| American Broadway musical is world-famous and has been developed for more than one hundred years. In the 1950s, American musical was just the time for its Golden Age when West Side Story appeared in the very act of the times. It is a significant milestone in the history of musical for its high artistic quality. The music, dance and drama of West Side Story were fused into one, which became a new standard of composing musical. It's the best example for us to study the composition, theory and performance of musical. The music of the show was composed by Leonard Bernstein who was one of the most famous American musicians in the 20th century. He created a new sound which had never been heard in Broadway. The sound mixed various musical styles including jazz, modernistic music, Tin Pan Alley, Latin American music and opera.Contemporary characters could be known easily in West Side Story. First of all, this paper keeps eyes on contemporary circumstance and background consisting of American social culture, music, musicals and the life of Bernstein in order to illustrate the reason of musical variety in West Side Story. Secondly, the paper analyzes musical variety from different perspectives in tradition and modernity, art and popularity as well as jazz and Latin styles, which combined with dramatic and orchestic factors in the show. Finally, the paper studies different numbers with their corresponding singing style in West Side Story according to the development of musical's singing style in comparison with singing style of opera and popular songs. Basing on these facts, it hopes to encourage the recognition of singing style in this show ascend to the one in musical and explore the practice and conception in performing and teaching of vocal art. |
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