Origin of Species

The many categories of musical theater are confusing, partly because they are variously defined by different writers, and partly because-however they are defined-they overlap, sending compulsive categorizers into despair. In summarizing the categories one distinction is important: some musicals are plays and some are not. Those that are plays are likely to have single composer and total score, that is, set of musical numbers conceived as one score with balanced aesthetic whole. Those that are not plays are anthologies, strings of not all of them musical; those acts in which music is secondary (such as magic acts) and those in which music is primary (such as song and dance) are collected for the balance of the acts, so the music is from number of hands and lacks overall musical logic. In general, the musicals that are plays can be described as musically organic, those that are not as additive. Both may incorporate broad spectrum of styles and types of music, but only the first is concerned with musical connection, continuity, and integrity. Musical was the current term for the integral works when historians first began to write about them, and it has continued in use even though it is no longer appropriate. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1969 edition) defines musical comedy as a play in which dialogue is interspersed with songs and dances, usually based upon rather sketchy plot. (Sketchy is defined as incomplete, superficial.)

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Musical · Visual arts · History · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Theater, Performance, and Music History

• The Cambridge Companion to the Musical

  Open Access•William A Everett, Paul R Laird•The Cambridge Companion to the…•2001

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• A multimodal model of analysis for the translation of songs from stage musicals

  Open Access•Beatrice Carpi•Meta Journal des traducteurs•2021

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