Exploring Original Cast Recordings as “Vocal Scripts”: Navigating “Vocal Omnivorousness” and Learning “The Sungs” of Musical Theatre

ABSTRACT

An original cast recording is produced to prolong the musical theatre experience, serving as a sound souvenir, a marketing tool, and a means to a commercial end, contributing to a show’s overall success and impact. However, it also plays a part in performance practices, assisting singers and voice teachers in learning new repertoire, and navigating an omnivorous performance field drawing on a wide variety of vocal and musical styles and aesthetics to tell its stories. In this regard, the original cast recordings take on the status of so-called vocal scripts, here defined as sonic entities choreographing social interactions between players, making them objects of interest in performance research and performing arts pedagogy. Drawing on writings from the fields of musicology, cultural sociology, and voice studies, this article’s theoretical contribution is twofold; (1) on a conceptual level, offering insight into and establishing the term vocal script, and (2) from a vocal pedagogical stance, exploring the ways of listening involved when interacting with a multifaceted vocal script. This article argues for taking the original cast recordings seriously within the theatre profession as material mediators, playing active parts in the formations of vocal behaviors, vocal styles, vocal tastes, and vocal pedagogies.

KEYWORDS:

• Performing arts pedagogy
• performance research
• musical theatre
• voice studies
• cultural sociology
• original cast recordings
• vocal scripts

Introduction

The original cast recording is an artifact produced to grant a form of permanence to musical theatre’s ephemeral state, serving both as a sound souvenir, a marketing tool, and a means to a commercial end, enabling us to relive what otherwise only survives in present audiences’ memories (Reddick 2018; Dvoskin 2018). The global accessibility of these recordings permits audiences residing outside New York to identify themselves as fans and a part of the Broadway community without ever setting foot in New York or experiencing a Broadway show live. Thus, the original cast recordings contribute to a show’s overall success and impact. Nevertheless, the success of a musical is not limited to fans enjoying a show or buying tickets but can be determined as to whether or not a show’s songs are sung again off their original stage, to what Wolff (2018) names “the power of the music to inspire imitation.” In this regard, the original cast recordings become part of musical theatre productions (re-)appearing throughout the United States and abroad, assisting practitioners in learning new repertoires (Reddick 2018). As argued by Edwin, Edwards, and Hoch (2018, 187), “As one listens to cast recordings, one finds that it is standard for Adelaide from Guys and Dolls to sing with nasality and Eponine from Les Misérables to possess a strong chest-mix belt.” Hence, the original cast recordings play a significant role in learning what Symonds (2014) names “the sung”: the sound of a voice and its vocal practices, and in the making of musical theatre performances and performers.

As a genre, musical theatre draws upon, absorbs, or appropriates whatever musical style needed to suit its purpose and tell its stories, continually expanding and including a wide range of popular musical styles and subgenres to its repertoire (Fisher, Kayes, and Popeil 2019; Kayes 2015; LoVetri, Saunders-Barton, and Weekly 2014; Edwards 2018). As a result, there is a sense of “omnivorousness”¹ within the profession: a multitude of broad, hybrid, and fragmented musical and vocal taste patterns in the form of incorporated styles, idioms, and practices. Noteworthy, not resulting in an increased vocal specialization among performers but rather to an established artistic expectation that the individual should master this multistylism vocally (LoVetri, Saunders-Barton, and Weekly 2014). Thus, the term “the sung” within musical theatre does not imply one type of vocal aesthetics but is to be considered as plural, as “the sungs” of musical theatre.

To navigate such vocal plurality, such “vocal omnivorousness,”² one needs sonic information. Within contemporary musical theatre, the original cast recordings may be the only source of such knowledge, often published long before the written score. Thereby, it is arguable that these recordings take on status as so-called “vocal scripts,” in this article defined as sonic entities choreographing real-time social interaction between players further making them objects of interest in the fields of performance research and performing arts pedagogy. As the life of a show goes on, it might be recorded many times. Still, it is proclaimable that the original cast recording stays a historically favored performance, partly because of a commonly direct composer involvement in its mounting.

Scholars, such as Reddick (2018), have documented the high-status position of the original cast recordings in musical theatre history, but less attention has been given to the recordings’ role in assisting and instructing singers and voice teachers when learning a piece or part. This lack of attention creates a knowledge gap in our understanding of the variety and volume of vocal demands, vocal tastes and vocal behaviors prevalent in musical theatre, and the profession’s many formal and informal pedagogical practices. Singers today do not learn to sing solely through voice lessons and a “master-apprentice model” dominant in the history of singing tuition but through a line of explicit and implicit learning environments such as gigs, recording studios, choirs, churches, online tutoring, and imitating other singers (Harrison and O’Bryan 2014). In formal musical theatre education, students are taught and expected to read noted music but listening and analyzing vocal information to heighten one’s aural, reflexive, and vocal skills is not commonly part of the curricula. This, despite that musical theatre scores, in general, are not well annotated (LoVetri, Saunders-Barton, and Weekly 2014), lacking indications and distinctions of stylistic and vocal demands, requiring excessive sonic information when learning a piece or part.

