Has the Broadway Baritone died?- Page 2

[chinto1984]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 4:32pm

According to my research, (I sound like Penny from inspector gadget) you are right.

[newintown]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 4:42pm

8vb does specifically mean an octave below, but I find that it's a pretty archaic usage, particularly in the theatre.

Here's a link to some musicians discussing it.

I find more scores use 8va for both above or below, sometimes specifying which direction (but the Barfee stuff is so full of initials specifying who sings which part, there's not really room for that).

But Fogler, who was singing the role when the published score was finalized, is definitely not singing in Logan's octave on the recording.




8va/8vb discussion Updated On: 4/9/13 at 04:42 PM

[RippedMan]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 4:43pm

Middle C- G is not ridiculously high for any tenor.

[chinto1984]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 4:52pm

True but that is where a true tenor should have their power. The may be able to sing lower or higher, but the strength and ease there is what many distinct as being a tenor.

[all that jazz]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 5:02pm

I think it also has to do with the training that broadway performers are recieving nowadays. I've been in auditions and seen countless clips of MT students, and they all sound similar to me, like robots. I hate that about our current theatre generation, everyone has such pitch perfect voices, a unique voice it's very rare to find.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 5:06pm

Yeah, but no one wants to spend $150 to hear someone calling for line, or singing off key, etc. That's the world we live in. It cost $14 million dollars to put on a Broadway musical. It needs to be perfect.

And there will always be revivals of the classics. Not many tenors could handle Captain Von Trapp, Guys and Dolls, etc.

[newintown]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 5:13pm

I think there's a big difference between "singing off key" and "singing in character." Listen to that original cast recording of Company - there are some voices that sound like actors they don't lull you into a stupor with a beautiful, pasteurized sound that has nothing to do with the words being sung.



Updated On: 4/9/13 at 05:13 PM

[chinto1984]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 5:17pm

I wouldn't say these new crop of singers have pitch perfect voices. Some just place it the nose and tend to be sharp.

I was listening to Idina sing defying gravity and Mandy Gonzalez sing it. Idina sounds painful and fake and splats. Mandy actually sings the song but young musical theater kids don't really care to sound like Mandy because Idina got the tony and is on the album. It's a lot of mimicking. It does bite them in the butt. I have performed with some teens, and they riff up a storm but can't sing a basic middle c to g line as written.

Also some working musical theater singers sometimes have no choice because they are replacing and expected sound the way the role has been established.

Updated On: 4/9/13 at 05:17 PM

[all that jazz]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 5:24pm

Exactly, Newintown! I'm talking about stars like Zero Mostel, Carol Channing, Elaine Stritch... I wouldn't call them pitch perfect singers but they're all legends.

I feel like most of our new talent are just Mariuses and Cossettes.


Updated On: 4/9/13 at 05:24 PM

[Patash]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 6:29pm

Bari-tenor sounds like what you do to him after he dies.

[chinto1984]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 6:35pm

there is probably a lot truth to that all these young singers sound like mariuses and cossettes, and not even the good singers who played those roles. Randy Graff on one of Seth's Obsessed episodes talks about how ALW and the British musicals really did change the singing on Broadway. They required a more of a mix/belt and rock style singing. But also they wanted to literally duplicate the same les miz production around the world. That has stuck. Even though Daphne's fantine was not vocally superior, but it was interesting.

Updated On: 4/9/13 at 06:35 PM

[michellek45]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 7:41pm

I have a love/hate relationship with baritones (love the rich tone, hate that I can't sing along), but I definitely agree that it's going the way of the dodo. I think part of the reason is the trend toward rock/pop sounding music, which is almost all sung by tenors. Rock music also tends to be one dynamic level more or less, which doesn't allow for a lot of variation. There's huge emphasis on rhythm (much of which is complex), so there's not as much room for ad-libbing a la Rex Harrison.

And to add on to the truth about the Mariuses and Cosettes (though I would say they're more Mariuses and Eponines), I think a lot of it has to with the fact that we're seeing one of the first, if not the first, generation of kids who actually went to school specifically for musical theater. School is a quantitative environment: you do x, you get x amount of points, you get x grade. You put, say, Carol Channing in front of an NYU professor and she's not gonna be getting high grades. Training people en masse like that will always give you less distinctive voices than if each of those kids went to a private instructor.

[chinto1984]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 7:53pm

yes. very true. It's not that people were not trained back in the day. Rather, one trained since there were seven in dance, and learned to sing to get a chorus job. They may have not been a great singer or actor, but they had a solid dance training. And the expectional ones became stars. Same with the singers. They studied music throughout their childhood and had legit singing voices or at least cultivated their singing ability. Everyone now seems to be mediocre in comparison to past icons. It could be because many musical theater kids are not learning the art of singing, dance, or acting. They spread their formative years and lack a personal discipline or craft

[ReggieonBway]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 8:03pm

Good lord, there's a lot of people spewing bullsh** in this thread.

Short answer; yes, the tenor has taken over commercial theater. The baritone is not dead, but all males should have at least a G to survive, an A to be competitive. The thing about a lot of roles mentioned in this thread (I saw Fiyero and Elder Cunningham, for instance, both of whom sing up to As) is that they aren't written for baritones. They may fall within a baritone's range, but they're meant for voice types that don't climax at those notes. Norm Lewis is a stock baritone, and he has a mixed high C - but how ridiculous would he sound in Book of Mormon?

Also, point of contention; Norbert Leo Butz is not a baritone. He's a low tenor. Brother belts a high C with practically no excess weight in TL5Y, and his passaggi are indicative of a tenor.

[michellek45]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 8:30pm

chinto, I didn't mean that there's no talent in the new crop. Are most people with a musical theater degree mediocre? Yes, but most people with any degree are mediocre. That's the meaning of the word. I meant mostly that developing a degree means you have to develop a style on which to base grades on. Also I think part of the reason is the general trend toward stories about young people in our culture, and young guys are stereotyped as tenors more often than not.

[musikman]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 9:01pm

Really, it boils down to the style of music most composers are writing in nowadays. When I think of the real Broadway Baritone roles, I'm thinking Joey from Most Happy Fella, Lancelot in Camelot, any role Alfred Drake ever played, etc... Those types of roles, and that style of music are from a bygone era of Broadway.

[darquegk]

Posted: 4/9/13 at 9:09pm

You are looking for the traditional, operatic bass-baritone. They're still around, but because lyrical, operatic music is out of fashion as the stylistic form du jour, you're going to see less of that.

My score will dip relatively little into that pond, but the influences are all pre-rock (unless you want to include Paul McCartney's late-Beatles jazz-pop experiments, which I suppose could be loosely called an influence on one song). Rather, the score is conceived through a lens of influences such as Kander and Ebb, "Threepenny Opera," film composers Nino Rota and early Danny Elfman, and classical composers including Mariano Mores.