The "Big Statement of Political Philosopy" Musicals with Innovative Music

When I want to write as though I know something I put it here in this old-fashioned blog, as if the word "blog" always existed. "Captain's Blog Star Date" etc... (I recently saw Star Trek episodes that I ignored 60 years ago. It took me this long to know they are great.) Musical theater is the best playground for innovative songwriting, though even a grand opera is, potentially, one big song. To categorize the "Twelfth Night" roasts produced by the New York City Bar Association, I offered the term "ballad opera," a musical play drawing from popular songs of the day. The Nicole Kidman Moulin Rouge is a 2001 example. A 1728 example is John Gay's The Beggars Opera, which, when it became The Three Penny Opera (1928), also drew from popular songs of the day. However, when playwrights collabarate with an innovative music composer, such as with The Magic Flute, they can achieve an immortality, even though their intent was to use their available talent and costumes (at the Freihaus Theater) to entertain their local audience in 1791. It is in the same breath that I add, my music for Crystal Field's annual summer Street Theater compares with Hans Eisler's scoring for Bertold Brecht. However, the composer with eternal divinity in the Brecht collaboration is Kurt Weil. As for this blog post, after convincing another attorney/songwriter to include me in his plans for an abridged stage reading of the 1965 Broadway musical, "The Roar of The Greasepaint, The Smell of the Crowd," I confronted a political philosopy allegory whose primary creative force was also its composer. There are various names associated with The Roar... but its shape, even with Robert Merrick as its producer and Leslie Bricusse as co-writer, is of its director, writer, composer and star, Anthony Newley. (the musical is shaped like Anthony Newley -- I mean that it highlights his talent, personality, his origins, and his status as a celebrity.) He's sharing his experience with class and aspirations toward achieving the status of "gentleman." He broadly exposes how we modify our behaviour with rules, and reduces it to the best of vaudeville; it's upsetting and depressing to me. He tries to trash civilized interaction while being a product of it. He gives freedom to the singer of "Feeling Good." He gives himself a false optomism that, well, if you actually sing his finale song (Sweet Beginning) through to its bitter end you're (I'm) reduced to tears. There's something in the music that transcends its efforts to uplift. It transcends into a genuine swirl of musical emotion. Our standard western scale has 7 notes. The eighth note is an octave above the first. We use Roman numerals I-VII to identify the chords we get from adding the notes a third and fifth above them. When the numerals are lower case the chord from that note is minor...All right... For Sweet Beginnings I hear/see-in-the-score six phrases, each one with the same starting point in another key... It starts in F, goes to A, goes to a ii/V progression, to iii/VI -- a rapid variation of this progressing runs throughout the score. The last phrase returns to the F with an extension worthy of repeat (iii/VI to ii/V), ending on a tonic chord (I) that keeps rising to the major chord a step above it. The I to II chord pattern was already set by the earlier song "There are (G) so many things to re (A) member..." And the words are bittersweet as well. "And so, my friend..." It's sublimely sad and sublimely beautiful. The song rushes away from us. It's only when we look slowly at it that we see and feel its emotional power. That's what I'm suggesting is what we find there, and everywhere throughout the score. The music in this show taps into stronger emotions than any I see in its book, and I'm just getting the abridged version the Marc Leavitt prepared. However, the more I played the score the more I imagined writing it and then trying to figure out why. A factor for me is: without knowing about this score I grew up in its wake. I then add here that it grew out of the wake raised by the radical chord changes of Burt Bacharach and James Bond. What I want to highlight is, there seems to be great inspiration here. Then back to me, whether or not anyone but me knows about it in my own work, I can tell you that I find it there too, and so I remain, while alive, very much the beneficiary of my own writing. It's too selfish, I know and other things sustain me as well... anyway... People can be inspired by the work of Anthony Newley, so I here recommend it as source material for your path toward enlightenment...