Drawing on writings from musicology (Cook 1999, 2003, 2014; Johnson 2017; Johnson et al. 2019), cultural sociology (Hennion 2003, 2004, 2015), and voice studies (Kayes 2015; LoVetri, Saunders-Barton, and Weekly 2014; Sadolin 2021), this article’s contribution is seen as twofold. The first contribution emerges at a conceptual level, offering insight into and establishing the term vocal script. Second, a contribution is made by exploring the implications of such a concept to the field of musical theatre. These implications are primarily scrutinized from a vocal pedagogical stance, exploring some of the “listenings” involved when interacting with a multilayered vocal script—hereunder, highlighting the vocal scripts’ potential role in learning to sing through the body, not through knowledge about the body. Even though these contributions are considered theoretical, the article is illustrated with examples from a selection of contemporary musical theatre works (Lutvak and Freedman 2014; Pasek and Paul 2017; Miranda 2015; Mitchell 2019), emphasizing the author’s insider position within the profession as a singer and a voice teacher. In sum, the current article argues for taking the original cast recordings seriously within the fields of performing arts pedagogy and musical theatre education, defining them as what cultural sociologist Hennion (2015), Hennion (2004) names “material mediators.” They are not intermediary tools transporting objective knowledge but productive entities playing active parts in the present-day formation of vocal behaviors, vocal styles, vocal tastes, and, hence, vocal pedagogies.

Voice in Musical Theatre

Teaching and learning to sing has a long tradition of modeling and imitation as part of its didactics; still, learning to sing by listening to and copying others is often considered an unaccepted “shortcut,” representing a potential “un-accuracy” when learning new music. One addressed pitfall is the danger of “teach[ing] a given student to be a parrot rather than an intelligent singer” (Berg 2011, 375). Moreover, an active and conscious manipulation of the vocal tract is conjointly looked upon by some vocal teachers and traditions with disdain (Edwin, Edwards, and Hoch 2018). However, when not in disease or anomalous, all singers and speakers can alter their vocal apparatus, hereunder, their vocal fold vibrational patterns, subglottal air pressure, and vocal tract configurations to create diverse and desired vocal outcomes (Edgerton 2014). It is also arguable that within musical theatre, some specifics regarding voice and vocal performance necessitate, enable, and legitimize such a vocal methodological approach.

Voice in musical theatre inhabits what Johnson (2017) calls a vicarious state, where performers express something on behalf of another, utilizing sounds that do not exclusively “belong” to themselves. At the same time, the performers constitute these “others” by giving them voice. A vicarious state enables the notion that each vocal part possesses a so-called “signature sound;” a somatic norm other singers seek to incorporate by adapting a specific setting of the vocal apparatus, commonly constituted by the part’s first (Broadway) performance (Benson, Stover, and Snyder 2020, 28). A signature sound is always mixed with a singer’s biomechanical trades, such as varying sizes and dimensions of their cavities and anatomical structures. Therefore, it is an approximate array of sounds; in other words, the mapped vocal condition of a part (Benson, Stover, and Snyder 2020).³

This idea of signature sounds might be understood connected to an overall contemporary focus on “character-driven” musical theatre works, where the character itself triumphs a celebrity-driven lead performer, making even leads replaceable when successful, long-running shows are branching out (Clum 2018). In this regard, the original cast recordings seemingly assist in creating audience expectations for coherent sounds as well:

When the audience has the opportunity to listen to the recording before seeing a show on stage, it changes their expectations of the live performance. Modern audiences want to hear a consistent performance; they expect that the singing on Broadway, the West End, or on tour will closely resemble what they have been listening to on their devices. (Edwin, Edwards, and Hoch 2018, 185)

Most musical theatre productions require and hire understudies and swings prepared to step in on short notice if main characters are hindered from going on stage. Therefore, ensemble members are cast to blend in vocally with a show’s overall vocal style show and with specific parts but at the same time, expected to vocally stand out when voicing smaller roles. Consequently, musical theatre performers, also within the same show, alter their vocal output to make each role recognizable by making their voices “unrecognizable,” the same way one would change costumes or alter body gestures.

This notion of signature sounds can further be contemplated connected to a prevalent “industry standard” in the profession, proclaiming that vocal sounds should always be produced in line with “the current-moment market standards as measured in only two places—Broadway and/or the West End in London” (LoVetri, Saunders-Barton, and Weekly 2014, 54). Thereby, aesthetics in present-day musical theatre, despite their plurality, are treated and transmitted quite strictly and stabilized, focusing on the “appropriate” sound for each piece and part. For example, current casting directors claim they want to hear new takes on songs, but a unique approach to acting is considered more common than altering vocal styles:

If a performer enters an audition room and sings “Adelaide’s Lament” with Italianate vowels or “On My Own” in head-mix, she has no chance of booking the show […] they do not want to hear “Maria” from West Side Story performed with vocal fry and riffing. They do, however, want to hear a nice legato line with appropriate registration, timbre, and judicious use of vibrato that will appeal to modern taste. (Edwin, Edwards, and Hoch 2018, 187)

Despite such expressed vocal aesthetical strictness, if comparing older cast recordings, for example, Oklahoma from 1943 (Rodger 2009), with revival recordings of the same show, for example, Oklahoma on Broadway in 2019 (Rodger 2019), it is arguable that the vocal behaviors in musical theatre, are somehow and somewhat evolving and changing. Also, within a specific style. Hence, it is seemingly with vocal aesthetics in musical theatre, as with other musical tastes: they “continuously change, without changing, never stop moving, while thinking themselves eternally the same” (Hennion 2003, 5).⁴

What Is in a Vocal Script?

