Excerpt+13

1. This is the opening of a musical about revenge, murder, injustice and cannibalism in 19th century industrial London. Describe the atmosphere of this excerpt, and how it is created.
 * Track 13: Stephen Sondheim – Sweeney Todd opening (2:05)**

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-An eerie atmosphere is created by a big church organ sound that plays sustained chords with changing dissonant harmonies. It descends chromatically creating a sense of downfall and collapse. -Interrupted by a piercing, high pitched scream, which immediately creates a sense of extreme danger and fear. -The lower strings begin a continuous minor 2nd trill beneath the music, creating a sense of impending doom. -A low, dark male voice sings the story of 'Sweeny Todd' - the voice has a gloomy dark tone colour to convey the sense of danger. A different, higher more harsh male voice sings the 2nd verse. -High pitched strings enter to play high frightening melodies, becoming more angular, creating a 'psycho-like' scream from the violins. -Dynamics suddenly become ff and more voices enter for a full blown, dramatic chorus section. They sing in homophonic texture to convey the power of 'Sweeny Todd'. -Heavy percussion (timpani and cymbals) are used to create thunder-like sounds - something assosciated with darkness and fear.

Lena

Notes: · Eerie, haunting, ominous, dissonant, frightening. · Minor Harmony · Descending chromatic melody · Dissonant · Loud saw like sound · Vocal melody small range male baritone voice · Brass and strings provide accomp. Brass 1 and 3 strings sus <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%; text-indent: -18pt;">· Dynamic Contrast – ensemble and voices

<span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%;">Actual answer: <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%;">In this excerpt an eerie, haunting, ominous atmosphere is created through the use of: <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%; text-indent: -18pt;">· The atmosphere is established immediately from the outset through the eerie tone colour of the solo church organ in the introduction. The organ plays dissonant descending chromatic lines and altered minor harmony to create an on edge discordant feel. <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%; text-indent: -18pt;">· A very loud, jarring saw like sound marks the beginning of a new section. This loud sound is unexpected, taking the listener by surprise, startling them to further create a frightened mood. <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%; text-indent: -18pt;">· The use of two baritone vocalists to take the main melodic role adds to the haunting, low end ominous mood, the small range of this melody further accentuating this. <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%; text-indent: -18pt;">· Underneath this melody the strings provide a soft, sustained accompaniment in close dissonant harmony. <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%; text-indent: -18pt;">· The lyrics of the vocalist help to communicate the narrative element of the work, giving a prologue of the story to come. The dark imagery used in the lyrics work in conjunction with the music to establish the mood. <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%; text-indent: -18pt;">· The brass provide crotchet interjections on beats 1 and 3 to create a militaristic, march like “two-feel”. <span style="color: #0011ff; font-family: 'Courier New',Courier,monospace; font-size: 110%; text-indent: -18pt;">· The composer cleverly employs the use of dynamic and textural contrast to give the work an element of surprise and unpredictability. This is particularly noticeable towards the end of the excerpt when there is an abrupt change in dynamics with the introduction of the tutti ensemble and an entire vocal section. This sudden change surprises the listener and creates uncertainty in the music. Matt

Creepy church organ, Sustained drones then cut into descending chromatic lines. This creates a sense of impending tragedy of death.

Cut by the loud high pitched factory Whistle - the Industry of London in 19th century, often viewed as brutal with child labourers and extremely dangerous working conditions and poor quality of life. Dissonant chord strummed in the harp under the harsh sound of the Factory Whistle. This effect also helps to create a sense of impending danger or death.

Continuous forward momentum of strings creating a hybrid bubbling and waving effect building suspense (soft dynamic) cut by small harsh muted brass entries under the sea shanty like main melody sung in the male baritone voice, suggests the atmosphere of old 19th century London with a large emphasis on industry around "the docks" with the strings creating a watery effect and the main verse sung in a sea shanty style with folksy rhythms and a relatively middle register and small range melody.

taken over by a tenor which is a higher register voice further creating tension and sense of anticipation.

Then full chorus and tutti accompaniment suddenly loud with harsh brass sounds, lots of shrill vibrato in the voice to accompany the dark disturbing text "Swing your razor high!". Highly accented beats creating "stabs" of harsh sound hinting at the idea of the razor to not be for shaving at all and further constructing an atmosphere of danger and imminent death.

Text mostly sung with a British accent to create the sense of listening to characters or voices from England. Very rough accents also hint at the working class or industrial workers to provide a sense of gritty and dark mood.

