Seems like damn near every Broadway show orchestration written in the last 30-plus years has to end on a short unison note (which I’ll call the Stinger).
What explains the ubiquity, nay all-but-universality, of the Stinger? Hypotheses:
a) Actors and dancers are basically cattle and need a dumb-simple code that can’t mean anything else but END OF NUMBER.
b) Tech and stage people need this same code, possibly because they belong to a different union which has negotiated long and hard for the right not to have to actually read the script.
c) Arrangers for Broadway pit orchestras are basically mindless hack executants who know that if they miss even one single unwritten convention, they’ll Never Work Again.
I would offer a notable (npi) exception to this “rule” is Stephen Sondheim; while he does conform to this convention from time to time, for the most part, his orchestrations end with harmonically interesting chords
I would say that the audience needs it to know when to applaud.
There is a great subtle reference to this in the movie Waiting for Guffman. Not a single song in the amateur community theater production has an actual ending, they all just peter out. The audience is left each time with an awkward silence that they are not quite sure they are supposed to fill.
If true, I would say that the professionals believe the audience needs it to know when to applaud. But any obvious ending would do for that - chord stinger, crash cymbal, what have you. The convention seems very, very strictly defined, which makes me think busy pros find it useful in a way a Merely Obvious Ending would not be.
As my creative writing instructor says, you always want to end things on a major chord.
You do need to clue in the audience that a piece is ending. Take a look at classical music: it usually has an identifiable ending, generally leading up to a final chord. Listen to the final 30 seconds of any symphony and you’ll notice it. Even if you’ve never heard a classical piece before, you can always tell with it’s just about to end.
Peter Schickele did one radio show solely on music endings, and made a good case that something about the music must indicate to the audience that the piece is over. One example he gave was the end of “Mountain Jam” by the Allman Brothers, which is a series of improvised playing (which is often how rock musicians accomplish the same thing).
It’s not necessarily a matter of telling the audience to applaud, though that is part. It’s just that a song that doesn’t have a clear ending is often very unsatisfying.
And a Merely Obvious Ending is not necessarily a Clear Ending…???
anyrose, I can’t think of examples because there are just too danged many. I just notice that number after number, modern-day orchestrations end one medium-to-up tempo tune after another on either a high unison stinger (no harmony) or a low one. Often they “smear” (bend pitch) up or down from the same note in another octave.
I am familiar with most of the musicals from the last 4 decades - I play them constantly on my iPod. Just give me one example, because unless you’re talking about a Disney* sponsored show, the ones I listen to have complex harmonies in the orchestrations and in the vocal scores. Think Rent. Think Spamalot.
*Beauty and the Beast, Tarzan, Aida, etc.
I can comment on A and B, since Mrs. Cheesesteak works on a Broadway musical (Beauty and the Beast) Neither of those are remotely true.
The actors and dancers are pretty professional onstage. They do the same dance moves, sing the same songs, follow the same choreography 8 times a week, they don’t need some splashy note to tell them the scene is over. When the stinger hits, they will be standing in the same place, after taking the same number of steps, turns, whatever, as they did the night before. When you have 10 people onstage going back and forth, you can’t screw with the choreography.
Backstage, the techs and stage managers need to be in place long before that last note. They have to catch the actors who are leaving the stage, you can’t do that if you’re rushing over after the last note plays. Chances are they have been working to prep the props and scenery for the next scene anyway, and there’s not a thing to cue them for that.
The other techs, who handle lighting and curtains and such, get their cue from the calling stage manager, who is calling dozens of cues throughout each number. Those cues are based on a variety of factors, from choreography, to the musical score, to the conductors baton. If the calling stage manager waits to hear the stinger, the cue will be late, he has to call it a beat before so the effect lands at the right time.
You hear the stinger cliché mostly in shows with a lot of jazz and swing dancing. Ex: Anything Goes, Kiss Me Kate, and most recently, The Drowsy Chaperone. And before you say “hey then, it must have been a swing era ending,” no it wasn’t - not nearly as often as it’s used in present day Broadway orks.
I have to admit that a) I notice the above because I play and study swing and jazz, and that b) I haven’t seen a lot of the Rent/Aida/Beauty and the Beast genre of modern day box office busters. I did see Spamalot, but I was laughing too hard to care about the music.
Another possibility: Actors have unusually strict musical needs to keep them from getting thrown.
I got canned from the only New York show I ever played (a cabaret with a cast of Broadway singer-actors) because I improvised subtly on a musical score that was quickly and loosely written (just piano, bass, and me on reed soubles). I was told later (not in time to do anything about it of course) that changing anything, be it ever so small, drove the actors nuts.
