| re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 12:20 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? - PJ 11:22 am EDT 08/27/19 | |
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| While composers certainly control the sound of their music, I'd posit that arrangers and orchestrators have an equal, if not larger, influence on the overall sonic identity of a piece. In certain respects that's always true. But orchestrators and arrangers do need to be in lockstep with the composer's stylistic intentions. The reason that a "golden age" orchestration for Dear Evan Hansen would be ridiculous (and laughable) is simply because that's not the musical style of the score that Pasek and Paul wrote. Style is a collaboration, not the will of the orchestrator. Even in cases where the composer doesn't know how to write or notate an accompaniment in the style he wants, the orchestrator should know how to do just that. So yes, while the finished musical product we hear in any show is certainly due to the work of arrangers and orchestrators as well as the composer, it shouldn't be the case that the arrangers and orchestrators are writing against the composer's style. It's more that they need to have a keen sense for how to expand on what the composer has already set out. If Lacamoire had said to Pasek and Paul, "this is all great stuff - and I'm going to write a Robert Russell Bennett-style orchestration for you, because I think it would be fun to try that," I daresay he might have been taken off the project. ;-) Whatever one may think about the current Oklahoma, I think that orchestration works because it stays within a style that we can already naturally sense from the show's setting. (But you wouldn't want the same "country band" feel for Carousel, for instance - it wouldn't be the right match.) So if the style is going to change, I think there has to be a valid reason that fits with the specifics of the production. |
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| Next: | re: On PASTICHE: is anyone trying to write a new 'Golden Age' musical these days? Would we pay to see one? - AnObserver 07:36 am EDT 08/27/19 |
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