Drama and Music

Musical Theatre is My Life

As a music major and musical theatre nerd, I cannot exclude the value of music in drama. Obviously, not all drama needs music, but music and drama are cousins, and dance and music are sisters. I feel like the Victor Hugo quote, “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”, fits well in this case. Music can influence the drama of a scene or a situation.

It is an expectation in the curriculum for students to explore audio and visual effects in drama. But it can be used an source of inspiration of a scene as well. Since I have classical training and the entirety of my undergraduate education was based in classical music, I often gravitate to classical music for sources. Pieces such as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons to inspire and accompany a drama production provides a vast amount of material for students. Consider the elements within the music and the elements of drama.

Elements of Music: duration, pitch, dynamics and other expressive controls, timbre, texture/harmony 

Elements of Drama: role/character, relationship, time and place, tension, and focus and emphasis and form. 

How might they relate to each other and how might they influence each other. Questions posed to students could be what might be happening if the music was the background to a movie?

I'm a Big Classical Kid

One of my favourite things to listen to when I was young was the audio book/teleplay series by Classical Kids. Such works included Mr. Bach Comes to Call and Beethoven Lives Upstairs. The series created dramatic stories based on the pieces of a particular classical composer’s life. My favourite was Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery. These stories could be used to introduce not only music, but also allow students to see how music can elevate, influence, and be part of drama. Students could act out the scenes from the Classical Kids production, or create a tableau, Reader’s Theatre, or short scene based on a piece of music. They could even find a children’s picture book to read in a choral reading accompanied by appropriate music.

Some music already has a dramatic story underlying it. Looking at Berlioz’s Symphony Fantastique, which depicts a story of a man’s love for a woman, turning into obsession, murder, and damnation. The piece uses a certain musical theme to represent the woman he loves, and manipulates it throughout each movement based on the story.

The story enough is something to inspire intermediate students, however the concept is something that is interesting to teach as well. Using a reoccurring theme and using it to represent something or have it change throughout the drama. This could be a piece of text, a prop, a costume, an action. Student may resonate more with the leitmotifs in Star Wars and their use in the films to introduce the idea of a reoccurring theme that represents something.