When I first started composing music for the theatre, I was operating entirely on instinct. I had no real technique or craft. I thought the job was simply to come up with some good tunes that conveyed the appropriate emotion and spirit of the moment. A score such as Godspell is basically a collection of songs, a kind of pop pastiche of musical styles of the period. One of the most exciting aspects of my journey as a theatre composer has been my growing consciousness of how much richer and more multi-layered the task can be, how central to the storytelling, structure, and character development the music can and should become.

Here are a few areas I have come to feel can be helpful to think about when approaching a theatre score:

1The musical “palette.” This is a phrase my friend Alan Menken uses. When he starts a score, he wants to discover and define the musical world of the show, set the place, time, and tone. If you think, for instance, of the contrast in Alan’s scores for the two animated movies I wrote with him – Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame – it’s clear there’s no way the music of any song from one would fit in the other; Pocahontas is built on Native American rhythms and English folk influences, Hunchback is French, Gothic, more “classical” in feel. Without hearing any of the lyrics, the music delineates the world. When I was undertaking the score for The Baker’s Wife, which is set in provincial France in the 1930’s, before I wrote a note, I spent a month or so playing Debussy, Ravel, and Satie on the piano, listening to French music hall performers such as Edith Piaf, and playing and listening to collections of French folk songs. When I began composing, I didn’t consciously refer to these; I just tried to write from a place of emotional truth. But I believe the muscle memory in my fingers and the echoes of what I had listened to informed the score and gave it a Gallic flavor that defined the world and the mood of the show.

2 Iluminating character. When I began writing for the theatre, I didn’t think about this consciously. I must have had some instinct for using music to define character – even in Godspell, if you think about the music for “Turn Back, O Man,” for instance, it tells you about the playfulness and sexiness of the Sonia character and how she is different from, say, the sincerity and simplicity of Robin, who sings “Day by Day.” But I really became aware of how music could depict character when working with Craig Carnelia on Working. When I first heard his “Joe,” a song about a recently retired man, I marveled at how even if I didn’t hear the lyrics, the music alone vividly portrayed the repetition and loneliness of his days, occasionally broken by romantic memories that come and fade – his whole story and character was in the music. I began to strive consciously to achieve that in my own writing. In that show, for instance, I wrote a song for an Italian waitress who sees herself as a performer. So I tried to make her music Verdi-esque and theatrical. In Wicked, I hope that the music for, say, “Popular” conveys the superficiality and “high-school” mentality of Galinda at that point in her development, whereas the low-end depth and strength of the accompaniment to “Defying Gravity” communicates Elphaba’s dawning sense of her own power. Neither character could possibly sing the other’s music (I hope).

3 Subtext. In most pop songs, the music says exactly what the lyric does, and of course so it is with most theatre songs as well. But I find it’s helpful to be aware of the possibilities for subtext, where the music tells things about what the character is feeling that the lyrics are avoiding or concealing. For instance, in the aforementioned “Joe” by Craig Carnelia, the lyrics are upbeat and jaunty, but the music tells you his bleak emotional truth. Or take Stephen Sondheim’s “The Ladies Who Lunch” from Company – what makes that song so thrilling is that the character’s sardonic and jocular words are belied by the rage and self-loathing that scream from the music. I tried to achieve something like this in Wicked in Glinda’s “I Couldn’t Be Happier,” where the more her words say how happy she is, the sadder the music becomes.

4Motifs. I remember as a kid being thrilled by Jule Styne’s use of the “I Had a Dream” musical motif to begin the overture to Gypsy and his doing the same with the “Nicky Arnstein” motif in Funny Girl. In both shows, they are the very first notes you hear, and it gives such a powerful sense of structure and thematic integrity. More and more, I’ve come to realize how valuable musical motifs and repeated themes can be to the storytelling of theatre scores. One of the first things I knew about the score for Wicked was that Elphaba would have a musical motif in which she would proclaim herself “Unlimited” as she set out on her journey, use it through the show with increasing desperation, and finally come in the end to admit “I’m limited” to the same motif. That kind of structure is particularly appealing to me, and I find it’s useful as a composer to think in those terms when beginning a score.

5Energy, flow, and build. A pop song has only itself to worry about. A theatre score requires a sense of moving from number to number, so that there is variety, contrast, and above all energy. Theatre to me is a “hot” medium that thrives on the energy and excitement of its music. In structuring a score, the composer needs to find ways to be true to the characters and story while still providing enough drive and kinetic pulse. Within individual numbers too, the best theatre composers know how to build to a climax that demands applause. I find one of the hardest things for composers coming to theatre from the pop world is knowing how to button a number. Being aware of how to “kick it up a notch” at the end of a number, as in such famous examples as “Comedy Tonight” from Forum or “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat” from Guys and Dolls, and as I try to do in Wicked’s “The Wizard and I” or “Lost in the Wilderness” from Children of Eden, can really help supply the thrill moments that are the lifeblood of musical theatre.

These are some of the things I have learned are helpful to be aware of when undertaking a theatre score. Music for the theatre is so much more than just finding a good tune. That’s what makes it so challenging to write… and so exhilarating to experience.