MUSIC MONDAYS 2: Bars and Tones and other things you're supposed to set.
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Now with youtube links, guaranteed to get you thinking about your favorite shows!
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Now I tend to get in trouble when I make correlations between musical processes and fandom. Does that stop me? Apparently, no. (Bear with me for the theory talk, this post is also about prose.)
So last night, at a thoroughly inappropriate hour, I started chord structuring work on "Australia", the love semi-duet from Act 1 of Dogboy & Justine. I'm doing something interesting with time signatures and phrase lengths: Danny is going to be singing in a steady waltz, but because of how the chord sequences are laid out, the phrases are going to elide into one another and be of irregular measures, most often seven bars, sometimes five, sometimes nine, all ways to deviate from eight. It's a technical way of showing musical tangents and stream of consciousness and self-interruption; Danny's condition informs how he thinks, and thus, how he sings. So an otherwise straightforward and eloquent melody is disjointed.
And it occurs to me, writing down these chords and these phrase lengths, that I am extremely lucky the duet takes place late in Act 1. If this were the first number in D&J, I'd get walkouts, because that's not something you are supposed to hear in non-classical musical theatre. (Actually, you're not really supposed to hear it in classical works pre-1850 either. When I said "Wagner, meet Schwartz," I meant it.)
The opening number of D&J, "Emergency Contact", is an energetic one--a frantic one, as Justine has just been kicked out of her apartment and is texting all over for a place to stay. But it's not without its nontraditions. My plans for it include what I describe as "time signature fuckery"; a steady pulse, and a fast one, and periods of 4/4 in the chorus, but the verses are going to be a mess of fives and threes. Stravinsky might approve. There's a really clear-cut musical reason for this, and it actually IS going to set a precedent for the entire work. I can't use something in the first number and not thread it through most of the show.
Just as the first sentence sets the tone for a story, the first song sets the tone for a musical. That's not uncommon knowledge. Not even necessarily the overtures, which exist for this express purpose--the first things the cast sings or dances or otherwise communicates. Think of the openings of Sweeney Todd, West Side Story, Candide, The Music Man, Chicago: you hear echoes or even direct reprises of the musical themes laid out in the opening throughout the entire show.
A musical almost never begins in medias res. It works with non-musical film; the action is stylistically similar enough to reality that we already have a guaranteed in, a link to the action, a common language. And it can work in books and short stories as well, though it's a little harder without the immediate visual cues. But in a musical or in an opera the composer has to establish a language--a musical language, tonal and temporal and prosodic and all--in addition to setting the scene. Musicals that start in the middle are extremely rare. (It's not uncommon to start at or after the end and ask how we got here--Wicked and Elisabeth and Blood Brothers come to mind, but in all three cases it's the End that is most familiar and accessible to the general audience, not the Beginning.)
But it occurs to me, working on these songs, that the idea of setting the tone or setting the bar doesn't just apply to works of art but to the communities that produce and consume it. It's not just a case of the early bird catching the worm; the first and most vocal people to support or create a kind of media will be the arbiters of its direction. The first guests at a party will determine the thread of conversation for the entire night (or at least until that one extremely charismatic person comes along and hijacks it). The first actions of the players will determine the course of the game. The opening moves dictate the path of a game of chess. The first prolific people in a fandom will determine the standards of operation, production, and consumption. And when the first person there missteps, or creates an unexpected opening, the entire work takes on a different tone to justify its opening.
So why can "Emergency Contact" be the opening number of D&J, and not "Australia"? For one thing, for all that D&J is also a love story, it's a growth story first and foremost, and more about Justine's maturation than anyone else's in the ensemble. D&J also builds on solo, performative songs throughout the show, and there aren't many group numbers at all, so we should establish with one of these. So neither a love duet nor "Oh my god, you guys!" nor "I've got the horse right here" seems to fit, in my head.
