Ideas for Research and Discussion

What is "pop music," anyway? Listen to your favorite song, by your favorite singer or group. How does it make you feel? Does it tell a story, or just express a feeling? Do the lyrics create a character? Does the character change through the song? Would it work in a musical? Does it tell a story or simply set a mood or a feeling?

How does music help to tell the story of The Scarlet Pimpernel? How does music create the atmosphere?

Study how musical theatre changed after the Tin Pan Alley era, especially with the coming of Kern and Hammerstein's Show Boat in 1927, and Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! in 1943.

How do these songs from The Scarlet Pimpernel advance the story? How are they integrated into the story? Can they stand alone?:

"Madame Guillotine"  *   "Vivez!"   *   "Into the Fire"
"When I Look At You"   *   "Where's The Girl?"
"The Riddle"   *   "Only Love"   *   "You Are My Home"

Nan Knighton started her career as a poet and cites her experience as a poet as an inspiration for life as a lyricist. The choreographer George Balanchine called lyricist Lorenz Hart the "Shelley of America" after the great English Romantic poet, and Irving Berlin called the lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II "a poet, and every else is just a lyricist." How are song lyrics like poetry? Read the lyrics of The Scarlet Pimpernel and compare their rhyme, rhythm, choice of words, imagery and content to a variety of poems, from a Shakespeare sonnet to Walt Whitman.

"Orchestration" is the choice of instruments to use in a song or musical arrangement. Listen to the songs from The Scarlet Pimpernel. How does the choice of instruments reflect the meaning of the songs? How does Frank Wildhorn use changing meter, rhythm patterns and beats to create characters and move the story? How does he use changing beat and tempo to create mood and express character? How does he use musical texture in harmony and dissonance? A motif is a theme heard throughout a piece of music. Are there musical motifs that follow through The Scarlet Pimpernel? Identify them and the characters or story lines they represent.

List your favorite adventure stories. How would you translate your classics onto the musical stage? What would the music sound like? What would the set and costumes look like? How would you create the atmosphere of the original work?

Explore the advent of "electric" music: electric guitars, synthesizers, samplers, amplification? How has this new sound effected music? How has it affected musical theatre? How does Frank Wildhorn use these techniques in The Scarlet Pimpernel?

 

Resources

The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists by Philip Furia. Oxford Press, NY, 1990.

Can't Help Singin': The American Musical on Stage and Screen by Gerald Mast. Overlook Press, Woodstock, NY, 1987.

125 Years of Musical Theatre by Hollis Alpert. Arcade Publishing, NY, 1991.

American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle by Gerald Bordman. Oxford University Press, NY, 1978.

Online:
Theatre Direct
Playbill On-Line
Theatricopia

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