Methuen’s series of pocket-sized musical theatre books has emerged as a useful set of companions for scholars and students. They are focused enough to offer a useful introduction and illustrative examples to a topic, while being concise enough to get through in a single sitting. Although their snapshot nature gives only a glimpse into their subjects, they set the scene for ongoing study and point to other resources for further reading.
Musical Theatre Orchestration, by Paul R. Laird and Elizabeth Sallinger, is a recent addition to the collection. It’s a handy consideration of how the orchestration of Broadway musicals works, with a focus on five post-1960 shows with a range of differing musical styles and instrumental demands: Hair (1968), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), The Lion King (1997), Wicked (2003), and Hamilton (2015). This choice of shows is an accessible selection which will appeal to readers in terms of their popularity and currency, and with cast albums, films, TV versions, and live recordings of material readily available, this selection of musicals also enables readers to access the orchestrations discussed within the book.
Orchestration is a fundamental element of any musical, and contributes significantly to the ‘soundscape’ of the world created on stage (as Laird and Sallinger refer to it). On the other hand, it is a technical area whose complexities can go unnoticed by both audiences and scholars: the best orchestrations often blend seamlessly into the overall experience of a performance, and many of the best orchestrational nuances can be overshadowed by the more audible – and visible – presence of the vocals.
It’s therefore helpful to have a companion like this, which begins with a useful overview of orchestration, the typical instrument groupings, and the development of techniques from the classical European tradition.
Following the useful introduction – which also picks up briefly on one of Broadway’s most influential orchestrators, Robert Russell Bennett – the book moves on to a handful of case study chapters in which we are introduced to Galt MacDermot’s composition and orchestration of Hair; Andrew Lloyd Webber’s work with David Cullen on Phantom; the collaborative approach of various contributors including David Metzger to The Lion King; veteran Broadway orchestrator William Brohn’s handling of Wicked, which served as an apprenticeship for Alex Lacamoire; and Lacamoire’s own orchestration of Hamilton. Each of these discussions is informative, and the stylistic variations of the selected shows enable the analysis of the orchestrations to consider slightly differing sound-worlds: the pop-rock of Hair; the synthetically enhanced classicism of Phantom; the globally infused ‘timbral diversity’ (p. 53) of The Lion King; the sheer scale of Wicked, which the authors describe as ‘wrapping an orchestra around a rock band’ (p. 61); and the hip-hop innovations of Hamilton. It’s a selection that has evidently been chosen to enable that stylistic range to be explored, though in focusing on styles, on household-name shows, and on a largely contemporary repertoire (‘after rock became part of the standard musical vocabulary’, p. 6), the book is only able to introduce us to a handful of orchestrators, and that means that other significant styles, key names, and canonical examples are unfortunately overlooked.
Despite the brief biographical focus on Robert Russell Bennett in the introduction, for example, there is no analysis of the sort of ‘classic’ and formative orchestration at which he excelled in many of the Golden Age shows (Oklahoma!, The King and I, My Fair Lady). Nor is there any consideration of the traditional ‘Broadway Sound’ epitomised in the orchestrations of Hans Spialek (On Your Toes), Don Walker (The Music Man), or Sid Ramin and Robert Ginzler (Gypsy). A discussion of those ‘soundscapes’ could have helped readers to recognise the baselines against which contemporary orchestrators have been working. Nor are we introduced substantially to figures such as Jonathan Tunick or Michael Starobin, who orchestrated much of Stephen Sondheim’s work, or of any female orchestrators such as Macy Schmidt (Kimberley Akimbo; Ratatouille: the TikTok Musical). Of course, you can’t cover everything, but some readers may be disappointed at these omissions. There are inevitably drawbacks to these short-format books, then.
Nevertheless, each of the case study shows is given a good degree of focus (though the chapter on The Lion King is somewhat slim). And in terms of the authors’ argument, the book delivers well in reflecting how orchestration can contribute not only to the sound of a show but also to the development of characters and the flow of the drama. The book does this particularly well in discussing Christine’s character development in Phantom (pp. 43–4), in distinguishing between the vocal groupings used in Hair (pp. 29–30), in explaining the organisation of Wicked’s orchestration in five different styles (pp. 68–74); and in its close analysis of Hamilton’s opening number (pp. 84–5).
In short, this is a book that serves as an excellent introduction to the concept of orchestration, notwithstanding its inevitable short-form limitations.
