No hummable tunes? … really? … Disagree for two reasons

Got into a discussion the other day about musical theater – talking about the current state of musicals … whether or not I like them and why. Suffice to say I am quite a fan of Stephen Sondheim’s shows and am not a big fan of much that’s been popular in recent years.

The other person mentioned that among the reasons why he likes the recently produced shows (such as ‘Spring Awakening’ and ‘Next to Normal’) is that they are “edgy” and have great songs.
I couldn’t disagree more.

Then the person commented that Sondheim’s music doesn’t have any “hummable” tunes.
And I disagreed even more vehemently. Two reasons …

First of all, there are PLENTY of hummable tunes in any Sondheim show. Take the project I’m currently working on – Into the Woods … “No More,” “No One Is Alone,” “Giants in the Sky,” “Agony” – all of these are hummable. And I could list song after song in just about every Sondheim show that is ‘hummable,’ so I disagree with this statement on its face.

My second response was a sort of, “So what?” Even if there were no hummable tunes (which is false), so what? Not every song in a Rogers & Hammerstein show is hummable. Take “Soliloquy” in Carousel, for instance. No one would dare say that is a hummable tune … but it is the right song for that moment in that show.

Even shows from the “golden age of Broadway” have rather non-melodic, or un-hummable songs. I don’t think folks would come out humming “Steam Heat” from The Pajama Game. I could go on – but you get the point.

YET - Since when was “hummability” (okay, I made that word up) a measure of excellence for a song in musical theater? And if being able to hum along with a song is its mark of excellence, then go ahead – hum “Super Boy and the Invisible Girl” … can’t really do it. Even if you could, that is one BORING AS HELL SONG!

It’s not whether or not you can hum a song. It’s whether or not that song accomplishes what it needs to accomplish in the moment of the show. Does it advance the story? Does it reveal the character more deeply? Does it allow the character to examine what’s happening? Does it shed light on how the character thinks?

The five notes

Last month I shared some thoughts on a piece of music from Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim. Still working on this show … and am finding all sorts of musical treasures. Case in point – the “five notes.”

There are five notes that appear throughout the score in various forms and I believe for various purposes / reasons. These are also probably the five most important notes in the entire show! The first time we hear these notes, they are played by the violin as the Witch makes her entrance at the beginning of Act 1. These five notes are a part of the music used as the Witch is recounting the tale of her garden (an event that happened before the show actually starts).

They signify five beans … beans being very important to the story. Ya know – Jack, beanstalk, and all that. Now these five notes appear several times throughout the score.

First time spells disaster

This first appearance is the violin playing them above a very dissonant series of chords in the rest of the orchestra (minor seconds galore!). So the musical impression is one of these beans as part of the problem; they are perhaps even a cause of the problem; and they are immediately associated with disharmony, broken promises, and even some bit of tragedy.

Underpinning a soliloquy

At a later point in the show, the character of the Baker has a brief soliloquy as he contemplates whether or not to take Little Red Riding Hood’s cape. She’s made it clear that she is very partial to her cape, and the Baker is considering the implications of stealing it from her.

The accompaniment in the orchestra is a variation of the five notes. The top note of each chord are the same interval. (Go ahead and play them on the piano to hear what I mean … I’ll wait). When we first learn about the beans from the Witch she tells us that many of the problems started when they were first stolen some 17 years before. And now the Baker is contemplating whether or not to steal a cape. He believes that he is justified because his reason for having the cape outweighs Little Red’s reason … hers is more that it is a comfort because it was something her mother made just for her; but the Baker needs this cape as one of the objects that will help to lift a curse from him and his wife.

Theft is the main consideration here … And so, as the Baker is weighing the opportunity and implication of just taking the cape from Red, as he sings the five notes underpin his soliloquy.

We all know what happens next …

The beans, of course, figure prominently in the story of Jack (you know – of “Jack and the beanstalk” fame). The Baker and his wife have to gather several objects – a cape as red as blood is one and another is a cow as white as milk. And who should have such a cow? Why, Jack of course! The Baker and his wife convince Jack that these five beans (which they found in the Baker’s father’s jacket pocket by the way) are magic and extremely valuable. Jack agrees to the trade. The Baker gives Jack the beans one at a time … with the xylophone accompanying the transaction:

Well, we all know what happens next in the fairy tale story … Jack’s beans grow into a giant beanstalk and he encounters a, well, giant.

