Welcome to another video of my series Performing the Forms.
Where I look at various composition techniques and forms and see how and why they are utilized
in the musical theatre repertoire.
Today I'll be looking at the many different and exciting overtures.
Traditionally, overtures are a short piece of instrumental music played before the performance
begins.
It almost always contains some of the melodies from the show.
It usually helps set the mood to what will follow, and is an indication to the audience
that it is now time to sit down and shut up as blatantly sung in this overture in the
2007 musical, Cry-Baby.
Overtures also allows the orchestra to show-off a bit.
Operas in the 17th century started including overtures more frequently.
As time went on, overtures became grander and longer, and were typically written to
even be performed as stand-alone pieces.
This trend carried onto Broadway, but since the rise of the modern musical and the decline
of large orchestras in the pits, overtures had evolved to either be completely re-imagined,
shortened, or even eliminated.
And for musicals, rarely do the composers write the overture themselves, at most they
might provide the orchestrator or arranger the list of songs they want included.
At the turn of the 20th century, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas such as Pirates of Penzance,
HMS Pinafore, and Iolanthe had lengthy overtures that lasted almost 10 minutes.
As musicals hit the American stage, overtures were cut down.
For instance, the original 1934 overture to the hit musical Anything Goes is only about
5 minutes.
However, once we hit the 1940s, Rodgers and Hammerstein were delivering us lush overtures
such as the King and I and South Pacific, which both last almost 7 minutes.
However, Rodgers and Hammerstein were known for challenging the common traditions of the time.
The 1945 landmark musical Carousel, had an overture underscoring curtains up on a pantomime
of a carousel scene.
And even Rodgers and Hammerstein's last work, Sound of Music, in 1959 did without an overture.
Once the 50s came to a close, so did the golden age.
Out with the old, in with the new.
1958 brought West Side Story by Bernstein and Sondheim.
West Side Story's overture is like that of Carousel's.
In this almost 10 minute musical prologue, we establish most of the characters in the
gang, the setting, and the relationship between these two gangs.
In this case, West Side Story used the overture as the exposition and to show off some dancing.
This is very similar to another one of my favorite overture from the rock musical, The
Who's: Tommy, which was written in 1969 (but didn't get a premiere till 1992).
In this 5-minute overture, we get a montage of a marriage, the husband being sent off
to war, he gets captured, and is now presumed missing.
All this being shown with the overture and with practically zero words.
Speaking of the 60s, in 1960 we had The Fantasticks by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones which ran
on off-Broadway for 42 years.
In this overture composed by Schmidt himself, like Carousel, it’s a Pantomime to introduce exposition.
This is a very unique overture because it's a piece written by Schmidt himself that has
very little musical connection to the rest of the show.
The following year in 1961 we had Bye Bye
Birdie by Charles Strouse, which was arguably one of the first rock and roll musical, and
it also won that year's Tony.
Oh god, what's that awful noise?
Yes, that's new.
Also new, is the 1967 ground-breaking musical by Kander and Ebb, Cabaret.
At the top of the show we merely get a drum roll, and out pops the Emcee, welcoming you
into this raunchy club.
In the 70s, we've completely reinvented the
norm for musicals.
1971 brought Company by Sondheim; this was the first Tony Award winning musical to begin
without music.
We have a 7 minute scene before the first song even starts!
I'll be doing a video series on this musical in the future.
In 1973, Sondheim brought us another hit with his Tony Award winning A Little Night Music.
This overture starts with a quintet warming up.
Then they continue to vocalize the overture before the drop out.
Sondheim called this quintet the Liebeslieder Singers (aka the Love Song Singers).
The 1982 Tony Award winning musical Nine by Maury Yeston does the same thing.
At the top, the ensemble of women sing the overture with La's in glorious harmonies.
This is to establish the relationship between Guido and all the women revolving around his life.
The famous 1976 musical, A Chorus Line by
Marvin Hamlisch, doesn't have an overture.
You open the show with a rehearsal pianist and a bunch of dancers trying to furiously
learn a dance at a very stressful audition.
Having no overture really helps immerse the audience and continues the suspension of disbelief.
However, there was originally an overture, before it was cut.
Similarly, an intermission was removed after deciding it would draw away from the suspense
of the audition, and allow it to feel like one fluid audition.
It became a thing for overtures to set the mood.
For example, in the 1978 musical 'On the Twentieth Century' by Cy Coleman, the sound of a steam
train is incorporated to indicate the time period and to reveal the exposition.
And the 70s closed off with another Sondheim hit, Sweeney Todd, who's overture is merely
an ominous organ prelude before a deafening whistle cuts in.
I have a whole series dedicated to Sweeney Todd; find a link to that below!
As the 80s and 90s loomed on, overtures began to disappear.
At the time of making this video, only about 5 musicals currently playing on Broadway have
actual overtures and 3 of the shows were written before the 1990s.
While overtures have traditionally stayed the same and served similar purposes, in this
new era of Broadway we've seen the Overture evolve to take on different uses or downright
get eliminated.
Hopefully the age of glorious overtures will return.
Thank you for watching!