The term vocal script offered in this article draws upon the writings by musicologist Nicholas Cook about music as sonic and social scripts. According to Cook (1999, 2003, 2014), to consider music as text is to see music as an object that is reproduceable in and through performance. However, to think of it as script is to see it as choreographing real-time social interactions between players, underlining music as performance, not as the performance of music. Thereby, the object of music analysis is found in the social interactions between performers and the acoustic traces they leave and not necessarily found in the written score. Connecting this way of thinking to voice and vocal performance, Johnson et al. (2019, 37) underline the “efficacy of the voice to serve as a hub of the ‘work concept’ […] tracing meaning on the throats of singers and bodies of listeners, rather than exclusively on the blots of ink on a piece of the musical manuscript.” As an example, the part of Evan Hanson in Dear Evan Hanson (Pasek and Paul 2017) is by many considered Ben Platt’s singing. It is considered his “bari-tenor voice,” performing highly audible changes between a darker mid-range “full voice” and a strong falsetto, adding creaky onset, audible vocal breaks, airy sounds, and a small, relatively rapid vibrato, using “shadow vowels,” and ad-lib ornamentations. These are all elements of a vocal practice invisible or “non-notable” in the written score but audible in the original cast recording, making the recording the social script to interact with. In other words, Ben Platt’s voice does not merely express the work, but these expressions are part of what constitutes the work itself; the sung is no longer a secondary practice or articulation of the song. This way of thinking challenges established notions in musical theatre that written music and text are stable components, transmitting or carrying objective knowledge or truth to be reproduced. Further, it opposes the composer’s sole authorship in creating musical theatre works, where performers,’ librettists,’ or choreographers’ roles are historically highly reduced, commonly to preserve a “seriousness of the genre and the musical work” (Morris 2018, 22).

Even though written works and composers inhabit a high status in musical theatre, it is not a “theatre secret” that writing a musical’s vocal part is commonly done in collaboration with its main performers, resulting in songs that play on their strengths or flatter their vocal shortcomings (Wolf 2018). Lin-Manuel Miranda supposedly revised “The Schuylar Sisters” in Hamilton (Miranda 2015) to include tight vocal harmonies after hearing the cast sisters Phillipa Soo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Jasmine Cephas Jones singing R&B songs in their dressing room (Benson, Stover, and Snyder 2020). This song’s signature ending was supposed to be performed by the orchestra, but Miranda replaced it with a virtuoso vocal harmony line, making the sung part of the compositional material. Miranda has also stated that the role of Lafayette is written the way it is because of Daveed Diggs being a technically gifted rapper; therefore, a fast tempo became the character’s trajectory skill (Benson, Stover, and Snyder 2020). In addition, Miranda wrote his main character, Hamilton, for himself to perform. In other words, Miranda writes vocal parts with a sonic voice already in mind. In this part of the process, performers and composers often interact with vocal scripts outside the musical theatre profession, granting additional sonic information to singers when auditioning, rehearsing, and forming original parts. In Hamilton, the original casting call described Peggy Schyler as Michelle Williams from Destiny’s Child, the part of Maria Renyolds, as Jasmine Sullivan meets Carla from Nine. In the latter, Miranda specifically wished for a singer with Sullivan’s low part of the voice, with a distinctive “rasp” merging with the modern Broadway “belter” (Benson, Stover, and Snyder 2020). This collaborative nature of musical theatre (Lovensheimer 2018) adds a new layer of understanding to our conceptualizing of the vocal script. Even if earlier argued that the part of Evan Hanson is the voice of Benn Platt, multiple people were actively involved in forming this voice, all adding different layers to the sung. A vocal script must consequently be seen as a collaborative script, comprising, among other things, the singers’ bio-acoustical vocal traits, their personal tastes and artistic values, and the choices, preferences, and demands of the producers, directors, composers, lyricists, musical directors, recording technicians, and even the audiences through a new musical’s many workshops and out-of-town tryouts. Thereby, vocal-musical works within musical theatre are to be seen as thick aesthetic events, and what we identify as Ben Platt’s “authentic,” constitutional voice is to be seen as a collaborative, encultured, and citational voice, both in practice and being.

