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| re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? | |
| Last Edit: GrumpyMorningBoy 05:22 pm EDT 08/26/19 | |
| Posted by: GrumpyMorningBoy 05:18 pm EDT 08/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? - Michael_Portantiere 04:55 pm EDT 08/26/19 | |
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| I thought about referring to RAGTIME in my post. It's probably the best recent-ish example of something that fully inherits the legacy of the Golden Age, but I imagined picking up the script and score, getting in a time machine back to 1959, and mounting it... ... it would feel revolutionary and unbelievably ahead of its time, particularly in certain sections. I don't think there's any way someone could have seen it as a current work. Yes, some parts could easily have been produced in that era, especially songs like "Crime of the Century," "Wheels of a Dream" or "Sarah Brown Eyes," but if you listen closely to much of "Your Daddy's Son," there's a whole lot of music there that no one would have written back then. If you know your music theory, take note of all those seconds and ninths. That's modern. If you pick apart "Coalhouse Demands," you might hear parts that reminisce back to unison agit-prop vocal parts from works like CRADLE WILL ROCK, but if you really listen to the structure of "Coalhouse Demands," there's an incredible fluency as it moves between sung lyric, spoken word, and orchestral details that just feels very much of the modern era, at least to me. I don't think Flaherty would have written this if Sondheim hadn't written the "City on Fire" sequence from SWEENEY TODD. I suppose we could compare it to some of Frank Loesser's best writing in the climax of THE MOST HAPPY FELLA, or find similarities to Gershwin / Bernstein, but to me, RAGTIME feels like the inherited progeny of those great works, not something that would be viewed as a contemporary of it. Still, I do think that Ahrens and Flaherty may be the most able to convincingly pen a pastiche musical from that era, if they wanted to. And if Howard Ashman were still here, he could have done so with Alan Menken. But are any newer writers who have this kind of historical command of the genre that they could do it? Could Lin-Manuel Miranda do it, if he really wanted to? Could Robert Lopez? Could Pasek & Paul? Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich? - GMB |
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| re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? | |
| Posted by: KingSpeed 07:24 pm EDT 08/27/19 | |
| In reply to: re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:18 pm EDT 08/26/19 | |
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| Pasek & Paul did it with A Christmas Story for sure. Sondheim could do it today if he wanted to. Glen Kelly could do it. He did it throughout The Producers and in his DD Award winning songs for The Nance. | |
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| re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? | |
| Posted by: Michael_Portantiere 10:35 pm EDT 08/26/19 | |
| In reply to: re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? - GrumpyMorningBoy 05:18 pm EDT 08/26/19 | |
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| "I thought about referring to RAGTIME in my post. It's probably the best recent-ish example of something that fully inherits the legacy of the Golden Age, but I imagined picking up the script and score, getting in a time machine back to 1959, and mounting it....it would feel revolutionary and unbelievably ahead of its time, particularly in certain sections. I don't think there's any way someone could have seen it as a current work." Well, you could say the same thing about WEST SIDE STORY, to name only one example of several from back in the day. So I guess I'm not sure exactly what you mean. As for Lin-Manuel Miranda: Seeing as how he wrote those wonderful '60s Brit pop pastiche number for King George in HAMILTON -- yes, I am quite sure he could pen a whole musical in period pastiche style, if he wanted to. And the great John Kander could probably still do it, unless you don't count him because he has actually lived and worked through five decades or more. |
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