#87: The Musical Score
On a not so conventional musical
Tonight is the Trevelyan College Musical Society’s last performance of American Idiot, the stage production of the rock opera by Green Day.
It’s quite a different musical choice from past years: Sweet Charity, Oklahoma, Sunshine on Leith, My Favourite Year. Those are normally full of one-liners that are the quality of solid dad-jokes, and a few (mostly innocent or PG) sexual innuendos. But American Idiot? Welcome to an abundance of swearing, drugs, rock and roll music, and even an on-stage sex scene — not shocking for the rock and roll world, but definitely for the world of musicals and operas, which often depict cheesy love-stories rather than teen angst and American despair.
Yet this musical still calls for violins to accompany its electric guitars and drum kit, so I was called in once again. This is my sixth musical now, and it is a unique experience. A musical score is a lot more complex than the sheet music I considered a few months back as an object. It is professionally printed and bound, and it is one of many relating copies and parts, puzzle pieces for the band, director, cast, and tech which enable them to put together such an impressive performance.
This one is a lot easier to understand and follow than other musical scores I have used, being printed, not hand-written, and there don’t seem to be multiple bars of music just missing or cut out, like we had in My Favourite Year and Oklahoma. I also have a much easier role in this one: the strings are there for dramatic effect, for the emotional moments and crescendos before we are drowned out by drums and three guitars. I am a detail, not an essential.
Playing in a musical is a unique experience, very different to playing in an orchestra or even a general house band. We are important — we are what make a musical a musical — yet we are in the background, often hidden in a ‘pit’, or as this is only a college musical, in the dark behind a few tables.
We are not centre stage, and this is what I love about it. We are still a part of this epic production, and all past productions, writing in these scores which musicians before us have used and written in. Yet we are are not focussed on. Instead we are the foundation for the cast, as they create a story-line, performing it on stage with confident skill. The cast take central stage, while we join the stage-hands and the tech team. Unnoticed, and therefore successful.
Looking for something to do tonight in Durham? Come watch the last night of the show — tickets are available here, and the Facebook event is here.
