“Can’t Help Singing:” The Music in Musicals
When we talk about musicals, we often break them down into two elements: the “book,” or the spoken text, and the “music.” The creators of a musical must choose how to fit the book and the music together. They must make choices about how the music functions in the world of the play. Will the other characters be able to hear the music? Is the character really performing a song for others, or is she expressing her feelings through music? Will the song move the story forward, or be a break in the narrative? There are many different ways of addressing these questions, and historically, musicals can be grouped into two different categories depending on how they answer those questions. However, a musical could fall anywhere between them.
Wagner: Unification In the 19th century, an opera composer named Richard Wagner began to write his operas using a theory of unification. Wagner wanted all of his operas to be integrated: he wanted the music, the book, the costumes and the set to fit together so well that you didn’t even notice they were different elements. He wanted the music to tell the story just as much as the words did. Wagner called this theory Gesamtkunstwerk, which is German for “total work of art” or “synthesis of arts.”
More recently, the musical-‐creating team Rodgers and Hammerstein used this idea of integration to create musicals such as Oklahoma! and Carousel. Oklahoma! uses song and dance to tell the story instead of using them as an entertaining break in the play. When asked what made Oklahoma! so successful, Rodgers replied that “the orchestrations sound the way the costumes look.” Before Rodgers and Hammerstein began creating their “musical dramas,” many musicals belonged to the tradition of Vaudeville. Vaudeville shows were variety shows that included all types of performers: musicians, actors, magicians, comedians and many more. Musicals created around the height of Vaudeville’s popularity typically featured song and dance primarily as a break in the story rather than a way to tell the story. Since Rodgers and Hammerstein made their mark, unification has become a traditional way of answering questions about how to fit music into a musical. Many theatre practitioners now feel that a song should function to further the narrative. In unified musicals, characters seem unaware of the difference between speaking and song.
Hugh Jackman as Curly and Josefina Gabrielle as Laurie in the 1998 London revival of Oklahoma! By Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Can you think of any other musicals that integrate music, dance, costumes and set into the entire narrative?
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