Question

Explain why music is invaluable to theater.

Give brief description of how musical compositions can evoke different emotions.
How can music help generate revenue for the theater? Provide an example.

Answer 1

Music has been effective and useful in evoking emotions in the audience throughout the history of cinema. Even during the silent movie era (when dialogue appeared in writing on the screen), the theater would play a soundtrack in the background to match the genre of the movie being played. For example, ragtime music was a common background score for slapstick comedy because the heavy syncopation added to the humor.

With the advent of recorded music in movies, movie producers used orchestras to create musical scores and to add an extra element of emotion to each production. Alfred Hitchcock (who is famous for suspense movies) used background scores to create an unnerving sense of tension. An iconic example is the high-pitched string section that plays during the shower scene in Psycho to mark the brutality of the attack.

Soundtracks in movies can also help to attract audiences. In general, a movie with a great soundtrack will perform better at the box office in comparison to a movie with a mediocre or poor-quality soundtrack. Good soundtracks also help increase movie revenue through sales of associated CDs and online music.

Step-by-step explanation:

Answer 2

Step-by-step explanation:

Music is a very important aspect in the theatre. All the different musical elements can be used in many different ways, for example,

Lets say people are running from something in a play / theatre production, the music can be very important to emphasise whats going on at that precise time. For instance they could have the beat of the drum slowly getting faster to show that the bad guy is getting closer and closer, or they can have it do the opposite. There is many different ways they can "tweak" the music they are playing to fit whats happening on stage.

Musical compositions can evoke different emotions, once again by using many different musical elements and aspects. They can slow down the tempo, add in strings for emotion. They could speed up the tempo to build suspense and many other aspects and elements of music can be used to create more 'Feeling' and 'Emotion'.

Hope this answers your question. :)