Yet here again we have these five notes. They are prominent at this point in the music because the characters are referencing the beans themselves onstage. The notes are unadorned … they are the beans themselves. And since, we’ve already heard their theme in the music at other times, and each time is dissonant, we get a sense that things aren’t going to go very well with these characters.

Sure enough … the rest of the show deals with the impacts of the choices made and the repercussions of the actions each character takes. The five beans play a pivotal role in all of this – even as the characters don’t yet realize how their decisions are intertwined and that they do indeed affect others along the way.

A resolution is near

Later in the second act, four main characters are confronting the possibility of having to work together to solve a problem – a “giant” of a problem in the form of an actual giant. Of course they are scared, both at the task at hand and at the prospect of what this task is truly asking of them. As the song, “No One Is Alone,” is sung we hear those five notes in the flute – again floating on top of the rest of the orchestra …

But this time the orchestra is completely consonant – not a single note of dissonance. It’s as though the beans are part of something beautiful rather than something terrifying. There is reassurance as we hear the five notes. And then …

Their curse is reversed

Within the same song, “No One Is Alone,” we hear the five notes … but they are inverted now (“people make mistakes”).

The beans’ effect has been reversed. When once their effect was to tear people apart, to facilitate people lying to each other, whereby everyone acts in their own selfish interest … now people have come together; they are being honest with one another; and they are figuring out how to work together, as a community, to tackle and solve their problems and to support each other.

Why I love Sondheim’s music

I just started to work on an upcoming production of Into the Woods … and once again I am enthralled with how Stephen Sondheim masterfully puts his music together. Case in point ….

Act two starts with a very lovely, open-sounding melody. The actors are really singing in 3/4 phrasing, which is a waltz.

Characters’ phrases are 3-beat groupings

It’s a slow waltz, which makes it elegant, regal, lilting, and romantic (rather than “dancing” such as in a Strauss waltz which is a bit more fun, capricious, and intoxicating) … This makes total sense in that it begins with Cinderella and her prince, who are the royal family of the show. So, it should be elegant and regal.

The romance of this melody and the slower 3/4 phrasing has two meanings:

• the romance of the royalty and of the characters’ love
• the romance of a fairy tale – which is how act 1 ended – in a “happily ever after”

3/4 time being a waltz … the emphasis is on the first beat: ONE – two – three; ONE-two-three; ONE-two-three … and so on. The stressed first beat gives a foundation to the phrase; and we expect this type of stress … go ahead – say it to yourself, “ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three.”

So the characters’ phrases feel solid, steady, expected … almost stately … and certainly romantic.

It would seem that all is just dandy.

But one of the themes of this show is that of being careful what you wish for, because if and when you get your wish you may not like the real results. The honeymoon feeling wears off rather quickly for the characters … the romance changes into the more hum-drum, work-a-day life. It ain’t all a fairytale. There’s something not-quite-right in the land of Cinderella and her Prince and with the other characters.

And Sondheim conveys this not-quite-right feeling by manipulating the stresses in the phrasing. Whereas the actors are singing in a 3/4 rhythm – with two groups of three in each measure, the orchestra is playing in groupings of four plus two … one-two-three-four one-two; one-two-three-four one-two

Orchestra playing 6/4 in grouped patterns of four plus 2

And unlike a strict waltz, this grouping of four-plus-two doesn’t have a predictable stress in any of the beats. The stress that would have been felt by the characters’ melody is nearly gone when it is coupled with the orchestra’s phrasing.

By juxtaposing these patterns with each other, Sondheim takes a solid, predictable romantic feeling and makes it into a ‘not-quite-a-waltz.’ It’s not quite what we’d expect … it’s not quite the happily ever after … it’s not quite everything that we dreamed it would be …

He could have (and I would imagine that lesser creative composers would do this) used harmonies or dissonance in the orchestra to foreshadow some kind of brewing trouble. But he didn’t. Here the characters have a lovely little melody and the orchestra is playing a lovely sounding part. So it’s not so much a foreshadowing of something but a sense of being unsettled – of it not being entirely perfect as we had imagined it to be.

And this is why this moment in the show is so satisfying to the audience. They’d never analyze the music nor even consciously think about the rhythmic structure. But the audience would feel as though there’s something not quite right … that the luster of having attained their wish is just beginning to feel ever-so-slightly tarnished.

One more reason that I love Sondheim’s music.