musical grammar final paper word

7/26/2019 Musical Grammar Final Paper Word

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Musical Grammar MUL 151

William Bullivant- 1402591

Understanding and having a working knowledge on musical grammar is a highly important skill for

my chosen career path. In the future, I aspire to be a musical director for live musical theatre. Thiswill involve working alongside many different musicians and musical theatre practitioners with

different levels of ability in musical grammar.

Being able to quickly and accurately read musical scores is a key skill for my career path. One

must be able to quickly and accurately identify elements of musical grammar, such as key

signatures, intervals, dynamic / tempo markings, sequences etc. This is important as a musical

director must express the score to his musicians, cast members and possibly the directors. For

example-1

1 Stephen Schwartz,‘Thank Goodness- Part II’ from his 2003 hit musical‘Wicked’



In‘Thank Goodness- Part II’ from Stephen Schwartz’ ‘Wicked,’ we see a large use of quickly

changing time signatures. The musical director must be able to clearly explain how the changing

pulse of 5/8 to 2/4 to 6/8 works, as this is rhythmically a particularly difficult passage to sing. the

musical director must use his knowledge of musical grammar the help the performer to sing this

song and conduct his band members clearly.

Transposing open / full scores to piano reductions is also important for musical directors. Inconductors scores, vocal harmonies are often written on separate staves (SATB.) As a musical

director, one may want to reduce the score to a piano scores in rehearsal so that he/she can play

all of the harmonies a the same time to help the singers easily learn their vocal line. For example-

2

2 Andrew Lloyd Webber, Extract from ‘Act two scene III’ of‘The Phantom of the Opera’ (Full

conductors score)



In act two of Andrew Lloyd Webber's‘The Phantom of the Opera,’ he uses close harmonic writing

in six part harmony. It may be in the musical directors interest to create a closed score or a piano

reduction of this extract to help teach the singers their harmonies.

Understanding and having working experience of transposition is a very important skill that all

musical directors must have. Traditionally the musical director will work from an untransposedconductors score. This would typically feature transposing instruments such as trumpet in B flat, a

range of saxophones and horns in F. When speaking to instrumentalists using transposing

instruments, the musical director music be able to translate the notes quickly in his/her head. For

example, if the musical director wants to hear a concert pitch C, he would have to ask the trumpet

player to play a written B flat. It is important that the musical director understands this otherwise

some serious errors could be made. In some modern productions, musical directors use

transposing scores, which means that the conductors score is already pre-transposed (all the parts

are written at concert pitch.) This could be helpful however the musical director must still have an

excellent knowledge of transposition as if talking to an instrumentalist using a transposing

instrument, their score will not be at concert pitch so the musical director must speak in terms of

their score.

Musical directors work along a wide range of musical people with varying ranges of musical

grammar. He/she must know how to effectively speak to these people to give direction and notes.

For example, in the orchestra pit, the musical director must know how to speak to every member of

his orchestra. This may be very different from the way he speaks to the bass guitar player to the

bassoon player. He/she must know how every instrument works and how to communicate their

intentions to the musicians. For example, he/she may have to speak to the viola players about the

harmonics within a piece then turn to the electric guitar player to speak about tab chords. Themusical director must understand all of these aspects of musical grammar to be able to

professionally and clearly speak to his instrumentalists. This is the same when they are talking to

the cast. He/she must be able to use their knowledge of musical grammar to communicate the

score to the cast. This means that the musical director must have an excellent knowledge of how

the voice works and be able to understand what the composers intentions on the score are through

the use of musical grammar. For example the score may be marked‘rit.’ or‘rubato.’ The musical

director must be able to understand these marking as clearly explain what this means to the

performer.



In conclusion, a wide range and solid knowledge of musical grammar is vital for a good musical

director to work professionally in the ever changing musical theatre industry.

musical grammar final paper word

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