Transcript Broadway Musical The Score Chapter 12

Broadway Musical
The Score
Chapter 12
段馨君 Iris Hsin-chun Tuan
Associate Professor
Department of Humanities and Social
Sciences
NCTU
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"
OKLAHOMA "The Surrey With The Fringe On Top" with
lyrics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss1CXo8QMi8
• 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.
Oklahoma
Out of My Dreams from Oklahoma!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goiy-2b3TdQ
• 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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0qao2xINsE
• 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 Tune
http://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 Music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRCnRgouv14
• 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!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7N2wssse14
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 Streisand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae0Hg6VLPc0
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 - Memory
http://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 film
http://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 Roush
http://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 Street
http://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 longrunning 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