Troy Rogan

Dissonant chords, use of organ from church: ominous feel with dissonant chords representing a corrupt society. Screechy high pitched sound. Horn jabs, short repetitive wavy motif in violins, very exposed male voices little vibrato with particular emphasis on words --> minimal accompaniment at this point in time. Another male voice, even less rounded vocal tone colour, more nasally. Use of one voice then another suggests more global knowledge of “the tale of Sweeney Todd.” This universal corruption is emphasised with the entrance of the entire chorus with rich chords full of colour. A sense of imminent doom is created with the horn line following the vocal lines. This enriches the intense texture and tone colour built from the male vocals combined with female vocals, ff. A melodic motif is established in this piece, in each instrumental line, providing a well-rounded atmosphere of impending doom present throughout the entire piece. The gradual entrance of each melodic line: the dissonant organ, the screechy/jarring high pitched sound, well formed vocal line motifs, finally proceeding to a full vocal chorus, demonstrates, in turn, the unmusical and brutal quality of murder as well as the harmonious accord of the chorus that corruption and injustice are present in society.

Harriet Davies

**__Instrumentation__** Church organ-descends in chord progression which becomes dissonant towards the end via the sustain pedal. A scalic descent into a series of dissonant chords creates a feeling of dread. There is a loose tonal centre but it changes rapidly with the changing of chords. Ceasing of all instruments save a prolonged, high pitched metallic sound – possibly a violin played before the bridge, amplified to sound like a scream. This creates a terrifying effect for the listener, being both audibly unpleasant and having deathly, violent connotations, filling the listener with a surge of fright. **Minor key introduced** through strings and brass: Strings play semiquavers in lower register alternating between semitones in micro - phrases of 6 semiquavers, rather than 4. This opposes all other instrument’s phrasing, making it at first difficult to identify the time signature = uneasiness for the listener. Cor Anglais? and/or horns play quavers on back beat, leaving out the 2nd beat of every 2nd bar, creating an illusion of a different time signature when in fact the time signature remains the same. This builds on the unease already felt by the listener. **__Rhtyhm/Tempo__**: Moderately slow tempo gives the opening an underlying feel of sorrow; despite its horribly graphic lyrics and imagery, the story of this musical does carry with it an immense tragedy of a man who has lost all he loves; and with it, his morality. To combat this, semiquaver passages from strings and generally short rhythmic values in the vocal parts help to build a sense of chilling anticipation one gets whilst watching a horror film. The rhythm within vocal parts is speech-like to aid the singers to communicate emotional ideas within the text in a seemingly natural way (unlike opera or art song, which is often phrased differently to how it would be spoken as a literary text). __**The use of vocalists in creating heightened emotional experience for the audience:**__ Traditionally, musical theatre is a combination of classical training with acting ability, where the former is usually out ruled by the latter for the purpose of communicating a story to an audience. Here, the vocalists blend these 2 concerns by maintaining a clear sense of phrase direction, rhythm and **pitch** but using speech-like **expression** within their singing so that the traditional classical balance of half-talking/half-singing is outweighed by talking. For example, particular attention is paid to consonants: **e.g.:** Flee**__T__** Stree**__T__** In this phrase, the vocalist cuts short the note value in order to emphasise the consonants, thus improving the level of communication between himself and the audience. This also has an effect on the tone colour; giving it a colder, almost robot-like sound, which is in alignment with the subject of which he is singing (murder, cannibalism, etc).

This style of singing allows vocalists to more clearly express the emotions within the text, whilst keeping to a set structure of intervals, to create sequences of both musical //and// speech-like phrases. This provides the audience with an experience which feels overall closer to reality than would an opera aria. The closer a character in theatre seems to reality, the more the audience is drawn into the world surrounding that character. Thus, the vocalists bring the audience further into the musical’s world, creating further anxiety and unease. **NB:** It should not be said, however, that the singers use //Sprechstimme// as this is a song-form based purely on text, and uses the natural tones of speech as a tuning system, rather than the conventional A440. //Sweeney Todd// is a musical theatre work based on the regular concert pitch tuning system and, like most other musical theatre, aims to give song speech-like characteristics without compromising heavily on conventional voice usage. EMILY LANHAM

<span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Mati:** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Notes:** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**-Organ - minor mood, sad, moving lines all descending, dissonance** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**-Really sudden high squeal** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**-strings low and repeating, insisting, driving** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**-male vocal, with interesting lyrics** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**-higher voice** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**-vocals somewhat spoken** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**-sudden loud vocal choir, sense of the grand** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**-hits in muted horn, create uncertainty**

<span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**Answer:** <span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**The mood created is tense but with a sense of importance.**

<span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**This importance is achieved through the grandeur of the organ opening, giving regal connotations and a call to attention. The presence of almost spoken soloists telling a tale give it a sense of narration. The stories importance is emphasised when the full choir enters, reinforcing the message of the tale. Also the language used is very regal and old fashioned (19th century)**

<span style="color: #1a6b6b; font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif;">**The tenseness of the excerpt is achieved by the dissonance in the organ introduction, seemingly miss-played notes by such a grand instrument are a juxtaposition. The sudden hight pitched whistling noise raises the tension through its dynamic and spontaneity. The impending string ostinato with uneven stabs from muted horn keep the tension while the narrators sing. A minor key is established adding to the darkness and when the choir enters the chords are thick and moving, dissonant and give a feeling of impending doom.**