Chapter 35: Broadway, and FilmMusic

Tin Pan Alley: Precursor of Broadway• Center of music business in New York City

• Song pluggers peddled sheet music

• Irving Berlin– “God Bless America”

– “White Christmas”

– “There’s No Business

Like Show Business”

The Broadway Musical• Also known as the musical comedy

• Emerged shortly after 1900

• Book: Libretto containing the lyrics

• American-born composers:– George M. Cohen: Little Johnny Jones (1906)• “Give my regards to Broadway”

– Jerome Kern: Showboat (1927)• “Ol’ Man River”: Elements of blues, jazz, and the Negro

spiritual

– Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein: Golden Era for American musical theatre• Oklahoma (1943), Carousel (1945), South Pacific (1949),

The King and I (1951), The Sound of Music (1959)

Recent Musicals• British megahits of Andrew Lloyd Webber– Evita, Cats, Phantom of the Opera

• Diversity of modern Broadway

– Revivals of earlier musicals• Anything Goes, Porgy and Bess

– Long running traditional musicals• Chicago , Wicked

– Adaptations of popular movies• Sister Act, The Lion King, Mary Poppins

– Based on earlier popular music• Jersey Boys, Memphis, Mamma Mia!

– Religious Themes• The Book of Mormon, Leap of Faith

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)• Great 20th century composer – conductor - interpreter

• Symphonies, ballets, a film score, four musicals

• Conductor of the New York Philharmonic for nearly half a century

• Dynamic musical leader

• Virtuoso pianist

• Educator and advocate for the arts

• West Side Story(1957)– Musical sensation on Broadway and as a movie

– Mix of old and new: Standard Broadway numbers infused with Modernist music

– Retelling of Romeo and Juliet

Stephen Sondheim (b.1930)• Private student of both Broadway lyricist Oscar

Hammerstein II and twelve-tone composer Milton Babbitt

• Lyricist for West Side Story

• Combined serious, complex musical techniques with witty, poetic lyrics

• Raised the quality of America musical theatre

• Variety of style: Gershwin-inspired jazz harmonies, Stravinsky-like dissonance, Viennese waltzes, standard Broadway fare

Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979)

• Musical masterpiece

• Three-hour long tragedy with very little spoken dialogue

• Monumental, dissonant, operatic score

• Technically demanding vocal music

• Dissonant, Modern music

• Grisly story

• Film adaptation in 2007 by

Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srR56T9-j5M

Film Music• Music’s power can greatly affects our emotions more

than images do

• Music is as key to a film as cinematography, acting, or editing

• Archetypal movie themes (such as John Williams’s Jaws and Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho) become musical symbols in popular culture

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VP5jEAP3K4

• Music can be the creative inspiration behind a film

Contemporary Diverse Styles• Pendulum swings between “classical” and popular styles

• Popular example: Saturday Night Fever

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0FphcAh3T8

• Balance between traditional orchestral writing and pop style in the scores by Danny Elfman, Thomas Newman, and Howard Shore

• John Williams: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)– Full orchestral sound; Certain instruments underscore

dialogue

– Themes represent dramatic forces, similar to Wagner’s leitmotifs

– “Luke,” “Force,” and “Yoda” themes