Music Theory for Musical Theatre by John Bell & Steven R. Chicurel

Author:John Bell & Steven R. Chicurel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2008-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

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Essays in Music Analysis

The late music scholar Edward T. Cone delivered a series of lectures in 1972 at the University of California, Berkeley. The substance of those lectures, printed in The Composer’s Voice, addresses, as does much of Cone’s other writing, the notion that rich possibilities for interpretation exist for performers of musical works if they consider analyzing music in a way that goes well beyond mere traditional (harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic) examination.1 Cone encouraged music (and theatre) artists to delve into the worlds of play structure, dramatic personae, and, in the case of vocal music, text analysis, in order to create a vital live performance. Cone’s ideas have been applied to great effect by many musicians whose orientation to analysis is through musical form and structure first.

Through the authors’ teaching experience in an academic setting, they have discovered that when elements of music theory are incorporated into the process of song interpretation, the product is inevitably richer.

In spite of specific direction offered by some composers and lyricists, the burden of song interpretation and performance falls to the musical theatre practitioner. In order to meet these challenges, the authors invite musical theatre artists to bring as much imagination and insight to the process of music analysis as they would to script analysis. In so doing, they benefit by infusing their typical dramatic or textual song analysis with elements of music theory.

Through the essays that follow, the authors offer models that illustrate approaches to song interpretation.

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