Skip to main content

It's Been Less than 0 Days Since Our Last Hamilton Reference JAMIE! // Abbie Hedden

 Am I gonna write on Hamilton and other Broadway shows? Absolutely. Did Jamie also write on Hamilton? Absolutely. Am I ashamed in any way? No, absolutely NOT.

WORD PAINTING IS MY FAVORITE LYRICAL TROPE. Is that what it's called? A trope? Probably not. You get what I'm saying. English Madrigals were deliberately lighthearted and avoided emotionally intense topics, but retained musical puns such as sopranos singing the words "all alone" up high on the scale... all alone. Unlike English Madrigals, Broadway has no problem getting serious... but its music loves puns. The three songs that come to my head straight away are Watch What Happens (Newsies), One Day More (Les Miserables), and The World Was Wide Enough (you guessed it...Hamilton). In Watch What Happens, the character singing it is writing a news article, while the jaunty tune and tempo sound like a typewriter in the backgroud. In One Day More, a whole slew of characters are joining together on sides of a revolution, and they're all singing at once. It really sounds like a crowd gathering around a fight! On another level, their tunes all come together and sing the last four lines in harmony. This shows musically that they are trying to reach a common goal. Finally, perhaps my favorite example of word painting is that in Hamilton's The World Was Wide Enough. Aaron Burr and Hamilton are in a duel and sing the lines together, "But we were near the same spot my (your) son died, is that why?" Burr begins the line at the bottom of the octave, while Hamilton starts at the top. Their voices "step" through the octave, making the notes have a duel. What are some of your favorite word paintings?


PS Clabo and Lily

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Word Painting in Vesta—Lily Caswell

  Word painting in Weelkes’s As Vesta Was from Latmos Hill Descending is quite interesting. And because that is a really long title, I’m calling it Vesta from now on. Word painting is basically when the melody matches up with the lyrics. So in Vesta, when it says “ascending” and “descending”, there are obviously scales going up and down. The madrigal was written for six voices to sing unaccompanied, so when they start to come together, it matches with the lyrics; so if the lyric says “two by two”, there are only two voices; “three by three” there is another voice added, and so forth. All the parts combine in exclamation before Vesta before it is left “all alone” to the highest soprano. All the way to the end of the piece, word painting continues when shouts of “Long live fair Oriana” with the bass sustaining long notes. Word painting in and of itself is a highly interesting topic because a musician takes the words of a poem or a sonnet and writes a melody line that pertains to cer...
4 comments
Read more

Welcome to Honors! (Please Read This)

     Welcome to Honors! My name is Abbie Hedden and I serve as President of Honors. Jamie Peters is our Vice President, and Caroline Tucker is our Secretary. I look forward to getting to know all of you in class during this upcoming year! There are a few things you need to know about Honors.      There are no quizzes or tests in Honors. Grades are provided based on attendance/class participation, blogs, explication papers, and the research paper. The papers will be addressed at a later date, as they aren't due until later in the semester. However, there is a blog post due every week. Bearing that in mind, here are the requirements! Criteria Blog posts are due Monday at 11:59PM , and comments are due Tuesday at 9:29AM . DO NOT BE LATE ON ASSIGNMENTS. Points WILL be deducted from late assignments! Be sure to have your name in your Blogger profile Blog posts should include at least one to two paragraphs on that week’s reading assignment.  Blog posts shoul...
Post a Comment
Read more

Topsy Turvy Day—Lily Caswell

  I cannot remember how old I was when I watched T he Hunchback of Notre Dame  but I was at least 8 or 9. I didn’t realize until probably a couple of years ago that the song  “Topsy Turvy” and the corresponding event was actually based on a real festival. The Feast of Fools was usually held on January 1 though it could have also been held on the 6 th  or the 13 th  of January. It was portrayed as a parody of Catholic feasts. Church bells were rung improperly, songs were sung out of tune, and the celebrants “wore strange garments and masks, and used puddings, sausages, and old shoes as censers.” (Seaton, p 77) In the song “Topsy Turvy”, it says “It’s the day the devil in us gets released / It’s the day we mock the prig and shock the priest / Everything is Topsy Turvy at the Feast of Fools… And it’s the day we do the things that we deplore ‘ On the other three hundred and sixty-four.”  I commented on Haylee Lynd’s and Jamie’s posts. Sources: https://www.brita...
1 comment
Read more