Arguably, conceptualizing the original cast recordings as vocal scripts raises the status of musical theatre performers in line with what may be called the “performative turn” in musicology and theater science, introducing, among other things, a flatter conceptual thinking of the ontology between the written score and its constitutive performances. Scholars within this tradition (Fischer-Lichte 2008) consider “performance as a source of signification in its own right” (Cook 1999, 247), defining performance as a creative, constitutive practice, not as a matter of “getting things right.” In this regard, it is important not to fall into the trap of making a vocal script merely a new text or truth to be reproduced, reading it as an audible book of rules or a judgment of a universal, correct performance. There is an openness to a social script; it inhibits and offers the possibility and quality of change. It fosters local meaning and actions and, as previously described, interacts with the biomechanics of a specific body, acting as a living entity in the ongoing negotiation and renegotiating of vocal tastes and practices, referring Hennion (2015), Hennion (2004). Consequently, some singers agree and offer themselves to the script, making an almost exact sonic photocopy of its aural notation. Others will refuse to speak it, speak with it, they will dismiss it in total or actively act against it, or choose to flip it, opening up experimentations, alterations, and modifications of both form and meaning, constantly varying across time and space. When performing within a new setting, concept, or context, the song and the sung may be subverted or allocated new practices. As theatre director Stephen Wadsworth (quoted in Burke 2000, 176) describes it, “Characters live in the ether until actors come along and embody them”; or as Hennion (2015) claims, music is nothing without its mediators, without its instruments, languages, scores, performers, and stages. Music must always be made and made again, offering performers a space of agency within and between genres, styles, tastes, and traditions. In musical theatre, musical theatre singers commonly act in a vocally freer way when relocating into new narratives. “Broadway backwards” is one of these concepts, which through gender-bending brings new characters and voices into being, introducing new sounds of cultural, social, and economic categorizations such as geographies, gender, class, age, and race. Concepts and sounds that slowly but steadily make their way into main musical theatre stages as well.

Interacting with a Vocal Script

When exploring the concept of vocal scripts from a vocal pedagogical stance, an intentional listening is our primary methodological tool. Singers and voice teachers act as what Mitchell (2014) defines as “expert listeners” able to decipher vocal patterns and behaviors, making rapid judgments about subtle audible changes, combining available perceptual cues and clues to determine the physiological and technical processes involved in creating specific voice qualities, vocal effects, and musical idioms. In other words, we listen not to achieve an aesthetic experience but to gain technical and vocal information, to learn singing and how to sing. Even though speech scientists and voice clinicians increasingly use computers and software to evaluate and explore voices acoustically, this is a limited practice in the voice studio as it is arguable that the listening ear is surviving as “the most vital tool” for detecting acoustic variation and determining its status within or against sustainable use (Shewell 2009, 172). However, vocal sound labeling, the terminology of voice we use to categorize, is not a straightforward matter or unanimously implemented throughout the vocal scene (Melton 2007). Within musical theatre, there is a continuous debate regarding aural perception and physiological explanation of terms such as, among others, “head,” “chest,” “belt,” “twang,” and “mix” (Edwin 2007; LoVetri, Saunders-Barton, and Weekly 2014). The language differences between singing pedagogy and voice science are one factor in this debate; singing teachers drawing on their personal experiences, creating different branches of hegemonic oral cultures, is another (Harrison and O’Bryan 2014). Many influential vocal methodologies are besides trademarked entities, hereunder Complete Vocal Technique (CVT), the Estill Voice model, and Speech Level singing, each containing and implementing specific terminology (Hoch 2018).

“Voice’s source is not the singer; it is the listener,” writes Eidsheim (2019); it is the listener who assigns meaning to voice, depending on their understandings and frames of reference. Therefore, a question of “Who am I, who hears this?” (Eidsheim 2019, 24) is relevant to ask, when interacting with a vocal script, as it is arguable that how we listen, what we listen for, and how we value our listening, are closely related to, among other things, our history of vocal training. For example, the vocal language, categorizations, and technical references in this article stem from and are shaped by my training within Complete Vocal Technique (McGlashan, Aaen, and Sadolin 2016; Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2017, 2019, 2020; Sadolin 2021). Consequently, elements I would listen for and give value in a vocal script would be (1) the most present “vocal mode,⁵” (2) changes between these vocal modes, (3) the vowels involved: modified or “clear,” (4) the amount of “twang” in the sound: necessary or distinct,⁶ (5) the degree of “metal”⁷ and (6) “density⁸” in the sound, (7) the “sound color,”⁹ and (8) the use of additional “vocal effects.”¹⁰ (See Table 1 for an extended list). I would, however, not listen for the overall timbre,¹¹ a term commonly used to describe the prominent tone, imprint, or “vocal quality” of a voice (Eidsheim 2019); or listen according to the deployment of musical theatre terms such as “legit,”¹² “mix,”¹³ or “belt.”¹⁴ Within Complete Vocal Technique, these terms are seen as too large of vocal categories, made up of other smaller technical and behavioral bricks and pieces that are considered more efficient and fruitful to pay attention to.

Table 1. Examples of the non-notable vocal demands found in a vocal script.

