Musical theatre is a type of theatrical performance combining music, dance, acting and spoken dialogue. Written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, ‘West Side Story’ is a classic American musical based on William Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. The through-composed score and lyrics are used to portray different characters and their cultures, the rivalry between the Jets and Sharks, and the emotions felt as the story progresses. This essay will be exploring the music and how effective the score is in realising the world and characters of the musical. Furthermore, it will discuss how Bernstein and Sondheim relate characters’ diverse ethnicities to particular musical ideas and motifs.
In the opening prologue, Bernstein quickly establishes the tension between the American Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks with the use of syncopated staccato major and minor third chords. This is intensified when the Jets start clicking their fingers in time to show unity within the gang. The upbeat to bar 12 marks the entry of the Jets’ leitmotif consisting of an octave jump, a falling minor 3rd, a falling major 3rd, and finally a falling augmented 4th.
Figure 1: The Jet’s Leitmotif (2000: 115)
This leitmotif is used throughout the musical and is even seen in ‘America’ which is the Puerto Rican’s comical song. This recurrent use of the same leitmotif keeps the audience focused on the conflict between the gangs through to the last note. The use of bitonality is another technique Bernstein uses to demonstrate the ongoing rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks. In the opening of ‘Tonight (Ensemble)’, which is sung by both Americans and Puerto Ricans, the lower part of the orchestra are providing a steady bass line in E major, with the high...
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The music in West Side Story expresses the real feeling of how people felt about each other from The Jets Song” to “ Officer K”. If you listen closely to the songs lyrics you can hear about topics of segregation and racism in them changing the meaning of the songs and the whole musical. Just like the song “ A Boy Like That” Anita sings the lyrics that goes “ one of your own kind/ Stick with your own kind” (YOUTUBE). In the song she indicates that she doesn't approve of Maria’s choice of falling in love with Tony ,an american boy ,“ He'll murder your love/ He murder mine” especially when the gang he was involved killed her brother. She is saying how can you chose someone who is in a gang that killed your brother if he can murder someone then
The musicals that were produced around that time period were meant to be strictly for entertainment, for the most part. It was a very brave move for the creative team of this musical to tackle themes like racism, violence, and death. The risk definitely paid off, because even today West Side Story still remains a very popular musical. The main message that this show is trying to convey to the audience is that it shouldn’t take a horrible tragedy to finally unite people. Just because someone may not look the same way you do, or act the same way, or share your same belief system, that doesn’t mean you have to be fearful of them. Instead we should try our hardest to embrace the fact that this world would be a very boring place without a little diversity, and it’s ok to celebrate the things that make us
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In Carson McCullers’ “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe”, the ending coda shows the work of the Forks Falls chain gang. The chain gang is made up of “twelve mortal men, seven of them black and five of them white boys from this county” (458)1. The song starts when “One dark voice will start a phrase, half-sung, and like a question. And after a moment another voice will join in, soon the whole gang will be singing […] the music intricately blended [...] the music will swell [...] Then slowly the music will sink down until at last there remains one lonely voice”(458). The song of the chain gang correlates the life of the town and Miss Amelia as they change, but eventually goes back into what they were in the beginning.2
For my live performance report, I saw “Bernstein's West Side Story” at the San Francisco Symphony on Friday, September 22. The chorus was made up of male and female singers ranging from bases to sopranos. Some of those singers were professionals; others were volunteers. There were also instrumentalists including trombonists, percussionists, and cellists. The music was composed by Leonard Bernstein, one of the most famous composers of the 20th century. Leonard Bernstein was born in 1918 and died in 1990. Based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Leonard Bernstein set out to write one of his most well known works: “West Side Story”. “West Side Story” is a musical about a couple that was kept apart because of their families who were rival gangs. It was first seen
I experienced Chicago, the Broadway musical, and because I had seen the movie many times before, I knew all the songs and dances by heart. I loved it, but it was actually the movie that influenced me to become a “Chicago fan.” The movie is based on the 1996 Chicago revival of the original musical version of 1975. It was thrilling knowing that the making of the musical into a mainstream production would increase its accessibility and widen its distribution into all the corners of the world; now there is no excuse for people not to experience Chicago, and though not everyone can go to Broadway to see it, just about anyone can indulge themselves in this dazzling movie in the comfort of their homes. In addition to a fantasy world of singing, dancing and Vaudeville, the film also provides a narrative that is explicitly presented through Roxie’s point of view, creating a counter-human side to Roxie’s fantasy world so that the audience can easily identify and engage.
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