Development of the American Musical:
The Golden Era of the American musical started in the 1920s with musical comedy. This focussed mainly on comedy, popular songs, youthful romances between star actors and actresses and impressive dance routines. However, this was at the expense of well-structured plots, which included stereotypical characters, meaningless themes, and cheerful singing and dancing with just about no logical link to the storyline.
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1943) was the first fully integrated musical, meaning that it was the first musical to combine all the aspects of musical theatre with a interconnected plot, songs and dances that explained and assisted the storyline and developed the characters into believable
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When compared to the average Broadway shows, this was a change as it had more music which was extremely complex and unconventional with a wider variety of musical genres; from vaudeville and Latin rhythms to bebop fugue and quasi-operatic ensembles.
West Side Story is also important with regards to making significant changes in the concept of musical theatre. Before this musical was brought out, musicals generally focussed on more pleasant, light-hearted subjects. West Side Story’s use of street slang, a dark urban landscape, and the subject of gang warfare, therefore challenged the normally accepted, and controversial musical subjects. It therefore opened the door for Musical Theatre to explore more serious topics and unpleasant subjects, and furthermore, to challenge society through the use of an entertainment medium which everyone enjoyed.
Bernstein’s Contribution to Musical Theatre:
Bernstein was a brilliant and multi-talented 20th century hero.
Besides his immense contribution to Musical Theatre, Bernstein was also a conductor, composer, pianist, author, and
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This tonal music is brought to life by syncopations and irregular time signatures, inspired by jazz and dance rhythms.
Bernstein was skilled in orchestration and his compositions expose each instrument’s capabilities to its best advantage.
His works were extremely interconnected: As a composer, he accomplished the bridging of the worlds of serious and popular music, and brought the Broadway musical a compositional technique and knowledge of music that few of its prior practitioners accomplished. His concert works also show a contemporary feel.
To summarize; Bernstein’s contribution to musical theatre was great because he pushed boundaries and ventured down pathways that earlier composers and creators of musical theatre never thought to explore. He forcefully opened doors for musical theatre which had been bolted closed due to conforming and the fear of straying from the safe path. He showed the world what musical theatre was capable of