A stylistic approach to the history of the musical

A stylistic approach to the history of the musical

DAN SPÎNU The Faculty of Composition, Musicology, Musical Pedagogy and Theatre

George Enescu University of Arts Str. Horia nr. 7 - 9, Iaşi, 700126

ROMANIA [email protected]

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to highlight those features which state that the musical is a genre on its own, different from the European operetta, and especially to surprise several turning points and important issues in the stylistic evolution of the genre, in the intention to make a staging of its history from a stylistic point of view. Key-Words: - musical, style, operetta, history, dramaturgy, jazz, theatre, staging.

1 Introduction The musical, sometimes called musical theatre,

emerged practically along with operetta in the second half of the nineteenth century and was heavily influenced by it, both in form and musical language, so for periods of history, or in the case of some works in particular, it is difficult to draw a border between these two genres.

However the musical is considered overall as a stand-alone genre, suggesting that there must be sufficient features to distinguish itself from operetta. The popularity has always been a declared feature of the musical, so the historians and critics have used it mainly as a criterion for staging the history of the genre at the expense of musicological and stylistic criteria, specific to music analysis.

The aims of this study are to highlight the aspects that distinguish the musical from operetta and opera, and to mark the major milestones in the evolution of the genre, but from the stylistic perspective, more appropriate and relevant when it comes to a musical genre.

2 The early period of the musical 2.1 1866 – The first musical?

The critics and historians Gerald Bordman, Denny Martin Flinn, John Kenrick, among others, consider The Black Crook, which premiered in 1866 [1], as the first musical. This work was actually an improvisation. A French ballet troupe, on tour in New York, was in trouble because the theatre where

it was to evolve was destroyed in a fire with all their costumes.

In an attempt to produce a show elsewhere the director of a Broadway theatre offers a different solution: to change the play currently in production by introducing music to support the choreography. To make it more attractive he invested a huge amount of money for that period ($ 50,000 [2]) in costumes and scenery. The show has enjoyed a tremendous success leading to a very large financial benefit for that period. Is this work worthy of being considered as the first musical?

Critics considered that it was to be remembered as such a big success that makes it a great reference for that period. As a historical fact, it is true, but is this really enough to sign the birth of a new genre?

A close look on The Black Crook shows that the scenario was basically a compilation of elements from Faust and Freishutz, so there was nothing original and the musical moments were in part taken from other works. This clearly shows that the music did not have important dramatic role and it was only a pretext to introduce choreographic moments.

In conclusion The Black Crook brought nothing original. The show format was already existent (the operetta) and the musical approach was lower in value than the one of the opera and operetta, the music had no original character, nor dramatic role which was a minus. The reason for such a success should be sought not in the value of the work itself but in the impressive scenery for that period (replication of waterfalls, pyrotechnic effects etc.), the fast of costumes and scenery splendour. But

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most certainly it contributed the presence of dozens of ballerinas, wearing an outfit seen provocative to men in terms of clothing rigors of the time. "Scenography and feet are all [...]" [2], was to declare Samuel Clemens in a chronicle of his newspaper, which fully confirms the above explanations.

All this makes The Black Crook, even if it had some specific features important for the musical, not really a new kind of genre and not a valuable work in itself, but rather an important event in record time by the audience and receipts. 2.2 The first elements of originality of the

musical Because this type of show format was already

existent, new elements must be sought elsewhere. Approaches of this period are, in terms of music, a tribute to operetta and therefore specific to the musical language of the European classical music. So even in this respect the musical was not proposing anything new, and was unable to produce a demarcation from operetta.

The explanation of this situation is simple. Even the North American society itself was trying to find its own identity, apart from the one of the European one. Premises of emergence of new forms of operetta-like genre appeared in the United States only when the American society could produce original musical genres, like those who prefigured jazz: negro-spirituals, ragtime, but also the first forms of original American music resulting from combining North American folklore with the one of European peoples - the precursors of country music.

Finally, the first authentic musicals should be found among those works that used the operetta format, with traditional European musical language, along with some new ones, like those mentioned above. Of course, such research raises many problems: some of the early works of the genre have been lost and the remaining number is too large to be effectively investigated by a single researcher. It remains that the only reasonable way is to research the works of the most important composers of the time, which were appreciated by critics.