I also have to establish the musical rules. While the overture is going to lay some of the language down, like how the themes and motifs relate to one another, "Emergency Contact" gets to lay down just what I expect of my singers. The prosody is wordy and dense; the tonal language is edgy, a bit pop, but with classical underpinnings and over-octave jumps (no, ladypeculiar, those are NOT fucked up, they're just pretentious and so am I); the chord structure is more chromatic than one usually hears in musical theatre, a little more chromatic than Sondheim, I would say, and in a different way than Leonard Bernstein; and most importantly, I have to establish that time signatures are at my mercy. If I don't, that device is going to come flying out of nowhere like a certain pig.
You know who actually sneaks that device in really well? Joss Whedon. In Once More With Feeling, he has Buffy shift time signatures briefly in "Going through the motions" (Still I always feel the strange estrangement / Nothing here is real / Nothing here is right), and then brings it back again for her, and only her, in "Something to sing about". The way Whedon lays out the show is that a) the device is used sporadically and b) applies mostly to Buffy. Also note that he never changes time signatures mid-song in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
Another show that does time signature authority really well is 1776. Right from “Sit down, John!” the composers establish that Adams is the only one with control over the orchestra. He shouts and causes caesurae, and he's the one to change the tune from their waltz to his march when the song shifts to "Piddle, twiddle, and resolve". So the rules for 1776 are that a) time signatures are not variable except if Adams causes them to be so and b) the orchestra is on Adams' side. This causes tension throughout the show when other characters attempt to usurp the orchestra. The orchestra mocks Dickinson throughout "Cool, considerate men", but when Rutledge sings "Molasses to rum", he sings irreverent of the orchestra, in a different time signature than the orchestra plays. And then-literally, with a whip-Rutledge actually steals the orchestra from under Adams’ nose, and hangs onto it even after the spoken interruption that usually reverts control to Adams is applied. Rutledge’s song is not only powerful because of its audacious subject matter, but because of the authority he exerts over the musical rules of the show.
So when I write "Emergency Contact", I have to establish that in D&J a) the time signature of the music is beholden to the words, and b) that it applies primarily to Justine, so that when Danny mucks around with his phrase lengths we can hear the connection. At least subconsciously. There are other things going on, and other components of the musical language to get at...
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Help us get Dogboy & Justine out there! We're almost at 50% of our fundraising goal.
.
Now with youtube links, guaranteed to get you thinking about your favorite shows!
.
Now I tend to get in trouble when I make correlations between musical processes and fandom. Does that stop me? Apparently, no. (Bear with me for the theory talk, this post is also about prose.)
So last night, at a thoroughly inappropriate hour, I started chord structuring work on "Australia", the love semi-duet from Act 1 of Dogboy & Justine. I'm doing something interesting with time signatures and phrase lengths: Danny is going to be singing in a steady waltz, but because of how the chord sequences are laid out, the phrases are going to elide into one another and be of irregular measures, most often seven bars, sometimes five, sometimes nine, all ways to deviate from eight. It's a technical way of showing musical tangents and stream of consciousness and self-interruption; Danny's condition informs how he thinks, and thus, how he sings. So an otherwise straightforward and eloquent melody is disjointed.
And it occurs to me, writing down these chords and these phrase lengths, that I am extremely lucky the duet takes place late in Act 1. If this were the first number in D&J, I'd get walkouts, because that's not something you are supposed to hear in non-classical musical theatre. (Actually, you're not really supposed to hear it in classical works pre-1850 either. When I said "Wagner, meet Schwartz," I meant it.)
The opening number of D&J, "Emergency Contact", is an energetic one--a frantic one, as Justine has just been kicked out of her apartment and is texting all over for a place to stay. But it's not without its nontraditions. My plans for it include what I describe as "time signature fuckery"; a steady pulse, and a fast one, and periods of 4/4 in the chorus, but the verses are going to be a mess of fives and threes. Stravinsky might approve. There's a really clear-cut musical reason for this, and it actually IS going to set a precedent for the entire work. I can't use something in the first number and not thread it through most of the show.
Just as the first sentence sets the tone for a story, the first song sets the tone for a musical. That's not uncommon knowledge. Not even necessarily the overtures, which exist for this express purpose--the first things the cast sings or dances or otherwise communicates. Think of the openings of Sweeney Todd, West Side Story, Candide, The Music Man, Chicago: you hear echoes or even direct reprises of the musical themes laid out in the opening throughout the entire show.