Examples of Non-Notable Vocal Demands Found in a Vocal Script

The use of vocal modes (Neutral, Curbing, Overdrive, Edge) Switching between vocal modes (commonly perceived as registration and registers) Sound color Height/position of the larynx Open or closed nasal passage Position or shape of tongue Position or shape of the soft palate The amount of audible twang, distinct, or necessary Degree of metal in the sound Degree of density of the sound Vocal breaks Volumes (often versus intensity) Onset treatments: in neutral (often airy), in a metal mode (commonly perceived as glottal), or in curbing (commonly perceived as mixed) Vowel modifications (in regard to pitch and volume) Additional vocal effects combined with or without note: Growl, Creaking, Grunt, Rattle, Distortion, air, moans, screams, laugh, cry Ornamentation Use of vibrato Types of vibrato: laryngeal, hammer, or pulsations Use of straight-toning Intonation Sliding into and of notes Bending of notes Phrasings Dialects Placement of text Consonant treatment Word painting (shortening of notes, e.g. bang, zip, knock—sounding like the words described) Spoken ad-libs Melodic ad-libs Melodic modifications Shadow vowels Duration of notes Speed, timing, ritardando, and accelerando

When interacting with these or other elements in a vocal script, it is important to remember that in recordings, all aesthetic and expressive choices become technical, and all technical choices become aesthetic or expressive. This intricacy of recorded voices demands voice teachers and singers to learn about recording techniques, mixing, mastering, equalization, compression, reverb, auto-tune, and microphones and distinguish between the sounds made acoustically in the vocal apparatus from those added or manipulated in the recording studio. A practice of editing flaws is present in most recordings; adding sound effects may result in “smoothed-out” voices, taming the live vocal sound when adapted to a recorded medium. More compressed sounds are often at play; the mastering may equalize volumes, making the aural recognition of different vocal traits harder to identify and disrupting what Symonds (2018) describes as “the natural color” of the voice. Adding layers of vocal takes on top of each other, such as presenting loud volumes with audible air to the sound, may also promote vocal behaviors that are not sustainably performed in a healthy manner when done so live. The use of technical equipment might “unbalance” the score, leading us to think that we may use, among other things, softer volumes than possible to implement live in a theatre setting. Or on the other hand, the original cast recordings may be produced by turning up vocal volumes, making us believe that an acoustic voice can match a live band of loud, electronic, amplified instruments. For example, comparing the filmed Disney+ version of a staged original Hamilton cast (Kail 2020) with its original Broadway cast recording (Miranda 2015), the two arguably have audible differences. Overall, higher volumes are presented in the “live” version than on the recordings. The live show also came across as using more vocal effects; both perceived as intentionally implemented in a healthy manner, but also effects emerging from a slightly inefficient vocal tract setting, maybe as a result of fatigue, overperforming, or pushing the boundaries of one’s vocal technique. Additionally, resulting in the perception of a more unstable pitch in the live version compared to the recorded.

Learning to Sing by the Language of Sounds

Interacting with a vocal script inhabits not only the possibility to train and gain proportional, physiological vocal knowledge, but it also fosters and opens up for an experiential form of vocal knowledge and listening, a listening made possible because a vocal script is a script written with a particular alphabet in mind: the alphabet of vocal sounds. This way of interacting with a vocal script can be described as an “aural to oral listening,” a “kinesthetic listening,” or merely as simple as “copying;” a purposive listening, where we understand and learn vocal technique and singing through tacit and practical knowledge, internalizing the musical and vocal elements from the recordings into our bodies and behavioral patterns (Green 2016; Johansen 2013). Thereby, we do not stand outside of the sung, but we let the sung do upon us, teach us, instruct us, and inspire us, utilizing our vocal tract’s ability to mirror the other singer’s vocal tract’s moldings and settings. In other words, we learn to sing through the body, not through knowledge about the body (Taylor 2013). Implicitly, acknowledging that in singing, one can often do much more than one can tell, and defining listening as not only an activity of the ear and the mind but of the whole body.

Aurally based mimicking, copying a specific vocal sound, as, for example, presented on a recording, may lead to a usable and efficient setting of our vocal apparatus, creating a desired vocal aesthetical output, resolving technical vocal challenges, releasing vocal constrictions, or, in some other ways, unblocking different vocal obstacles. Copying an intensive, high-volume, high-pitched sound sung in Edge,¹⁵ for example, one might heighten their regular position of the larynx, relax the soft palate, add some nasality through a small opening of the nasal passage, broaden the mouth’s opening, add more twang, or alter or change the vowel in question, for example, from a more Norwegian version of “AH,” as in “palm,” to a more American English version of “A” as in “trap.” This active change, manipulation if you may, in/of the vocal tract setting may further influence the voice’s respiratory system and, possibly, adjust, or change the vibratory pattern at the vocal cord level. By repeating the phrase or sound multiple times, a new muscular memory in the vocal apparatus may be created,¹⁶ changing the voice’s physiology and “go-to” vocal behavior. From a “pure” state of this mimicked sound, an alteration of the vocal output to a more preferred aesthetic liking is possible by, for example, opening the mouth more, rounding its corners, closing the nasal passage, or lowering the larynx a bit, thereby creating a larger acoustic space resulting in a darker sound color to your high intensity, belted out, sound.¹⁷ This ability of our bodies to mirror the activities of others has been gaining increasing attention in numerous areas of study, including the field of musical theatre, here exemplified through the writings of Rodosthenous (2014): “voice and song in musical theatre have the capacity to mode audiences through pre-motor responses and mirror neurons that create a mimetic response to the portray of emotion in the voice and body of the performer” (46). In the practice of teaching and learning voice, such a mimetic response is not limited to audience effects but is implemented in voice training as a pedagogical tool (Shewell 2009). Consequently, this way of working with voice emphasizes the need for the singing teacher to be a singing teacher, able to produce a range of desired and required vocal qualities in musical theatre, as argued, among others, by LoVetri Saunders-Barton, and Weekly (2014).

