to the theater and I rehearse words, music, book and so on with people who are--at least superficially--very agreeable and very attractive. Then people tell me. 'You're working hard.' "I have to laugh to myself. I don't find it work to write music, because I enjoy it. I'd find an evening of bridge hard work, because you have to think like hell and at the end you get nothing for it. "There isn't anything I wanted to do, that I haven't. At the same time, there isn't anything I've ever done that I didn't want to do better. "I would like, if I can, to broaden the possibilities of the musical theater. I think there's a better 'Oklahoma!' someplace, a better 'West Side Story.' And I'd like to be mixed up in it." Mr. Rodgers was at various times a director of the American Theater Wing, the Philharmonic Symphony Society of New York, the Juilliard School of Music, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the National Council of the Arts, the Dramatists Guild and the Actors Fund of America. He was also a trustee of Barnard College. Mr. Rodgers is survived by his wife, the former Miss Dorothy Feiner, whom he married in 1930. Mrs. Rodgers is an art expert, a gourmet of semi-professional standing and the inventor of a nonstretch dress-pattern material. Also surviving are two daughters, Mary and Linda.