AOS2: Musicals, film music and game music

Question 1

What do musicals include? + what is their aim to do?

Answer 1

Songs, dialogue and dances, they aim to tell a story.

Question 2

What did musicals come from?

Answer 2

Less serious versions of operas

Question 3

When did the musicals we have today start and when did they develop?

Answer 3

Started in 1920s- developed throughout the 20th-21st century.

Question 4

Where did they start?

Answer 4

Out on broadway- a famous theatre street in New York. Some also started in the West End.

Question 5

What accompanies the singers ?

Answer 5

An orchestra, they also play incidental (background) music.

Question 6

Give some examples of musicals which have turned into musical films.

Answer 6

Grease, West Side Story.

Question 7

What can musicals be based on and give some examples?

Answer 7

Novels including Les Miserables, Oliver and Jekyll & Hyde.

Question 8

What styles of music were earlier musicals based on?

Answer 8

Jazz and swing music

Question 9

What styles of music did musicals from the 1970s onwards have?

Answer 9

Rock music.

Question 10

Give some examples of pop songs (which have hit the charts) that are present in musicals.

Answer 10

Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber have taken songs from the charts to be played in their musicals including “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”, “Memory” from Cats and “No Matter What” from Whistle Down the wind.

Question 11

Can musicals be based on any topic, give some examples.

Answer 11

They can be based on any topic.
They can be very serious eg Miss Saigon set after the Vietnam war and Cabaret is set in Nazi Germany. These musicals are often tragic and emotional.

Can be based on Shakespeare e.g. West side story is based on Romeo and Juliet in 1950s New York.

They can be be bizarre- “Little Shop Of Horrors” based on a man- eating plant etc.

Question 12

How are musicals made to be entertaining and easy to listen to?

Answer 12

• The melodies are easy to sing.
• The harmony is diatonic, either in a major or minor key.
• The song structure is often simple with alternating verses
  and choruses and a middle 8 (similar to the structure of
  a pop song

Question 13

What does the intro do?

Answer 13

Grabs the audience’s attention and sets the mood for the song.

Question 14

What does the Middle 8 do?

Answer 14

Has new chords and new lyrics- a change of mood to keep the audience interested.

Question 15

What does the outro do?

Answer 15

Ties the song off, either loud and brassy or sad and quiet.

Question 16

What form is the chorus in?

Answer 16

32- bar song form. The 32 bars break down into 4 sections of 8 bars. Section 1, 2 and 4 use the main theme (sometimes with slight variations). Section 3 has a contrasting theme (middle 8)

Question 17

Choruses have a hook- what does this mean?

Answer 17

A catchy bit of lyrics and melody that makes the song memorable e.g.

“I like to be in America” (West Side Story)
“It’s a hard-knock life” (Annie)
“And all that jazz” (Chicago)

The hook is this bit which gets stuck in the audiences head - so they want to order the CD when home and it often becomes the title of the song.

Question 18

What are the four basic types of musical song? and describe a bit about each.

Answer 18

• Solo character song: a character talks about how they are feeling e.g love, hate, happiness.
• Duet: basically same as solo, except two people are singing so you get two different reactions from a situation.
• Action song: the words in the song which tell you what’s going on in the plot - they lead you into the next bit of the story.

Chorus Number: The whole ensemble sing together like at the end of Grease- “we go together like ramma lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong” and “food glorious food” at the beginning of Oliver.

Question 19

What are solo songs like? (musicals)

Answer 19

Arias

Question 20

What are action songs like (musicals)

Answer 20

Recitatives

Question 21

What type of music are leitmotifs commonly used in?

Answer 21

Film music

Question 22

What is a leitmotif and what do they represent?

Answer 22

A tune that returns throughout the film (there’s often more than one.)

They represent a particular object, idea or character in a story and often returns in the background or in an altered form.

Question 23

How do leitmotifs give you a hint to what will happen later in the film, e.g. if the character turns out to be bad?

Answer 23

They will use chords to portray the character- e.g if they are bad, they will use menacing chords being played in the background.