A musical almost never begins in medias res. It works with non-musical film; the action is stylistically similar enough to reality that we already have a guaranteed in, a link to the action, a common language. And it can work in books and short stories as well, though it's a little harder without the immediate visual cues. But in a musical or in an opera the composer has to establish a language--a musical language, tonal and temporal and prosodic and all--in addition to setting the scene. Musicals that start in the middle are extremely rare. (It's not uncommon to start at or after the end and ask how we got here--Wicked and Elisabeth and Blood Brothers come to mind, but in all three cases it's the End that is most familiar and accessible to the general audience, not the Beginning.)
But it occurs to me, working on these songs, that the idea of setting the tone or setting the bar doesn't just apply to works of art but to the communities that produce and consume it. It's not just a case of the early bird catching the worm; the first and most vocal people to support or create a kind of media will be the arbiters of its direction. The first guests at a party will determine the thread of conversation for the entire night (or at least until that one extremely charismatic person comes along and hijacks it). The first actions of the players will determine the course of the game. The opening moves dictate the path of a game of chess. The first prolific people in a fandom will determine the standards of operation, production, and consumption. And when the first person there missteps, or creates an unexpected opening, the entire work takes on a different tone to justify its opening.
So why can "Emergency Contact" be the opening number of D&J, and not "Australia"? For one thing, for all that D&J is also a love story, it's a growth story first and foremost, and more about Justine's maturation than anyone else's in the ensemble. D&J also builds on solo, performative songs throughout the show, and there aren't many group numbers at all, so we should establish with one of these. So neither a love duet nor "Oh my god, you guys!" nor "I've got the horse right here" seems to fit, in my head.
I also have to establish the musical rules. While the overture is going to lay some of the language down, like how the themes and motifs relate to one another, "Emergency Contact" gets to lay down just what I expect of my singers. The prosody is wordy and dense; the tonal language is edgy, a bit pop, but with classical underpinnings and over-octave jumps (no, ladypeculiar, those are NOT fucked up, they're just pretentious and so am I); the chord structure is more chromatic than one usually hears in musical theatre, a little more chromatic than Sondheim, I would say, and in a different way than Leonard Bernstein; and most importantly, I have to establish that time signatures are at my mercy. If I don't, that device is going to come flying out of nowhere like a certain pig.
You know who actually sneaks that device in really well? Joss Whedon. In Once More With Feeling, he has Buffy shift time signatures briefly in "Going through the motions" (Still I always feel the strange estrangement / Nothing here is real / Nothing here is right), and then brings it back again for her, and only her, in "Something to sing about". The way Whedon lays out the show is that a) the device is used sporadically and b) applies mostly to Buffy. Also note that he never changes time signatures mid-song in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.
Another show that does time signature authority really well is 1776. Right from “Sit down, John!” the composers establish that Adams is the only one with control over the orchestra. He shouts and causes caesurae, and he's the one to change the tune from their waltz to his march when the song shifts to "Piddle, twiddle, and resolve". So the rules for 1776 are that a) time signatures are not variable except if Adams causes them to be so and b) the orchestra is on Adams' side. This causes tension throughout the show when other characters attempt to usurp the orchestra. The orchestra mocks Dickinson throughout "Cool, considerate men", but when Rutledge sings "Molasses to rum", he sings irreverent of the orchestra, in a different time signature than the orchestra plays. And then-literally, with a whip-Rutledge actually steals the orchestra from under Adams’ nose, and hangs onto it even after the spoken interruption that usually reverts control to Adams is applied. Rutledge’s song is not only powerful because of its audacious subject matter, but because of the authority he exerts over the musical rules of the show.
So when I write "Emergency Contact", I have to establish that in D&J a) the time signature of the music is beholden to the words, and b) that it applies primarily to Justine, so that when Danny mucks around with his phrase lengths we can hear the connection. At least subconsciously. There are other things going on, and other components of the musical language to get at...
-
Help us get Dogboy & Justine out there! We're almost at 50% of our fundraising goal.
.