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GLOSSARY OF TERMS

• Assonance:

  The repetition of vowel sounds in a passage.  Hamilton is ripe with assonance.  Assonance in contemporary (hip-hop) music can function similarly to internal rhymes, allowing words to resonate against each other.  See, for instance, for instance at all the ten trisyllable words from “Right Hand Man” (Hamilton) which have vowels similar to “elephant” in the following:

  …general
  The venerated Virginian veteran whose men are all
  Lining up, to put me up on a pedestal
  Writin’ letters to relatives
  Embellishin’ my elegance and eloquence
  But the elephant is in the room

• Comedy song:

  A comedy song is defined as a song in which the lyrics make us laugh out loud more than once. Comedy songs are generally complaints, and very often indulge in self-pity. Self-pity is only attractive when it makes us laugh.

  Ballads and uptempo songs are characterized by the style of the music, but in comedy songs the words take precedence. Frequently the music to a comedy song is very attractive and charming, but the audience seldom cares as long as it supports the lyrics, which make us laugh out loud.

  Topics for comedy songs are usually in the nature of a complaint of some kind, may be dripping with self-pity and always are rooted in some sort of problem. In “I’m Just A Girl Who Cain’t Say No,” Ado Annie thinks she has a terrible disease. She believes that the other girls don’t have the feelings she experiences when she’s with a “feller.” “Adelaide’s Lament” in Guys And Dolls is that her perpetual cold is probably psychosomatically induced by her unwed status. In Brigadoon, a young girl’s search for “The Love Of My Life” thinly disguises her questionable virtue. Tevye’s “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof is mainly about his misconceptions of wealth. In each case there is an element of complaint – and something real to complain about: poverty, lack of virtue, chronic sniffles or the painful realities of puberty. Normally a complaint is not attractive and writers eschew self-pity like the plague – and they ought to! Except when writing comedy songs.

  Comedy songs are much harder to write than they are to define. However, there’s at least one in every successful score, and two or three are to be hoped for. Audiences love to laugh. When attending a musical, the audience’s expectation is that a fair amount of entertainment will ensue. Originally, remember, the form was called “musical comedy”, and the responsibility to help an audience laugh remains strongly a part of the genre. Below are examples of Comedy Songs from both the Classic and the Contemporary repertoire.

• Motif:

  A short musical idea or succession of notes which gets repeated and/or embellished, usually with additional layers of meaning.

• Rhythm Uptempo Song:

  Note: We used to call this kind of song a “charm” song; many composers still do. We have found, however, that the commodity “charm” has gone out of fashion in musical theatre, and songs which used to be considered charming are now rather old-fashioned and approach parody. The artistic elements of a rhythm/uptempo remain the same, however.

  Rhythm/Uptempo songs are defined by the rhythm – not merely the rhythm in the accompaniment, but also and especially the rhythmic syncopation of the melodic line.

  The lyrics to a rhythm/uptempo song are usually optimistic and not as serious or ambitious as those of a ballad, and the words will contain lots of good, hard consonants and rhythmic phrases that lend themselves to syncopation.

  The quintessential rhythm/uptempo song must surely be “The Surrey With The Fringe On Top” from Oklahoma!. The lyric is narrative and percussive, the tune is rhythmic and reflects the content of the words, and the effect in the theatre is uptempo beyond belief.

  Rhythm/uptempo songs are not hard to find. They are the mainstay of a score, outnumbering ballads and comedy songs by at least two to one. Consider just a couple and examine how the words and music work together to create the rhythmic unity that produces such a high degree of charm in the theatre.

• Consonance:

  The repetition of consonant sounds internally in a passage. (Vowels are usually shifting)

  • (L)ovely wiTCHes (L)et the sniTCHes
  • Keep youR fingeRs undeR contRol “R” sound
  • conTrol, cuT the thread, buT leave
  • Wives can only seW and Weep

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