Opening up and Closing Down: Knowing What to Keep and What to Toss Away

Interacting with a vocal script not only fosters the ability to decipher or replicate vocal behavior but demands an awareness and expertise to make rapid decisions about what part of the vocal script to interact with socially. Here, a vocal script requires and trains not only aural and vocal skills, but also skills in reflexivity: a sense of mise-en-scène, a feeling of the environment of a thick vocal event, seeing voice as a multilayered and always situated, resulting in an intricate process of knowing and creating what is involved, what to keep, and what to toss away. Arguably, if an original cast recording showcases a specific vocal behavior, for example, the use of “belt,” as performed by the role of Eliza Schuyler/performer Phillipa Soo in Hamilton, then high pitched, intense, belted sounds are on the table, even though the way people belt may technically be executed in a variety of manners (Flynn, Trudeau, and Johnson 2018; McGlashan, Aaen, and Sadolin 2016).¹⁸ Sometimes, an exactness of vocal output might be of meaningful importance, as perceived when replicating with exactness, note by note, Ben Platt’s previously described audible vocal breaks.¹⁹ At other times, a sound is seen as replaceable with other, similar vocal outputs without losing its explicit or implicit meaning. Take the use of excess vocal effects as an example. In the musical Hadestown (Mitchell 2019) and the song “Our Lady of the Underground,” Persephone/performer Amber Gray uses “Growl,” a vocal effect defined as vibrations made by the arytenoid cartilages “drumming” on the epiglottis (Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2020). In Dear Evan Hanson (Pasek and Paul 2017) and the song “Good for You,” Heidi/ performer Rachel Bay Jones uses “Distortion,” a vocal effect created by vibrations of the false vocal cords (Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2020). Both examples allow for using “non-pretty,” “rough,” excess vocal sounds to enhance specific parts, but each in a different way and with different purposes. The way Amber Gray uses Growl may be performing lavishness, a playfulness linked to the meanings of sensuality and the abundance of nature and growth when Persephone is spending her months away from the underworld, creating a spring for humankind. Rachel Bay Jones, on the other hand, might use Distortion to create “realism” in her sound, performed more as a token of not controlling what sounds emerge when in despair or greave. The first vocal effect, the Growl, might not easily be replaced by another vocal effect because it is linked to the song and the show’s genre stylism, citing and using idioms linked to, among other things, New Orleans jazz. If one were to perform this vocal effect as, for example, Distortion, it might lead to a too “rock-ish” sound, referencing or creating a subtext that is perhaps unwanted in the scene by the performer, composer, or director. The vocal effect of Rachel Bay Jones, however, could maybe be performed as “Creaking, ”where the vocal effect is produced by vibrations on the vocal cord level (Sadolin 2021) or as a “Rattle,” vibrations made by the arytenoids cartilages “drumming” toward one other (Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2020), because the vocal effect constitutes a state where we cannot control what comes out of our mouths, but for sure, it does not “sound all pretty.”

Noteworthy, vocal scripts can be seen closing down vocal behavior as well; for example, all the above-described vocal effects are unheard in a piece such as A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Lutvak and Freedman 2014), where vocal performances are built on even vocal sound, legato lines, and aesthetics from classical singing techniques and traditions. Conventionally, an intensive use of vocal effects would break the show’s stylism and are not found on the cast recording. However, as vocal styles, traditions, and tastes are not stable entities; a singer might choose to implement some anyway, adding and expanding understandings and performances of the musical work. This highlights the (potentially) open character of a vocal script, situated and context dependable, and illuminates the role of individual behavior in creating social structures, such as musical styles or genres. Consequently, interacting with a vocal script offers singers and voice teachers the possibility to stabilize already existing vocal aesthetical traditions and values within the musical theatre industry, but it also grants us the possibility to empower and equip us to see ourselves and act, as active members of the musical theatre business’s future aesthetical values and practices, changing and adding new vocal practices and sounds to the profession, to styles, and to genres, as we sing along.

