Download 7th Grade - Musical Thtr Notes Vocab

7th Grade - Musical Theater: FACTS
& NOTES- Summative on 12/15/16
Musical theater, as it is commonly defined, combines drama (story) with music and (usually) dance, plus visual art (costumes,
set design, lighting). In stage or film musicals, all four art forms (drama, music, dance, visual arts) come together!
Songs and dances in musical theater function as ways to develop the story by either expanding on a character’s feelings (reveal
something about a character) or moving the plot (story) along. In the mid-20th century, a show might first have run on a Broadway
stage in New York and/or in London and later have been adapted as a musical film by Hollywood studios.
Because they are created from a combination of highly-developed art forms to be performed for an audience, musicals fulfill the
artistic expression purpose of music. A musical theater production tells a story (book musical) and/or showcases particular
performers’ talents (revue).
Revues, with their roots in music halls, variety shows, vaudeville, and/or minstrel shows, have fallen from popularity today. When we
refer to musical theater, we usually mean book musicals.
The structure of musicals relies on two main elements: the score and the book.
The concept of combining music, drama, and dance goes back to the ancient Greeks. While it combined story and song, grand
opera of the Baroque period was not actually the ancestor of Broadway-style musicals. The major difference is that opera lacks
extended dialogue.
American musical theater as we know it today was born in the 1800s, although plays with music were performed by touring
companies from England and Europe in the mid-1700s when the U.S. was still a collection of colonies.
Uniquely American musical theater began as a cross between operettas (light or comic opera) and music hall acts from the 1890s.
Some well-known composers such as Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, and Stephen Sondheim have created music for musical
theater, in some cases incorporating jazz, folk, and other styles. Sondheim is a good example of one who has also been a lyricist as
well as a composer.
Types of Musicals:
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Opera
Operetta
Comic Opera
Musical Revue
Concept Musical
Musical Play
Spoof
Parts of (some) Musicals:
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Overture
Crossover
Lead in Line
Production Number
Underscore
Vamp
Recitative
Vocabulary
1.
Book - (also called the libretto) is the story, which includes the language of dialogue and is sometimes adapted into song lyrics.
2.
Book musicals (musical comedic plays) have been known by various names over the years: ballad operas, musical comedies,
operettas, comic operas, extravaganzas, and so forth.
3.
Choreographer - the person who creates the dance numbers and coordinates much of the physical movement of the
actors/singers/dancers in a musical production
4.
Chorus - In Greek theater, a character or group that comments on action and advances the plot.
5.
Comic Opera - An Offshoot of straight opera, it combines music and humor
6.
Composer - The person who writes the MUSIC
7.
Conductor - The person who directs the orchestra
8.
Crossover - A short scene played in front of the curtain while scenery is being changed
9.
Lead in Line - The line or lines of dialogue immediately preceding a song, usually underscored
10. Lyricist - The person who writes the WORDS to the music
11. Monologue - a speech in which a character directly addresses the audience or another character as if thinking out loud.
12. Musical - a theatrical production with both spoken dialogue and sung dialogue
13. Musical Play - Acting and choreography are equally integral, increased emphasis on real people in real situations
14. Musical Revue - Consists of a loosely connected series of lavish production numbers
15. Musical theater - a stage, television or film production using popular-style songs and dialogue. A musical can be a comedy or a
tragedy.
16. Opera - Totally music – even conversations are SUNG!
17. Operetta - a theatrical production with lighter music than an opera and actors speak lines rather than just singing.
18. Overture - orchestral music played at the start of a show, a medley of the show’s songs
19. Principles - The named lead characters in a musical
20. Production Number - A large-scale musical number involving many performers
21. Recitative- A singing style that is closer to speaking than to singing
22. Repertory - a theater in which several different plays/musicals are performed in a season by the same company of performers
23. Revue - a series of acts, rather than a whole piece, centered on telling a single story.
24. Score - is the music, created by a composer and a lyricist or by a composer who is also a lyricist.
25. Soliloquy - when the character delivering a monologue is alone on stage,.
26. Soubrette - Secondary female lead, usually a comic role
27. Spoof - A farcical play that pokes fun at certain subjects or eras (time periods)
28. Underscore - Music played that accompanies dialogue
29. Vamp - To repeat measures of music until a singer is ready
30. Vaudeville - popular stage entertainment consisting of many unrelated acts, ranging from song and dance to comic to pantomime,
etc.
History of Musical Theatre
The history of musical theatre in Europe dates back to the theatre of the ancient Greeks, who included music and dance in stage
comedies and tragedies as early as the Fifth Century B.C. Aeschylus and Sophocles composed their own music to accompany the
plays. During the Third Century BC, Roman comedies of Plautus included song and dance routines were performed with
orchestrations. In order to make dance steps more audible in large open-air theatres, Roman actors attached metal chips called
“sabillia” to their stage footwear hence creating the first known tap shoes. The Twelfth and Thirteenth Century BC, religious dramas
such as The Play of Herod and The Play of Daniel taught the liturgy, set to church chants. It was this type of play that developed into
an autonomous form of musical theatre, with poetic forms, sometimes alternating with the prose dialogues and liturgical chants.
The poetry provided modified or completely new melodies.
By the Renaissance period, these forms had evolved into commedia dell’arte, an Italian tradition where raucous clowns improvised
their way through familiar stories, and from there, opera buffa, Moliere turned several of his comedies into musical entertainments
with songs provided by Jean Baptiste Lully in the late 1600s.
The 1700s brought two forms of musical theatre to the area of Britain, France, and Germany. The ballad operas, as John Gay’s, “The
Beggar’s Opera” in 1728 including lyrics written to the tunes of popular songs of the day often spoofing opera. Romantic plots
became popular such as Michael Balfe’s “The Bohemian Girl” in 1845.
These sources opened the door to the vaudeville days, British music hall, melodrama, and burlesque. Melodrama’s popularity, in
particular fed on the fact that many theatres’ licensed only as music halls and none allowed such present plays without music.
The first recorded long running play of any kind was The Beggar’s Opera, which ran for 62 successive performances in 1728. It would
take almost a century before the first play broke 100 performances. The record soon reached 150 in the late 1820s. New York did
not have a significant theatre presence until approximately 1750. By the 1840s, P.T. Barnum was operating an entertainment
complex in lower Manhattan. The theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850,
seeking less expensive real estate prices, and did not arrive in the Times Square area until the 1920s and 1930s.
Broadway’s first long-run musical record was a 50-performance hit called “The Elves” in 1857. New York runs continued to lag far
behind those in London, but Laura Keene’s musical Seven Sisters in 1860 shattered previous New York Records with a run of 253
performances.
Broadway Musicals began to run rampant with new performances taken over when others completed their runs.