As the first signs of original music occurred in the United States after mid-nineteenth century and the first forms of early jazz (ragtime) occurred in the early twentieth century, the first musical to incorporate elements of originality really should be sought among the works dating from the early twentieth century.

Such work could be Little Johnny Jones, composed by George M. Cohan, which premiered in

1904 [3]. The piece Give My Regards to Broadway was selected for analysis. Fig. 1 [4]

There is first to be observed that at the end of the

musical phrases there is a syncopated rhythmic formula (shown circled in the figure above). This comes from the first forms of original American music as it is the one written by the composer Stephen Foster. An example is the song Old Folks at Home, which contains the mentioned formula at the end of the musical phrases, shown circled in the example below:

Fig. 2 [5]

Another American-specific element is the

accompaniment. As shown in Figure 1, in the second stave the accompaniment marks the root of the chords on strong beats (and eventually the fifths) and the entire chord on weak beats. This specific type of accompaniment is the one of the first form of early jazz, the ragtime, as seen in the figure below that shows a fragment of a song representative for the genre:

Fig. 3 [6]


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During his early stage the musical was also strongly influenced by the revue, the main form of entertainment at the time (the radio was about to occur). This format consists of using a sumptuous, large choreography ensemble, lavish costumes and scenery.

Consequently the musical borrows all these elements and did this even the script requested it or not.

It is something usual for this period as when the main character interprets an important moment, out of nowhere dozens of dancers appear and they have nothing to do with the script. Also it is still a current practice that various producers to replace some original musical moments with others, especially created to introduce choreographic moments or make the show more attractive to the audience.

All these clearly shows something very important: in its early stages the music of musicals had rather an utilitarian role, similar to the variety show, to give support for choreographic moments or to offer another way to entertain the audience.

Another feature was that the scenarios were easy, painting life in pink, a reason for joyful music and dance. Approaching deep and complex issues, like social problems, was unthinkable in this period, which remained a prerogative of theatre and opera. The attitude to replace some musical moments clearly shows that the musical lacked the indissoluble unity scenario-music, a trademark of European opera and operetta, which, associated with the thematic of the scenarios, was a factor of lack of maturity of the musical genre. However a trend to give music a dramatic meaning existed, prefiguring the later approach. It is the case of Jerome Kern's work, The Girl from Utah [7] premiered in 1914.

The piece They Did not Believe Me [8] announces the elaborated, romantic air, specific to the stages that will come.

In this song he introduced compositional techniques borrowed from classical music, such as modulation inflections, the use of seventh chords for their special colour, sequencing, all making a big step towards simplicity of many scores of before.

George Gershwin takes even deeper the dramaturgical role of music in Lady Be Good [9]. In the one of the constituent pieces, Fascinating Rhythm, the composer treats the melody’s structure ingenious in terms of rhythm.

The figure below shows that the melody is composed of phrases which in turn are composed of motifs, denoted by a and a ':

Fig.4 [10]

First of all it draws the attention that both motifs are composed of rhythmic cells consisting in a eight doted note followed by a sixteenth, which gives a certain rhythmic pulsation. It's the jazz specific rhythm, based on the cell consisting in a triplet with the first two notes tied. Second he uses an ingenious method of offsetting the a motif with an eight note ahead, thus obtaining the a’ motif. The procedure is carried on offsetting the following musical phrase with a beat in advance. Thus the fourth beat gets an accent, and if it were to write the melody alone, the composer would have chosen alternative measures- 4/4 and 3/4. The two beats offset in advance of the melody related to the beats of the accompaniment is recovered in the fourth bar of the chorus, by increasing the value of the last note. This process is essentially a polimetrie and Gershwin is probably the first to apply it in a musical, not for complexity sake, but to suggest what the title announces: a fascinating rhythm. This suggesting of an idea using the musical language, the techniques of composition, is itself a great novelty, it is the first time when entertainment music serves the text to such an advanced a level.

3 The beginning of the classical age The year of 1927 was a turning point in the

history of the musical marked by Jerome Kern’s work, Show Boat. In the first place it was the first time when the script of a musical addressed a different topic, other than entertainment, a socio-cultural phenomenon that was American-specific, that of "floating theatres" on the Mississippi River, hence the name. The script is an adaptation after Edna Ferber’s novel, a Pulitzer Prize winner in 1925. Also it provides a fresco of the life in the riverside towns, approaching serious social aspects


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of American society, as the problems of skin color and racial discrimination. The presence of characters with diferent skin colour side by side is again a novelty. Also, from a musical point of view, the work has a new approach.

