Creative Lecture 2
The Creative Process of Music According to the Drama and Characters in a Musical
Date: August 11th, 2021, Wednesday 4:20PM ~ 5:20PM
Location: Online (by Zoom)
Lecturer: Composer Chan-hong Min

For the second creative lecture, Chan-hong Min, composer of musical , , and more shared his own working procedure.

Important point when Composing a Musical
In musicals, music conveys the story, and its “text” is a combination of text and music. The work should not only be composed of drama or text, but also filled with the music’s sentiment and genre, and sensibility. The writer should provide some room in the script for the music to musically express. The composer should describe the characters, story, and theme of the musical, not only embodying his/her own intention and interpretation to musical genre or structure.

The example of a musical where the genre of music represents its theme is , in which the rock music describes the overthrow in the story. Examples of the music’s genre describing the musical’s background, character, and sentiment could be , , and . represents an eloquent character by hip-hop, featuring the character through music well. is an example of where the musical motive penetrates its theme; the symbolic significance of its music is connected with its theme and story with the Gregorian chant ‘Dies Irae’ as the musical motive.

Determination of Music’s Style in a Musical
Musical is about poets Rimbaud and Verlaine, in which the story unfolds with Delahaye, Rimbaud’s friend, looking for the last letter of Rimbaud. All of the lyrics were based on poems, so I chose to adopt Kunstlied to this musical– a European art song style where the melody makes the lyrics more audible. However, the problem was that Rimbaud is a French poet, whereas Kunstlied was mainly developed in Germany. Also, even though many poems were created during the period of post-romanticism, it was hard to apply difficult grammar of those days to music. But since the drama was rather focused on the characters than the background, neither I was not very aware of the era or nationality while working on it.

I tried to describe all three characters of differently by music. Kunstlied was mainly used for Verlaine, as his poems are lyrical enough to put melody on it. Delahaye, who is rather common and non-artistic, was mainly represented by relatively simple and plain tune with an addition of pop style rather than classical music.

On the other hand, I had a lot on my mind for Rimbaud as his character was very unique and his poems were convoluted; the poems were not only difficult to understand, but also lack of the rhythm and rhyme of the original poems as they were translated versions. I decided it was impossible to vitalize all of the complicated significations of poems, so I simplified them to convey the meaning to some degree in the musical. But it was still hard to represent the poems through traditional classical music, and such style did not fit Rimbaud’s character, as he was artistically progressive. So I combined rock music to it. Since it has to be in harmony with other songs and the number of musical instruments that could be played in a small theater is limited, I did not apply the rock style overall. I just put a guitar riff in the first solo of Rimbaud, ‘Drunken Boat’, and composed it with the instruments that could give a strong impression, mainly with piano. This could show the contrast of characters, getting along with the whole musical ‘tone’. Additionally, I used a unique tempo of 6/4 as It was hard to put long and tedious poetic diction into the original tempo of 4/4.

The Theme Song and Reprise
Usually while composing a musical, I think of which song could represent the whole work. And then I use that song as a benchmark when composing other songs. I suggest to identify the representative musical number in each musicals and how that song relates to, and influences other parts. It is better to create a new meaning through reprise than a simple, functional one.

I generally reflect the storyline through the pitch of the key. For , the keys of each song were unified as the story begins with Rimbaud’s death and concludes with his realization in the end. The last musical number ‘Eternity’ used the same motive and melody of piano to link with the first number.

Another example could be the musical . is about a young man living in 1969 wakes up to find himself became an old man of 2020, and wishes to go back to the past. First I referred to music of 1969 a lot. But since the musical’s genre is a fantastic comedy with a strong feature of fairytale and the main character is an elder with a young heart, I tried to use contemporary music rather than describing that time of the past by music. 

In , the song ‘I’m going nuts’  is a humorous song where the young man in an old body argues with an old woman. And the song ‘Future Exploration’ is an exciting song; the old man who studied the future and went back to the past for success sings it together with the young man of the past. The piano accompaniment of ‘Future Exploration’ is a reprise of the melody of ‘I’m going nuts’, which is used for a mysterious plot of what happened to the main character. I found this work interesting as these songs share the motive but they mean opposite.