Another thing actor-singers don’t like much is having to give up their favorite vocal keys, such as B and F#, in order to simplify writing and reading the score. When you consider that an easy key is always just a semitone away, you get a sense of how much more the actors matter than the musicians, even in a small cabaret show.
I have to say BoDoug, that for someone who’s worked in the field, you certainly seem to have a lot of disdain fo rthe profession. Is it all just sour grapes? Because studying Jazz does not cancel out the study of Broadway as a genre. I’ve studied both, and altho never a prefessional, I got my undergrad degree in theatre, have done a number of community theatre musicals, and have been singing in a barbershop chorus for the last 7 and a half years. **Anything Goes ** and Kiss Me, Kate, FTR, are from the 20’s and 40’s respectively. Also both are by Cole Porter, which give a clue to their similarity of style. I’m sorry your experience with improvisation was negative, but that may have been particular to that production. The original peices I’ve worked on encouraged improv; the copywrited pieces, not so much. But ultimately, all is up to the discretion of the director, who until dress rehearsal is, for all intents and purposes, God. After that, the title goes to the Stage Manager. If you didn’t get permission from the director (or in your case, the conductor) beforehand, then I understand completely why your improv was frowned upon. Also, had you been playing that way all thru the rehearsal process, I doubt anyone would have objected. Actors learn to liosten, and they learn to rely on what they hear. That nothing in the pit changes from night to night is why they are able to repeat their movements so accurately 8 times a week. It’s hard work! Rent Rent, and try to picture that amount of energy confined to a NY theatre stage.
Probably sour grapes, yes. But not entirely unjustified. The director on my show hardly gave us any rehearsal time - we didn’t even get arrangements until 36 hours before opening, fer krissake. And the director didn’t communicate directly with the musicians at all - only privately with the musical director/pianist/arranger.
Anyway, it was a lousy first taste of the theater, and asking around amongst my fellow musicians mostly just confirmed my experience. So no more pits for me.
Background: I am not a Broadway actor, and I don’t do musicals, but I do act as a hobby. I also play three instruments.
Actors aren’t as stupid as you’re portraying them here, especially ones who sing for a living. Professional Broadway actors may well have more musical (vocal) training than you do, because their jobs depend on being able to defeat 100 other actors in open auditions for a choice role.
You might as well say “musicians are stupid and have strict musicial needs so they don’t forget to stop reading the sheet music when they get to the double bar at the coda.” It’s about as likely to be true, and it has the same flavor of condescension.
The actors are not allowed to change anything. They have to do the same things every night, lest they bring the wrath of the stage manager. They are the reason the audience attends, not the peons in the pit. If you’re improvising variations on the score then you obviously don’t know what your job is down there: you are playing along to them, not them to you. They should not be required to improvise around your variations.
And don’t gripe about the fact that the director doesn’t talk directly to the musicians; that’s the musical director’s job.
That last thing you said is the first piece of sense you’ve said in this thread. Of course the actors matter more. What did you think a Broadway musical was, a showcase of your improvisational skills?
I have perfect pitch, and drives me bananas when somebody changes the key of a song on me. I can sing songs in the proper key without accompaniment, without a pitch pipe. Don’t you dare change my song on me simply for your convenience.
In addition, a piano has an 88-key range. A human voice, well-trained, has a range of maybe 21 notes — a tenor might sing from Db below middle C to the Bb above it — and he was cast in that part because he can hit the notes required by the score. And here’s a musician, saying “gee, I’ve got more notes on the piano, it’s no strain for me to play higher.” Singers can’t pick and choose a key that’s convenient for you without risking straining their voices.
As to why songs have such endings?
Audiences know they’re supposed to applaud, but they don’t always know when. If the audience applauds at a false ending, then it may throw off the pit musicians; or it may throw off the actor, who can no longer hear the music over the clapping and lose his beat; or if the actor and conductor stay on cue, the audience may miss the next bit because they’re too busy making hand noises.
Why is this a recent phenomenon? Who cares? It’s probably just a thing — there’s no point in trying to blame it on actors, or audience, or musicians, or stage hands. You might as well ask why musicals of the last 60 years have drum sets, and blame it on actors who can’t keep time without one. It’s just a phase that music goes through. It’s your bitterness toward actors that makes you blame it on them.
Now you just wait one cotten picken minute here, Fish.
I never meant to imply that actors actually were stupid. If you’ll look back to my OP, “actors are cattle” was right underneath “Hypotheses.”
BTW, musicians are not peons unless put in that position. Either my director or my MD didn’t do his job well enough to let me do mine, and I was the one hung out to dry for it.
Listening to you isn’t exactly improving my attitude toward the theatrical community, FWTW.
