The orchestra ‘pit’ is clearly the major feature of the theatre musician’s career: the musician will spend the entire show in this place, usually in the dark. De rigueur in early theatre, and still found in many opera houses, the orchestra ‘pit’ was simply an area at the front of the stalls at floor level… Continue reading History: The Orchestra Pit
Tag: history
Norman O’Neill – Music to Stage Plays
This is a wonderful old article (it was published in the proceedings of the Royal Musical Association in 1910) which lays out the land for the traditional method of presenting music to a stage play. Norman O’Neill was a composer who wrote prolifically for the theatre, and these musings are the product of an expert… Continue reading Norman O’Neill – Music to Stage Plays
The Purposes of Theatrical Music
Music in a play (or to a lesser extent a musical) serves a very different purpose to music in a film or at a concert. In fact, it has a variety of purposes depending on the play that it is part of. I have based these purposes on the great book Sound and Music for the Theatre: The… Continue reading The Purposes of Theatrical Music