Music Essay on Chicago & West Side Story

Music essay on Chicago & West Side Story

Choose two contrasting dance passages from the musicals that you have studies and show how rhythm and structure, instruments and texture have been used to convey the mood and distinctive dance features. (20 Marks)

I am going to explain the key features of 'America' from West Side Story written by Bernstein and 'Cell Block Tango' from Chicago John Kander.

West Side story is a musical twist of William Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet'. Two rival gangs, the Sharks and the Jets are in a feud with each other set in New York City. The two people who fall in love are Tony and Maria. They fall in love and from that moment things get worse.

At the beginning of the song, they are singing in conversation, also known as call and response. This technique of singing allows the singers to tell a story or have a conversation whilst singing. There are distinct key changes during the instrumental section of the song as it allows time to dance. It makes this section stand out from the rest while you are watching the musical performance.

The structure of the piece is very repetitive as the verses expressing the disagreement between Tony and Maria both musically and lyrically while the chorus expresses new opportunities in America.

This piece is written as a swing jazz. The minim beat is divided up into triplets and the duple metre is slightly blurred between simple and compound. In the main part of the song, the tempo changes to 'Tempo di Huapango' which refers to the huapango dance. This fast tempo works well with the complex cross rhythms alternating between 3/4 and 6/8.

The use of the Eb within the chromatic notes creates a false relation between C major and Minor. The key of the piece modulates from G minor to F minor which is G major chord 7. The song is mainly diatonic, tones within a key signature, but a harmonic shift occurs. The song finishes with a four bar coda. This ending signals the end of the piece because of its dynamic changes which allows the audience to applause.

Cell block tango was written for the musical 'Chicago'. This is based on the corruption in the administration of criminal justice. The song 'Cell Block tango' is set in a block of cells within a prison and expresses the aggressive side of all but one of the 'criminals' in there. There

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