Element contents
Series: Elements in Musical Theatre
“Why Aren't They Talking?”
The Sung-Through Musical from the 1980s to the 2010s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2022
Summary
In the American musical theater, the most typical form of structuring musicals has been the book musical, in which songs interrupt spoken dialogue and add means to depict characters and dramatic situations. After 1980, a form of structuring musicals that expands upon the aesthetic conventions of the book musical came to prominence. Sung-through musicals challenged the balance between talking and singing in musical theater in scripts that are entirely or nearly entirely sung. Although often associated with British musicals, this Element focuses on American sung-through musicals composed and premiered between 1980 and 2019. Their creative teams have employed specific procedures and compositional techniques through which music establishes characterization and expression when either very little or nothing is spoken and thus define how the musical reinvented itself toward and in the twenty-first century.
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Series: Elements in Musical TheatreOnline ISBN: 9781108866866Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 10 March 2022
References
Primary Sources
Jonathan Larson Papers. Call No. ML31.L37. Library of Congress, Music Division, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
The New York Shakespeare Festival Records, 1954–1992. Call No. *T-Mss 1993–028. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York.Google Scholar
Secondary Sources
Bádue, Alex. “Performing Gender, Sexuality, and Jewishness in the Songs of William Finn’s Musical Falsettoland (1990).” Studies in American Jewish Literature 38, no. 2 (2019): 159–78.Google Scholar
Bell, Marty. Broadway Stories: A Backstage Journey through Musical Theatre. New York: Limelight, 1993.Google Scholar
Block, Geoffrey. “Frank Loesser’s Sketchbooks for ‘The Most Happy Fella’.” The Musical Quarterly 73, no. 1 (1989): 60–78.Google Scholar
Brown, Jason Robert. The Last Five Years: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Musical. Milwaukee: Applause, 2011.Google Scholar
Clum, John. Still Acting Gay: Male Homosexuality in Modern Drama. Rev. ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.Google Scholar
Dietz, Dan. Off-Broadway Musicals, 1910–2007: Casts, Credits, Songs, Critical Reception and Performance Data of More than 1800 Shows. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010.Google Scholar
Dumaresq, William, and Galt, MacDermot. The Human Comedy. New York: Samuel French, 1985.Google Scholar
Everett, William A. “Golden Days in Old Heidelberg: The First-Act Finale of Sigmund Romberg’s The Student Prince.” American Music 12, no. 3 (1994): 255–82.Google Scholar
Finn, William The Marvin Songs, Three One-Act Musicals: In Trousers, March of the Falsettos, and Falsettoland. Garden City, NY: The Fireside Theatre, 1990.Google Scholar
Finn, William Falsettos: March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland by William Finn and James Lapine, and In Trousers by William Finn. New York: Plume Drama, 1992.Google Scholar
Fisher, James. The Theater of Tony Kushner: Living Past Hope. New York: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
Friedman, Jonathan C. Rainbow Jews: Jewish and Gay Identity in the Performing Arts. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007.Google Scholar
Furia, Philip. Ira Gershwin: The Art of the Lyricist. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Guernsey, Otis L., Jr., ed. Playwrights, Lyricists, Composers on Theater. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1974.Google Scholar
Hinton, Stephen. Weill’s Musical Theater: Stages of Reform. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. “The Aesthetics of Singularity.” The New Left Review 92 (April 2015): 101–32.Google Scholar
Kowalke, Kim H. “Theorizing the Golden Age Musical: Genre, Structure, Syntax.” A Music-Theoretical Matrix: Essays in Honor of Allen Forte (Part V), edited by Berry, David Carson, Gamut 6, no. 2 (2013): 133–84.Google Scholar
Kushner, Tony, and Tesori, Jeanine. Caroline, or Change. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2004.Google Scholar
LaChiusa, Michael John. Hello Again: A Musical. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1995.Google Scholar
Larson, Jonathan. Rent: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical. New York: Applause, 2008.Google Scholar
Magee, Jeffrey. “Miranda’s Les Miz.” Studies in Musical Theatre 12, no. 2 (2018): 213–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandelbaum, Ken. Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.Google Scholar
mcclung, bruce d. Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musical. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
McDonnell, Evelyn, and Silberger, Kathy. Rent by Jonathan Larson. New York: Harper Entertainment, 1997.Google Scholar
Miranda, Lin-Manuel, and Jeremy, McCarter. Hamilton: The Revolution. New York: Grand Central, 2016.Google Scholar
Moross, Jerome, and Latouche, John. The Golden Apple: A Musical in Two Acts. New York: Random House, 1954.Google Scholar
Pollack, Howard. The Ballad of John Latouche: An American Lyricist’s Life and Work. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Rogers, Bradley. The Song Is You: Musical Theatre and the Politics of Bursting into Song and Dance. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Singer, Barry. Ever After: The Last Years of Musical Theater and Beyond. New York: Applause, 2004.Google Scholar
Stempel, Larry. Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theater. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.Google Scholar
Sternfeld, Jessica, and Wollman, Elizabeth, eds. The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical. New York: Routledge, 2020.Google Scholar
Suskin, Steven. Opening Night on Broadway: A Critical Quotebook of the Golden Era of the Musical Theatre, Oklahoma! (1943) to Fiddler on the Roof (1964). New York: Schirmer Books, 1990.Google Scholar
Turan, Kenneth, and Papp, Joseph. Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told. New York: Doubleday, 2009.Google Scholar
Viertel, Jack. The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built. New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2016.Google Scholar
- 4
- Cited by