The Musicology Project

Audiences learn about characters most directly through the spoken word - what the character says, and what is said about that character by others. But those who create these characters have other 'languages' they use to tell us who these men and women are. Character Studies has begun a series of special projects that will explore and explain these other methods of telling these characters' stories.

Composers make choices about which styles of music to employ when writing a song for a character. Mark in "Rent" uses rock music, while Anita's songs reflect her Puerto Rican heritage. To discover how these choices are made, and what went into these choices, we have launched a musicology project to research composers' creative decisions. We will look at the cultural heritages behind the songs of our characters, how the time and place of the story affects the choice of music, and how the sound of the songs influence our views of the character.