I'm a songwriter, lyricist, and playwright working on musicals and other live shows. I've written musicals and plays, performed improv as a keyboardist and an actor, and now I'm a RU-vidr specializing in musicology, a field in which I have a degree from UCLA.
So, I get that modern musicals are not opera, and have this radio thing going on, but I'm still not convinced that the two phenomena are *the same* to the extent that they should use the same term. Les Mis does have a few leitmotifs in the traditional sense, I think. Just off the top of my head, there's the "F G F G F G A B C D" that appears as a brass fanfare at the beginning of scenes on the barricade (which is sung, in a different rhythm, in the scene right before Red and Black) and the three repeated notes with a dotted rhythm that seem to be played after certain characters' death scenes (e.g. Gavroche) -- I also hear the dotted rhythm at the beginning of the overture as "the same thing" as this, but at the end of the day ( 😉 ), it's just a dotted eighth, sixteenth, and half note, so that might be arguable. (There are probably more of them, and better ways of describing these ones.)
I know that I am super late on this, but this is also Encanto is an example of Magical Realism of South America so the "magic" in Encanto wasn't new. The butterfly represents the magic and the soul. It is a sign.
Just seen the film last night and I’m absorbing all the content I can that’s related to it. Very nice video essay you put together here, thank you for your time.
As a composer I know I'll never be able to compose these riffs and will be relying on kickass vocalists to improvise them at the moment. Just amazing work
The "my shot anthem" has always been my favourite motif. Throughout the musical i began to associate the anthem with rising up (of course) but also ambition and warning, and finally, in TWWWE all that came crashing down. I watched the musical on disney+ and when the rise up anthem came on with the credits, i couldnt watch it. I couldnt bear to, yk? An anthem about what could happen, about building a legacy, and in TWWWE it all fell apart and hamilton was forgotten for... A considerable amount of time. Ive rewatched hamilton on disney about 13 times now, and only on my latest rewatch did i finally build up the courage to watch the credits through. I cried the whole way through :,) (but that could also just be iqu and wlwdwtys)
This Vulture interview with Moss and Marlow includes Celine as a Queenspiration for Jane Seymour: www.vulture.com/2020/03/six-broadway-musical-henry-viii-queens.html
The Pirates of Penzance also works with very fast almost spoken word songs but it is very clearly melodicized. It's like if Eminem and opra came together
