The Musical as Drama

continues beating. Numbers are based on the time of repeti- tion, and we hardly ever think about this, perhaps because we have a ...

Chapter Three CHARACTER AND THE VOICE OF THE MUSICAL Are There Real People in Musicals? A BETTER book is what made the musical s ...

place, or, to put it another way, by consistently speaking dia- logue that normally answers the speech of others and is about to ...

to the country. No one else has ever thought this a problem— only Sondheim, who seems worried over the consistency of her charac ...

Maria sings that in B-flat, then the music rises to D-flat for the repeat of A. A Tonight, tonight, There’s only you tonight, Wh ...

This is a conventional ending, with the double rhyme on “star/ are” and “right/tonight” tying the final A together and con- nect ...

Lovers Maria is the Puerto Rican girl unlike other Puerto Rican girls, the one who can reach up to that unexpected G-flat at the ...

neither realizing that it has just come along. They do not know they are falling in love at first sight. In fact, they are sure ...

Character in a musical, then, is an effect of song character as well as book character. There are pairs of lovers in most musi- ...

All complete with slippers and pipe. Take me like I am er leave me be! If you cain’t give me all, give me nuthin’— And nuthin’s ...

the vantage point of number mode, which has the lilt of song and dance. The Case of Henry Higgins Love duets are worth consideri ...

The better book brought on a need to disguise the standard- form love song without giving it up, and the best example of this re ...

to an end on the spoken “In America they haven’t used it for years!” and then starts in again on “Why can’t the English teach th ...

eruption that begins “I can see her now” runs to fifty-four mea- sures. Joseph Swain has observed that the melody resembles Eliz ...

time, and lets them extend their characters musically. Those who do not sing and dance are lesser characters. They stand out bec ...

reverses, and by the end, as Higgins sings some of her motifs, she is creating a new character for him.^7 These are valid points ...

centered approach because there is no way to think that Eliza and Higgins are “like” him or are “learning” from him. But he belo ...

music—these are vastly different songs. Yet the touch of simi- larity in their melodies does mean something. One can say that th ...

account of lost hopefulness, and now Sam is the one character responsive enough to hear her song after her death and express it ...

people sing about depends on the work that goes into the kind the black people sing about. But this point of racial difference i ...