Broadway MusicalThe Score

Chapter 12段馨君 Iris Hsin-chun Tuan

Associate ProfessorDepartment of Humanities and Social

SciencesNCTU

Function

• Composers harness all its expressive energy when they adapt music’s power of suggestion to the dramatic elements of the musical book.

Candide at NYCO To hold a pen is to be at war,” wrote M. de Voltaire.

• Music can reinforce the emotion in drama in a way that cannot be duplicated by language alone.

• Music can be employed to reinforce dramatic action.

Yet in the case of Candide, all those revisions still left the world .

• Music can establish and maintain a tone appropriate to the dramatic atmosphere of a work.

• Music can personify, prefigure, and predict, particularly when the composer resorts to the operatic technique known as leitmotif, a short musical statement made to represent a character, event, or emotion.

• Music can set and sustain a dramatic mood.

• Music generates dance. Theater of spoken language limits movement and spectacle to pomp, ceremony, or group conflict.

42nd Street. Genre: Theatre; Location: State Theatre.

Component

• Melody is a movement of musical tones capable of great expression.

• Richard Rodger knew that the repetition of single tone in a melody is apt to produce sound with a sleepy, hypnotic effect.

Richard Rodger

• The musical encapsulates the situation and give the leading players something to act.

• The melody suggests in sound what the lyrics say in words.

OKLAHOMA "The Surrey With The Fringe On Top" with lyricshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1CXo8QMi8

OKLAHOMA "The Surrey With The Fringe On Top"

• The first five measures of “Out of My Dreams” reinforce with music the image of a young girl gliding out of a conscious state into a dream of love.

Out of My Dreams from Oklahoma!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goiy-2b3TdQ

Oklahoma

• Since dramatic scenes are like musical can use rhythm to contrast the dramatic values in different situation, to dramatize character in music, and provide the momentum for dance. Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet - The balcony scene.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyUptXZOG5w&feature=related

• Composer can use rhythm to compare and contrast characters.

• Rodgers allowed character to trade rhythms in order to demonstrate their relationship in music.

• Rhythm generates the force and momentum for the regularly accented movement of the body known as dance.

• Musical rhythm is to visual movement what musical harmony is to visual color.

• Today, the words “musical score ” imply more than the sum total of musical numbers written or assembled for particular show.

I Whistle A Happy Tunehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UqtScdjKiw&feature=related

• A serious musical theater score:

(1)Developments from the book or concept.

(2)Avoids imposition and interpolation

(3)Makes no concession to the commercial market. Visit the CAPA Fund website for

more TheKing And I photos

Element

• Two broad classifications will govern this introductory approach to the elements of a musical score.

• Musical characteristic, like the overture, opining number, establishing number, patter songs, rhythm songs, chorus numbers, musical scene, underscoring, segue, and reprise.

Do ... RE ... Mi ... The Sound of Musichttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edZZr3JtfQA&feature=related

• The overture captures the attention of the audience and helps secure audience favor.

• The opening number will more likely introduce the principal characters, describe their relations, and fix the performance style of the entire production.

The Sound of Music

• Jerry Herman wrote the song “Hello, Dolly” to accompany Dolly Levi’s triumphal entrance into the Harmonia Gardens. Jerry Herman

Herman at the White House for the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors

• Lyric dominate the sound of the patter song regardless of function.

• Comedy material fits well into the patter song, particularly when dramatic situation encourages humor generated by incongruity of language.

• The patter song depends on a rapid delivery of many words.

• The chorus number provides contrast to the solo elements of a musical score.

Hello Dolly!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyUl0aYK8Ws

Hello Dolly!

• Chorus number offers a brief set piece in song, the musical scene sets an entire dramatic action to music.

• Underscoring allows the composer to harness the power of music in an equally soaring but less dramatically specific manner.

• All musical need to move along at a brisk and rapid pace.

• The reprise.

"Hello, Dolly!" Barbra Streisandhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FdI1RKcNhU&feature=related

Types of Songs

• Songs in which the lyric cannot be divorced from the music.

• The charm song stands midway between the ballad and the comedy song.

• Since comedy in the theater grows out of incongruity in life or language, the comedy song makes music subservient to the lyric.

Cats Musical - Memoryhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-L6rEm0rnY

• The “I am” song establishes something essential to audience understanding of character and situation.

• Songs classified as special material support the special performance talents of the star.

Elements of a Theater Song

• Four elements that figure prominently in an understanding of the theater song are title, function, form, and beat.

The Moments of Happiness - HD, from Cats the Musical - the filmhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTIiif7hIo4&feature=related

• The title of a song for the theater should represent something more than a descriptive name of the song’s subject.

• The composer must respond by setting title.

• While both can be appreciated for their own sake, the theater song exists to fulfill a dramatic or theatrical function.

• While lyrics provide a precise indication of what a character is feeling or thinking, music can transport that content beyond the capability of spoken sound.

Song Forms

• Songs were used rarely for anything more ambitious than vocal display or dance accompaniment.

• This framework and its refrain variations AABB, ABAB, and ABAC allow the songwriter to attach patterns of dramatic development to repeated patterns of sound and so bring dramatic meaning to songs.

"LILLY DALE'"- 1852 Ballad - Tom Roushhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTeL8Q9M4dw&feature=related

42nd Street

• 42nd Street is a musical with a book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble, lyrics by Al Dubin, and music by Harry Warren.

The Lullaby Of Broadway - 42nd Streethttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qITsRZ2vrWs

• The 1980 Broadway production, directed by an ailing Gower Champion and orchestrated by Philip J. Lang, won the Tony Award for Best Musical and became a long-running hit. Nadine Isenegger and Cast in 42nd StreetPhoto

courtesy of Joan Marcus.

• The show was produced in London in 1984 (winning the Olivier Award for Best Musical) and its 2001 Broadway revival won the Tony for Best Revival. 42nd Street