Conclusion and Implications for Future Research

This article argues that learning a piece or part in musical theatre is not done by studying the written score alone; sonic information is crucial to the process as the sung is only perceivable by its mediators, human or material. Consequently, reflexive listening skills and aurally based mimicry are considered pedagogically viable, even desirable, tools to help navigate vocal omnivorousness and technically and stylistically learn the many sungs of present-day musical theatre. Arguably, such practices highlight a prevalent “aural tradition” (Fisher, Kayes, and Popeil 2019, 709) within the genre, making the profession’s learning strategies and aesthetic values move closer to a wide variety of rhythmical or popular music instead of in the direction of opera or other classical singing traditions. For instance, musical theatre’s learning strategies bear close similarities to practices within jazz, where musicians frequently make exact copies of a piece by ear as a way to add to their repertoire of sounds, tools, licks, and runs (Hughes 2017), and learning from musicians better than oneself through interacting with recordings is an accepted way of working on vocal and musical skills (Johansen 2013).²⁰ An interesting aspect considering that many voice teachers in musical theatre are classically trained and educated (Bartlett 2020; LoVetri, Saunders-Barton, and Weekly 2014). A paradox that, on the other hand, might belong to the reasons why vocal-aural analyses are not commonly included in musical education curricula.²¹ Worth underlining in this regard, interacting with a vocal script is not to be seen as replacing a traditional “master/apprentice” dynamic within the profession. It is more seen as expanding it, “outsourcing” parts of the voice teacher’s actions and tasks by inviting another teacher into the room in the form of a recording. Thus, making it possible regardless of location to learn from and interact with the “best in the business,” the performers originally cast to constitute renowned musical theatre works. Thereby, the original cast recordings in their form as material meditators not only play a part in the making of musical theatre performers and performances, but they stabilize, form, and create a close relationship within the global scene of musical theatre; a network of vocal aesthetics,²² which in turn, and at the same time, stabilizes and reinforces North America and Broadway as the pinnacle for contemporary musical theatre today.

As previously noted, little attention has been given to the role of original cast recordings in assisting and instructing performers in learning a piece or part. Therefore, the current article’s implications for future research may lead to different pathways. When moving forward, it can be fruitful to ask didactical and pedagogical questions of how vocal-aural analysis and aural reflexivity are, and might be, taught and included in formal education. For example, more thoroughly investigate the types of listening involved when interacting with a vocal script as we “often take for granted the phenomenal processing skills at work when we hear a singing voice” (Mitchell 2014, 188). We can further seek to understand how interacting with a vocal script is experienced connected to areas such as “career preparation” and “employability” or to artistic values such as “personal expression” or “authenticity.” Another interesting route would be to move in the direction of Eidsheim (2019), applying a “critical performance practice” view on the listener, researching who those interacting with a vocal script are and how they listen to their own listening. Finally, we could also follow in the footsteps of Hennion (2003); Hennion (2004); 2015), asking if and how these vocal scripts as material mediators are part of negotiating, forming, and equipping contemporary vocal tastes and vocal practices among, for example, musical theatre students. In sum, different pathways that all would gain new knowledge of the dynamics of vocal tastes, vocal demands, and vocal behaviors in contemporary musical theater and increase our insight into the multiple arrays of ways various vocal genres, styles, and traditions are created, transmitted, and taken off their page.

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank her colleagues at The Norwegian Academy of Music, especially professor Sidsel Karlsen and professor Sigrid Røyseng, professor Håkon Larsen at Oslo Metropolitan University, Mathias Aaen at Complete Vocal Institute, the two anonymous peer-reviewers, and editor of Voice and Speech Review, Rockford Sansom, for constructive comments and views on this article in progress.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Guro von Germeten

Guro von Germeten is a Research Fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Centre for Educational Research in Music (CERM), writing her doctoral thesis on the pluralities of vocal tastes and vocal behaviors in contemporary musical theatre. She is a trained singer and voice teacher, focusing primarily on cross-training of the voice and voice for stage, previously working among others at Kristiania University College, bachelor in musical theatre and bachelor in acting. Von Germeten is an authorized Complete Vocal Technique teacher and holds a master’s degree in cultural management from the Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Vienna.

Notes

1. Utilizing the term omnivorousness draws on a sociological framework by Richard Peterson about cultural omnivorousness and the cultural omnivore, denoting developments of taste processes, where consumers in Western countries were found to have an increased breadth of cultural taste and willingness to cross established hierarchical genre boundaries. In other words, a “qualitative shift in the basis for marking elite status” (Peterson and Kern 1996, 900) from refinement and exclusion to plurality and breadth.

2. Within musical theatre, we might even speak of an “omnivorous voice,” a term, implying that the human voice is not singular or innate but culturally formed, inhabiting a wide variety of vocal outputs and aesthetic possibilities that both formal and informal, explicit and implicit, vocal training will amplify or dampen.

3. For example, the lowest of the three Fates in Hadestown (Mitchell 2019) is showcasing a very dark sound color. Replicating this sound, possibly constructed by a somewhat extraordinary large acoustic space in performer Jewelle Blackman’s vocal tract, might be unachievable, or be perceived as “pushing” the limits of a low female voice in a non-sustainable way, when replicated by others with a smaller vocal tract. However, a more restrained darkening of the vocal output may be added to all voices as part of “metaphoring” the role “the fate of death.”

