The Future Sound of Australian Musical Comedy

(WARNING: there are some naughty words)

"Drama" by Kate Miller-Heidke featuring Drapht - lyric video

(For reasons unknown I can't seem to embed this clip but it's very much worth a click)

This is a song from the album O Vertigo by Kate Miller-Heidke (assisted here by a hippity-hop fella from Perth by the name of Drapht). Miller-Heidke is a pretty exceptional singer/songwriter from Down Under. She's sung modern opera with the English National Opera company and she's recorded electronic pop with hubby/creative partner Keir Nuttal.

So far she hasn't written any musical comedy (although she's apparently working on a children's opera). But judging by "Drama" I'd say she'd be well placed to have a crack.

Generally with comedy numbers, people think about the lyrics, mostly the wit and the rhymes. There's plenty of that here ("deeper than Chopra/bigger than Oprah"). Then there's the comedy in the performance and the overlapping voices of the two singers in this song is beautifully timed ("I said.../I heard you the first time").

But what really makes a great comedy song is the music. The character being portrayed here is the world's largest ego; an outrageous and outspoken modern-day diva. So the words get spat out in short and punchy melodic phrases (half sung, half shouted). There's the high-pitched shrill self-affirmations in the chorus ("She's the man!") followed by those big piano octaves after the word "drama", all suitably over-the-top and melodramatic. To top it all before the final verse, the music modulates hysterically, moving up a couple of semitones for no good reason.

It's a terrific musical comedy number. It just so happens it's on a pop album. What with this and Gwyneth Herbert's "Perfect Fit", I'm beginning to wonder if the best musical theatre songs are currently to be found outside of the theatre.

P.S. For those who like their musical comedy a little bit more traditional, she can do that too:

Music and Emotion

More from Professor Begbie.

This time on music and emotion:

"It would seem that, at the very least, two things are going on here, sometimes simultaneously. First, we can be moved directly by the aesthetic qualities of the musical sounds - by their arrangements. We hear a chord sequence, a guitar riff, an intricate elaboration, and its patterning, its formal arrangement generates emotion. But second, very commonly, music's emotional properties get directed toward and attached to objects that surround it...we always hear musical sounds in a context." (p.297)

Of course, that context is very commonly words. Emotions require an object. We don't just get angry/happy/sad; we get angry/happy/sad about some particular thing. In songs, the words provide the particular. In musical theatre, it's not just the words but the story and the staging and the performance that provide the context.

(There's also an interesting side issue about how context-free or "pure" music can generate emotion. An orchestral symphony performed in a concert hall, for example. Apparently it's something of a mystery. The current thinking is that emotion closely relates to certain body movements and music can trigger these movements, thus also triggering the emotion.)

All of which supports a favourite saying of mine by the lyricist EY Harburg:

"Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought."

Truly, he should have been a professor.

Music and Speech

So I'm currently reading "Resounding Truth" by Jeremy Begbie which is, frankly, very high-minded of me. Begbie is a professor of theology but also a fine pianist. I can personally attest to this having once heard him explain the doctrine of the Fall by playing the theme tune to The Simpsons.

Anyways.

In a chapter on Bach he discusses the influence of figurenslehre. Now I'm more of a Bach-arach than a Bach, J.S. man so this was completely new to me. In my defence, the tradition of figurenslehre or musica poetica originated with the Greeks, was developed in Germany and ain't really discussed much these days.

But the idea is this. Basically, in the same way that classical Rhetoric, the use of formal figures of speech, can be found in Shakespeare's verse, so too can the musical equivalent be found in the music of Bach.

Begbie explains it better:

"Figures were devices that were thought to give music a greater rhetorical force, analogous to the embellishments orators use to make their speeches more persuasive and drive their points home. For some time composers had enjoyed illustrating textual ideas and words with musical figures...If you wanted to 'say' something musically, you needed to know your figures." (p.131)

Nowadays if you need to "know your figures", there's even a helpful website.

Here's an even more interesting bit:

"Some figures are very closely allied to the sounds of speech. Pairs of notes, very close in pitch, were thought to heighten a sense of sighing or lamenting - think of the sound of a sigh...What we should not miss is that what drives this more than anything else is the assumed link between music and language. Not only did composers believe these devices worked like rhetorical gestures in speech but they also used the devices to drive home a meaning or emotion already conveyed by the words." (p.131-132)

In short, Bach was a songwriter. Of sorts.

My little theory has always been that the difference between, say, an operatic aria and a popular song is that in the aria, the music dominates. An aria may be concerned with the meaning of the words but a popular song is also concerned with the sound of the words. Hence there is a more equal relationship between words and music in a song.

However, if I understand the idea of figurenslehre correctly, it sounds as if my little theory may not hold. At least the relationship between music and the sound of words goes back much further than what I generally think of as popular song. As with philosophy, democracy and salad, the Greeks got there first.

This all put me in mind of two questions about musicals.

QUESTION 1. When I was doing a spot of research on Billie Holiday I came across a quote in this essay from the music critic Gene Lees who described Holiday's style as conversational rather than oratorical. I think I know what he means. I'd suggest that most musical theatre singers are oratorical in their singing style. So is it possible to sing in a musical in a conversational style?

QUESTION 2. Is lyric writing closest in form to writing speeches? I suspect there may be something to this. There's a certain rhythm to speech-writing. There's usually repetition of key phrases (like a song title) and there's a concision, trying to capture an idea with a simple and clear message. Also I seem to remember the author Robert Harris describe political speeches as "verbalised emotion" which, for sheer pithiness, is a pretty good description of a song.

Answers on a postcard, please.

Interview with Niamh Perry

My interview with Niamh Perry, who is currently playing in the revival of Ben Elton and Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Beautiful Game, is now available over at the ever-beatific Musical Theatre Review.

Looking back at my old review of the original London production I don't think I paid enough attention to the music. It's a very interesting score. Everything is quite sparse. The harmonies generally stick to the triad notes making them sound 'cleaner', less romantic and more folksy ("God's Own Country"). Sometimes harmony is ditched altogether and we just get a single unison line. The verse of the title song is simply a rising chromatic melody which is repeated four times:

"Buy the ref a flippin' guide dog
D'you call that a bleeding pass?
Kick it out mate! What a ball hog!
Dozy plonker shift your arse"

It's upbeat and sarcastic at the same time. The effect is quite unusual, a bit like a lumbering football chant.

A single unison line is used again in Act II in the middle section of "I'd Rather Die On My Feet Than Live On My Knees". But this time it's an altogether more sinister falling chromatic line as the hero is pressured into joining the violent struggle:

"Insects crawl, a man stands tall, he has to risk it all
Men dictate their final fate while fools negotiate"

Yep, still not convinced by Ben Elton the lyricist. Ben Elton the book writer is far better. It's a shame he hasn't done more of it - musical comedies, in particular. There seems to be a skills shortage in this area.

However I did get one thing right. The big ballad "Our Kind of Love" always felt out of place in this score. That's because it belonged to another one. The tune became the title song from Love Never Dies and isn't making an appearance in revival.

One final memory from the original production. At some point in Act II one of the players from the football team, having been falsely accused of betraying an IRA member, gets crippled by being shot in the kneecap. On stage, as the gun was fired, the stage went black except for a single spotlight on the victim. In slow motion the actor mimed kicking a football whilst a ghostly whisper of "goal!" went through the auditorium. It lasted about 5 seconds. Then the lights came back and the story continued. It was so unexpected, so surreal and so uniquely theatrical, that it's a moment I'll never forget.

Definitely a show worth a second listen.