First it uses American – specific musical instruments, as the banjo [11], and the chorus is treated as in opera, as a collective character and is divided into two subsets: one of white, the other of black performers, symbolizing the two populations mentioned in the script. But more than that extensive use is made of American-style music to better reveal certain situations and characters, which, besides the original character of the script, implies an important dramaturgical dimension. The air of the character Jim, in which he opens up about the problems related to the skin colour, is made in the manner of the negro-spirituals genre, becouse this is the one which is emblematic for the aspiration manifestation of freedom of this population. The melody of this air relies on syncope and pentatony:

Fig. 5 [12]

These, and especially the use of pentatonic scales, are important features of the genre, as seen in the example below: Fig. 6 [13]

Another American specific genre, the blues, is

used in the air called Can’t help lovin’ dat man, both in melody and harmony: Fig. 7 [14]

In the fragment shown surrounded above, the

lowered third degree (marked with x) points the use of the blues scale, and is harmonized with the VI-VI-VI cadence, with the VI-th degree lowered and transformed in a major seventh chord, so it has the

sonority of the dominant seventh, chained with the domination seventh chord. It is a typical blues cadence. Along with these elements, the 12 bar blues form is used, with its specific harmony. The score is too big to be reproduced here, so the 12 bars and their corresponding chords are shown in the table below: Fig. 8

I II7 / V7

I I IV IV-

I I V7 V7 I I All this blues – specific elements are used not for the sake of the popularity of the genre but becouse the character of this air is an mulattoes who remembers his mother singing a song, specifically black people. It is again the use of music with drama role. The combining of the musical language of European classical music with American-specific one is another element of originality present in this work and will henceforth be a feature of the musical. In the air shown below the simple and tonal character of the melody, as used in the European operetta, would be harmonised, most probably, with the I-V-I succesion. However the composer uses a succesion of 3 seventh major chords, each placed at a major second below the previous chord, as shown below. This is a jazz-specific harmony used for European-specific melody: Fig. 9 [15]

As a conclusion Show Boat is a milestone

marking a new period in which the musical genre becomes a mature one, able to address deep and complex issues, getting rid of the label of a genre of exclusive entertainment, rising to the level of opera and operetta. Importantly, with Show Boat, music became a servant and support to scenario and not just an excuse for entertainment or choreographed moments. But what detaches it from the European musical tradition most, is the very musical language, by using of American-specific genres blended with the European classical ones and using American-specific musical instruments along with the symphony orchestra.


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The age opened by Show Boat continued consistently enough, keeping the stylistic uniformity until the late '50s. This feature, coupled with the fact that the most valuable works are considered reference models, is justifying the classical name for this period.

4 The beginning of the modern age With the late '50s new trends arise, new ways to use the types of entertainment, implementation of new techniques of composition (for the musical) and also the rise of new musical languages occurred with the emergence of new genres of jazz. The modern period is considered by this study to begin since 1957, the year of West Side Story premiere, a work by composer Leonard Bernstein, offering enough novelties to be apart from the traditional approach. Besides the modernity of embedding elements of modern jazz like bebop and cool, the dramaturgic role of music is so deep that it extends down to item level of the musical language which afterwards is transformed into a symbol. The entire work has as central element the augmented fourth, exploited in various ways. One is as it is, used as a signal, announced in the prologue, marked with A in the figure below:

Fig. 10 [16]

Here it is exposed instrumental and whistled by

the members of one of the gangs, as their signal. It is also present in the melody of the air Maria:

Fig. 11 [17]

Here the point is to give an expansive character to the song that suggests excitement when the main character meets Maria.

A more discreet and sophisticated way of using the augmented fourth is through the harmony, like in the Tonight duet:

Fig. 12 [17]

As shown in the third bar in the example above, the harmony of the second degree is a major chord, it is a turning to the Lydian mode.

Why did the composer choosed to use this very particular musical interval in such many situations? Most likely it is due to its tensioned, conflicting character, requiring resolution that may suggest the core of the scenario, the conflict between the two ethnic groups, with all the dramas that result.

