What’s the
role of music in a piece, and how might a writer fulfill, revolutionize or
totally fuck it up when creating his musical?
By RSO
What Makes a Musical a Musical?
Musical
theatre, traditionally, mixes spoken text (dialogue) and sung text (songs). (For a moment we’ll put aside the
frequent third partner, movement and dance, to explore only text.) Based on this, ostensibly, musical
theatre’s closest cousins are the play, a dramatic piece of predominately
spoken text; and the opera, a dramatic piece of predominately sung text.
From the
play to the musical, it seems that narratively speaking, dialogue is regularly
replaced by sung text, or songs. Likewise,
from opera to musical, music suddenly gives out and dialogue — a scene — takes over.
(A composer
which has made some headway in the field, hateful of at least one bookwriter
she was forced with, referred to the bookwriter’s work as “the chat,” which is
perhaps indicative of the boiled blood this relationship can cause.)
The decision
for how much and when music takes over or gives way seems to define most pieces
as musicals, or else:
·
“straight” plays, (Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Names Desire) – entirely spoken
·
plays with music, (Peter and the Starcatcher, Master Class) – mostly spoken, with
some songs
·
operettas, (Pirates
of Penzance, The Merry Widow) – mostly sung, with some dialogue
·
operas, (La
Boheme, Carmen) – entirely sung
with
musicals residing comfortably in the center – song and speech in almost equal
part.
When you
consider the operetta versus pop-opera (dramatic pieces which are sung-thru
like the opera but musically abandon it, such as Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, Chess, etc.) versus “true” musical
theatre, the decision (according to the audience which the producers of the piece target)
is simply style of music. Nearly
sung-through works with musical leanings to the contemporary (pop, rock,
etc.) are nearly always musicals, and those leaning back to the music of the early
20th century and before tend to live as operetta.
It’s
interesting to note that Sweeney Todd and
A Little Night Music are frequently
performed by opera companies but are, by all accounts, musicals (and not operas
or operettas) for the extended dialogue scenes. Some argue the voices required (“operatic” voices — big,
exact, and trained ones, and “musical theatre” voices — smaller, less virtuosic
and less trained) or that the extension of chromaticism in the piece (The Light in the Piazza, for example)
may determine it, but in the end, the first decisive vote goes to the author –
what have they written? And of
course, the last decisive vote goes
to the producer with whom the writer has agreed to work: to whom (what sort of
theatre or company) will the producer sell this piece and what will they hock
it as?
Countless
essays have been written on this topic and speculate on dozens of other
rationales for defining musical theatre but we proceed nonetheless with the
intention of creating a musical theatre
piece which has all kinds of shitty baggage associated with it.
Labeling Music Within the Musical Score
Within the
roughly 150 — 300 pages of a musical’s piano-vocal score, music might be categorized
as follows.
SONGS are musical material structured to be continuous and with little or no
interruption from spoken text. Often these moments contain one or only a few
dramatic actions, with little or no change, or else a "turn."