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| re: The Quintet from WEST SIDE STORY / One Day More from LES MIZ / We Don't Talk about Bruno from "Encanto" -- what are their musical historical roots? | |
| Posted by: Seth Christenfeld (tabula-rasa@verizon.net) 12:57 am EST 01/07/22 | |
| In reply to: The Quintet from WEST SIDE STORY / One Day More from LES MIZ / We Don't Talk about Bruno from "Encanto" -- what are their musical historical roots? - GrumpyMorningBoy 12:27 am EST 01/06/22 | |
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| I tend to think of the "Tonight Quintet" as descending less from earlier musical theatre and more from opera--the antecedent I always think of is the Act II finale from The Marriage of Figaro, which is a septet with three or four separate melodies going at once at times. Seth, admittedly no opera scholar |
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| re: The Quintet from WEST SIDE STORY / One Day More from LES MIZ / We Don't Talk about Bruno from "Encanto" -- what are their musical historical roots? | |
| Posted by: stgmgr 09:25 am EST 01/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: The Quintet from WEST SIDE STORY / One Day More from LES MIZ / We Don't Talk about Bruno from "Encanto" -- what are their musical historical roots? - Seth Christenfeld 12:57 am EST 01/07/22 | |
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| I don't have access to my Amadeus script. But I do have the memory of a fantastic Act Two speech in which Shaffer's Mozart tells Salieri of his ambition to write an extended finale in which a quartet becomes a quintet becomes a sextet and continues to expand to include the world, which must be the way that God hears the world. That, he maintains--and I am of necessity paraphrasing--is the task of the composer: to allow audience to hear as God does. (This speech--also as my memory serves, is not in the film version insofar as its triumphant conclusion. I recall the endpoint of the film speech being about how long Mozart could sustain a finale.) Certainly accounts for our delight at hearing the blending of separate melodies. |
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| re: The Quintet from WEST SIDE STORY / One Day More from LES MIZ / We Don't Talk about Bruno from "Encanto" -- what are their musical historical roots? | |
| Posted by: showtunesoprano 02:09 pm EST 01/07/22 | |
| In reply to: re: The Quintet from WEST SIDE STORY / One Day More from LES MIZ / We Don't Talk about Bruno from "Encanto" -- what are their musical historical roots? - stgmgr 09:25 am EST 01/07/22 | |
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| That speech is about the Act II Finale of Marriage of Figaro, which starts as a duet, then trio, then quartet, and finally septet. And it does actually span 89 pages of Act II's 154 pages. But I don't believe it is an applicable precedent for Quintet, One Day More, and the like. In those pieces, everyone sings their individual lines first, and then all are layered over each other. In Figaro, the music that each of the 7 sings when they are all together is new musical material. | |
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