He said that one cannot truly write musicals until one has at least had some experience in performing in them.

This is because it is important for the aspiring writer to have a good understanding of the singing and choreography process, and how it all blends in to create a beautiful whole.

I think this is very good advice.

I think it would be advisable for me to at least find some way to dip my feet in the waters of performance, even though I have never ever entertained the thought before.

The reason being that there simply aren’t that many fully original musicals out there that have been very successful, as compared to the vast number of musicals that were adapted in some way or other.

Basically every major musical you’ve heard of has probably been adapted in some shape or form, e.g. Phantom of the Opera, Oklahoma!, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Les Miserables, Wicked, Oliver!, Fiddler on the Roof, Evita, Avenue Q, Show Boat, etc.

The fully original musicals I can think of are Brigadoon, A Chorus Line, and Company. (There are probably a few more but they escape my mind at the moment.)

(It doesn’t hurt to read too many books!)

It makes many good and interesting points, and is filled with fascinating anecdotes on Broadway.

One part I found extremely interesting was a quote from Sondheim regarding “lead sheets” for composers:

“I’ve never used lead sheets, and neither has any self-respecting composer with any training. Give me a melodic line and I’ll harmonize it one way, you may harmonize it another way. It’s an entirely different song, even though it’s got the same melodic line. Music is made up of a number of elements, and it is the putting together of all those elements that gives the song its flavor, character, quality, weight, texture, everything else.”

Wow.

Sondheim touches on an issue which I’ve always pondered about.

I’ve even asked musical theatre experts this question at seminars I’ve attended before.

I’ve wondered – How much of a role does a composer of musicals play in the harmonisation of the music?

Is a composer solely responsible for composing melody and not necessarily harmony?

The importance of harmony in a song cannot be overstated.

Cos if you look at a typical Richard Rodgers score…I mean, wow, I don’t know of many people who could harmonise like he did with his songs.

Even seemingly simple songs like “Edelweiss” and “My Favourite Things” were so intricately harmonised…and it is the harmony that gave the songs their unique identity.

Not that the melodies weren’t fantastic, but the harmonies made the songs the special songs that they were.

More on this another time.

A very interesting video I found on YouTube, about how “Wicked” was made.

Nothing like hearing the pros telling it like it is.

Great stuff.

Cos I’ve come to realise that I’m not the kind of songwriter who is comfortable with writing songs about my innermost feelings and presenting them to the listener.

I’m not the type who likes to “bare my soul” to the listener.

I would very much prefer to write based on a given scenario and situation.

So writing for musical theatre suits me just fine, I guess.

It’s been really enriching reading up and analysing so much about musicals recently.

At least I’ve been learning some really cool stuff.

Not professionally a la “Phantom” of course, but at least staged in some way or other…even if it means on a tiny shoestring budget.

That’s the whole point isn’t it?

But the problem is that it’s not easy even to do a simple staging of a musical.

You need to at least find a director, choreographer(?), actors who can sing, and maybe a few other key personnel.

But maybe I shouldn’t get ahead of myself here, cos I haven’t even started to write the musical yet!

Let’s save those problems for another day.

But sometimes I envy those who have the ability and resources to get their works staged.

People like Dick Lee, Ivan Heng, Selena Tan, Kenneth Lyen, Mark Richmond, Beatrice Chia-Richmond, Stella Kon, etc.

These people have written or directed stuff which made it to the stage.

That’s such a wonderful thing to be able to do.

But as I said, let’s leave that problem for another day.

For now, I think I’ll just concentrate on getting the book and score done first!

I recently read that Alain Boublil, the librettist of “Les Miserables”, together with Claude-Michel Schönberg (the composer), took a total of nine months to complete the first iteration of their libretto for the musical.

Nine months!

This included detailed descriptions of the music and lyrics of the whole score as they had imagined it. (Just descriptions only ok…they hadn’t actually started writing them out yet.)

It was only after much more revisions to the libretto that they decided that they could finally start actual work on the songs for real.

Wow.

That shows you how important it is to get the libretto done up first, before any songwriting can even start to begin.

In the sense that there are much more “restrictions” (or “conventions”, if you will) when writing the libretto for a musical.

Not convention for the sake of convention…cos when you actually think about it, all these conventions make perfect sense.

For example, a play can be about a very small incident in a very small setting (i.e. just one setting, just two actors, just minimal or no props).

I guess in a play, you can focus on the “incident” or “plot”, that’s why there are entire plays which can just be limited to two actors in one single locale, e.g. “Waiting for Godot”.

Not only that – plays can be about the most seemingly mundane of things as well.

However, for musicals, you always have to “think big”.

It is hard to find a musical that concerns just one or two actors in just one single locale.

The audience would like to see frequent scene changes, with certain scenes featuring big ensemble numbers (preferably with dance as well).

Basically, a musical has to be “larger than life”.

That’s just the way musicals are.

Also, it is important to note that a musical is usually character-driven, and not just plot-driven.

Hence, when writing a musical book, one has to have a (preferably) larger than life protagonist with an overriding ambition, and the protagonist will have to spend the entire musical trying to achieve his or her overriding ambition.

Woo hoo! Guess what arrived in the mail today?

“The Sound of Music – Vocal Score” and “Les Miserables – Vocal Selections”.

Good stuff.

I can’t wait to play through them.

The vocal score to “The Sound of Music” isn’t exactly cheap (US$65 before shipping), but I’ve always told myself that if there is one vocal score I’d buy first, it would be this all-time classic of Rodgers & Hammerstein.