musical theater radio

[Dude]

Posted: 1/3/04 at 3:50pm

i love musicals, but when i try to listen to any internet radio stations that play musicals, i get bored real quickly.

i think that it's hard to mix musical songs together because of the diverse type of music styles in musicals.

anyone else?

[on1ystarinthesky]

Posted: 1/3/04 at 3:53pm

Well, I'm having trouble just finding a radio station (internet or not) that plays strictly musical songs. What ones are you listening to? Can you give me the URL?

Anyways, in response to your remark, yeah, that's true. Really, no two musicals are alike, so it's hard to group them together.

[krisjoseph]

Posted: 1/3/04 at 4:16pm

When I try to categorize "musical theatre radio", I lean towards free-form. Free-from radio matches up music based on "energy level" or beats per minute, but allows the style/genre of the music to vary widely. Broadwayworld Radio is, for all intents and purposes, free-form radio.

The style of music that people generally associate with musical theatre is an earmark of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Jerry Herman, and other composers from that (rather wide) timeframe. The "stereotype" of "Broadway music" is locked in that timeframe, which speaks highly of those folks' universal appeal. I actually don't think you'll find many radio stations that focus in that arena, because (at the risk of raising Bulldog's ire) I don't think it makes for terribly varied, interesting radio

Remember that Rodgers and Hammerstein, et al. were very much en vogue in their day. The very first piece of vinyl ever pressed into a record was "South Pacific", because it was seen as being on the high end of musical culture at that time. Musical theatre has never, since, been at the "pinnacle" of Western culture; rather than leading it, now, it is a reflection of it. That's a whole different debate.

The world is "smaller" today, and interests are more diverse. I am not nearly as well-versed in the history of musical theatre as many other people here, but I will suggest that the range of styles present in musical theatre over the past few decades is broader than ever before, and is a reflection of an art form trying to find a new voice. Which pieces will be remembered fifty years from now as fondly as we remember R&H certainly remains to be seen... but I love the experiment.

What was the question? :)