The scene called Cool is showing the highest level of merging of the European classical music tradition with the African-American genres. This scene uses some elements of jazz, taken from the most modern subgenre of the time, cool, and a genre emblematic for the European musical tradition, the fugue. By combining these two, so different, Bernstein made probably one of the most genuine moments of the musical history. The cool style gave mysterious character, emotional colors, "slippery" melodic profile, suggesting someone in a wait for fight or hunt, or traking slowly his prey. The fugue provided musical depiction of the two collective characters (the two ethnic groups) materialized in the subject and his imitation, the polyphonic fabric that suggests tracking and confrontation between the two groups, by the use of counterpoint.

West Side Story was another turning point in the history of musical, which marks the beginning of the modern age, when the genres are not necessarily used as such, to describe their social, ethnic, historical origins and connotations, but for their dramaturgic potential, for the way they can serve the scenario. With this work were opened the use of any compositional techniques and any combination of styles, as long as they serve the story.

4 Conclusions The issues presented in this study shows first that

the musical has enough elements of originality to be a genre in itself, apart from the operetta, even if its format is identical with. The musical aspects are those that differentiate it more than any other.


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Also this study proves that the stylistic approach of history of musical is a valid one there are clear turning points in the stylistic of the genre and enough consistency in maintaining certain features on certain periods of time so that a staging of the historical evolution of the genre, on stylistic criteria, could be made. The shown arguments support a staging of the musical's history into three periods: - the early stage (1866-1927) - the formation of the

genre format, the setting of the influential sources and stylistic features, the evidence of the first original assertion

- the classical age (1927-1957) – in which the genre comes to its maturity, by the full outline of its basic features and thus affirmation as a distinct genre; as is the case for any classical period, this one has stylistic homogeneity and reference works, those that will be models for later

- the modern age (1957 - until present days) – in which the patterns are no longer necessarily regarded and a big variety of composing techniques and musical languages are used, often interlaced.

Due to the vastness of the subject the author has

no claim that this study covers it entirely. Yet through it is shown that, despite the importance of the staging of musical's history in terms of popularity, the approach of the genre development based on stylistic aspects is a feasible one and leads to revealing otherwise unseen features, in a more subtle, nuanced and deeper way. References: [1] Bordman, Gerald, American Musical Theatre:

A Chronicle, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, p. 19.

[2] Flinn, Martin Denny, Musical ! A Grand Tour, Schirmer Books, New York, 1997, p. 80.

[3] Bordman, Gerald, American Musical Theatre – A Chronicle (third edition), Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, p. 236.

[4] Cohan, Geo M., Give my regards to Broadway, F.A. Mills 48 W. 29th St., New York, 1904, p.1.

[5] Foster, Stephen, Old Folks at Home, H. Franklin Johnes Publisher, New York, 1896, bars 5-10.

[6] Joplin, Scott, Maple Leaf Rag, bars 18-22; public domain score, http://www.free-scores.com/download-sheet-music.php?pdf=6 (2010, the 7th of January).

[7] Bordman, Gerald, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, p. 344.

[8] Kern, Jerome, They Didn’t Believe Me, Jerome H. Remick & Co., New York & Detroit, 1914.

[9] Bordman, Gerald, American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001, p. 444.

[10] Gershwin, George, Fascinating Rhythm, WB MUSIC CORP., no place, 1924.

[11] Suskin, Steven, The Sound of Broadway Music, Oxford University Press, New York, 2009, p. 536.

[12] Kern, Jerome, Show Boat - Conductor’s Score, MCA Music Publishing, no place, 1995, Act I, Scene. 1, No 4, p. 3, bar 48 - p. 4, bar 55.

[13] No author , Negro Spirituals, Go Down, Moses, G. Ricordi & Co., New York, 1917, p. 4.

[14] Kern, Jerome, Show Boat - Conductor’s Score, MCA Music Publishing, no place, 1995, Act I, Scene 2, No 5, p. 2, bars 1-7.

[15] Kern, Jerome, Show Boat - Conductor’s Score, MCA Music Publishing, no place, 1995, Act 1, Scene 1, No 3, p.1, bars 1-16.

[16] Bernstein, Leonard, West Side Story - Vocal Score, Chappell & Co. Ltd., London, 1957, p 9, stave 3.

[17] Bernstein, Leonard, West Side Story - Vocal Score, Chappell & Co. Ltd., London, 1957, p. 57, stave 1.


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A stylistic approach to the history of the musical