NY Public Library for the Performing Arts Curator Doug Reside on Motifs!

BroadwayWorld.com continues our exclusive content series, in collaboration with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which delves into the library's unparalleled archives, and resources. Below, check out a piece by Doug Reside (Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Curator for the Billy Rose Theatre Division) on motifs:

Many works of art are based on patterns of variation. This principle has long been practiced in all kinds of music theater, including opera and musicals, through repeated musical themes sometimes known by the German word, motiv or, in English, motif. In musicals, a motif is a theme that is associated with a particular character or idea. The music that accompanies the entrance of Darth Vader in the Star Wars films or the ominous musical heartbeat signaling the approach of Jaws are perhaps the most familiar cinematic modern examples, but opera has assigned distinctive melodies to characters and themes since at least the days of Mozart.

Late 19th and early 20th century American musical theater did not always have original scores; instead, popular songs would be added or dropped into the action throughout the run of musicals. As a result, these early productions generally lacked the musical sophistication to incorporate motifs. However, when composers such as Victor Herbert and Richard Rodgers began to write for musical theater, they brought with them some of the formal techniques of operetta. Thus, for instance, the "Ol' Man River" refrain runs throughout the score of Show Boat, repeating and morphing slightly to suit various situations. The song itself is repeated as a reprise by Joe several times throughout the action, and the music under the words "Ol' Man River" is structurally very similar to that under the phrases "Cotton Blossom" and "Captain Andy." The repetition and variation suggests that though the individual experience of those who ride along the Mississippi may vary, the same basic patterns of life, love, and death are played out in each life, and the river (perhaps symbolizing the nation of the United States or even the Universe) keeps rolling along indifferent to those who live on it.

While Show Boat closely mirrors the structure of an operetta, many more recent scores employ the same kinds of musicological techniques. My colleague, Evan Leslie (who has contributed to this column before), recently pointed out to me that in The Sound of Music, the music Captain Von Trapp and Maria dance the Laendler to at the ball is the same basic melody as "Lonely Goatherd," suggesting perhaps that Captain Von Trapp is, in his own way, a lonely goatherd. Sondheim has noted in various places (including the DVD commentary for Sunday in the Park With George) that the music that underscores the title lines in the songs "Finishing the Hat" and "Putting It Together" are essentially the same melody, underlining the connections between the solitary, isolating work of Georges Seurat and the political, collaborative, but ultimately no less isolating, work of his 20th-century descendant. Likewise, an article by Ian Nesbit in the most recent issue of the scholarly journal, Studies in Musical Theatre examines the many musical motifs in Jason Robert Brown's Songs for a New World, Parade, and The Last Five Years. Brown himself explicated some of his musical choices in the accompanying commentary for the recently released recording of his 2011 Abrons Art Center concert (e.g. the "opening vamp" that precedes "The Old Red Hills of Home" is the same melody as "All the Wasted Time" and the line "Old Red Hills of Home" becomes "You Don't Know This Man"). There is sometimes an obvious thematic connection among the uses of a motif in Brown's work, but just as often it serves simply to tie the score together into a unified musical composition.

In some cases musical theater scores extend repetition and variation of musical themes across entire songs to draw connections betweens thematic moments. For instance, in Les Miserables, Valjean and Javert both respond to a transformative act of grace with twin soliloquies set to the same music but with very different conclusions (Valjean changes his life; Javert commits suicide). Meredith Willson employs the same technique with a bit more subtlety in The Music Man by giving Harold Hill and Marian Paroo the same melody with very different rhythmic structures for their theme songs ("76 Trombones" and "Goodnight my Someone"). The connection between the songs suggests that though the characters are on the surface very different, they share a deep underlying connection that makes possible their romantic union at the end of the show.

I am not a musicologist (a fact I probably made abundantly clear to any real musicologists reading this piece), and so probably miss many of the most complex motifs even in musicals I've seen dozens of times. Nevertheless, this kind of compositional complexity occurs so frequently that I believe audiences don't necessarily need to recognize how the craft works to appreciate its beauty. Only trained musicologists and composers may fully recognize how these patterns of variations are used within a complex score, but, nearly anyone can enjoy the effect they produce.