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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

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