4. In this article, Hennion (2003, 5) investigates, among others, the development of tastes within classical music and jazz, claiming that when it comes to the latter, “records have written jazz’s library. Its living history is the fruit of mechanical recording.”

5. CVT identifies, defines, and teaches the four modes of singing categorized as Neutral, Curbing, Overdrive, and Edge, based on audio perception, laryngostroboscopic imaging, acoustics, long-time-average spectrum, and EGG (Sadolin 2021; Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2019).

6. Twang is defined as a narrowing of the epiglottic funnel between the petiole and the arytenoid complex, whereby the sound becomes clearer and nonbreathy and the volume potentially increases. (Sadolin 2021).

7. The vocal modes Overdrive and Edge imply a dominant second harmonic, as well as progressive constriction of supraglottic structures, defining and making them audible recognizable as “metallic” (Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2017).

8. In so-called “reduced density” an elongation of the vocal folds is observed as an accomplishment of the “thyroid cartilage tilting forward, stretching of the mucosa covering the cricoid-arytenoid complex and the posterior cricoid, and an upward posterior, slightly superior, contraction of the middle constrictor muscle in the pharyngeal wall” (Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2019, 806.e09).

9. Within CVT, the term sound color is linked to an acoustic principle that a larger vocal tract creates a darker sound and a smaller vocal tract lighter. The position of the larynx, the amount of twang, closing/opening of the nasal passage, the shape of the mouth opening, the position and shape of the tongue, and the raising/relaxing of the soft palate will all alter the size of the vocal tract and impact the sound color (Sadolin 2021).

10. CVT identifies, defines, and teaches vocal effects, such as Distortion, Rattle, Growl, Grunt, Creak, Creaking, air added to the voice, screams, vocal breaks, vibrato, and ornamentation technique, each formed by various supraglottic structures, most not interfering with the vibratory pattern of the vocal folds (Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2020).

11. Timbre is commonly defined “as the attribute that causes a listener to hear dissimilarity between two tones of the same loudness and pitch” (Erickson and Phillips 2020, 231). CVT considerers timbre a perceptual artifact defined by the choice of vocal mode, the amount of metallic character amount of density in the note, the chosen sound color, and the natural size of the larynx and the vocal tract, see Aaen et al. (Aaen, et al., in press).

12. Within musical theatre, “legit voice” is predominantly used to describe voice production strategies built on Western classical lyric singing techniques and traditions, valuating, among others, the use of laryngeal vibrato, legato lines, evenness across register, and a “covered” sound compared to so-called “belted” sounds. See, e.g. Kayes (2015).

13. “Mixed voice” is predominantly used to describe voice production strategies perceived as either TA or CT muscle activity dominant in connection to pitch and so-called registers; however, the research on the concrete definition of mixed voice is relatively sparse (Aaen, McGlashan, and Sadolin 2019).

14. Within musical theatre “belting” is commonly perceived as a speech-like voice quality based on what many thinks of as a “chest register” taken to relatively high pitches; high in intensity, often described as “brassy” and “twangy.” See Kayes (2015) or LoVetri, Saunders-Barton, and Weekly (2014).

15. Within CVT, Edge is defined as a fuller to reduced metallic sound, with fuller to reduced density, commonly described as a somewhat “aggressive” sound with a “sharp” or “screamy” character. However, in reduced density, the sound can be perceived as more contained (McGlashan, Aaen, and Sadolin 2016; Sadolin 2021).

16. The notion of “muscular memory” is based on a practice repeating the same vocal action until the brain remembers it, and the muscle will get used to responding in a certain, automatically way (Sadolin 2021).

17. Even though, in this article, aurally based mimicry is exemplified through a translation into words, imitation is often considered a way of avoiding “verbal overshadowing” in vocal processes (Mitchell 2014, 195), a phenomenon describing that verbalizing voice may reduce the ability to, even hinder, the discrimination of voices and the memorization of performances.

18. This type of listening could be named a “concept-orientated” listening (Johansen 2013, 89) where one identifies and copies an overall style or a main idiom, for example, “air added to the sound” as implemented by Eurydice, Eva Noblezada, in the song “Flowers” from Hadestown (Mitchell 2019); however, not copying its exact placements but “playing around” with the idiom, connected to one’s personal understanding of its potential implementational possibilities and meanings.

19. This could be seen as a “detailed oriented” copying (Johansen 2013, 85), where copying is done in the form of an exact replication or transcription of the vocal script.

20. In jazz, this practice is commonly described as an “oral” musical tradition, not “aural,” see, e.g. Johansen (2013).

21. In so-called classical or Western-lyrical traditions, the written work commonly embodies a significantly high status and is seen as the primary source of interpretation, an attitude, among others, connoted in the German term “werktreue.”

22. A network here is considered the relationship of mediators, a “heterogeneous series, increasingly tightly interwoven, polarized and channeled into stable realities” (Hennion 2015, 9).