Keywords: THESIS3

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## Parlor Songs

I choose to analyze this piece because the function of music differs from the rest from the rest of the show, in that the dramatic figure's are aware that they are singing. And because of the fact that the music is seemingly produced on stage. This piece begins as follows:

> BEADLE:(Singing from a songbook, accompanying himself) Sweet Polly Plunkett, lay in the grass,
> Turned her eyes heavenward, sighing,
> ``I am a lass who alas loves a lad
> Who alas has a lass in Canterbury.
> 'Tis a row dow diddle dow day,
> 'Tis a row dow diddle dow dee...''

Is the music here part of the action? In a sense it is, if we take the action to be making music and singing. In this case this piece differs from the rest of the show, where the music supports the action, and the actors are seemingly unaware of the music.

If we were to draw a communication structure for this piece, it would be quite different from the ones we've seen before (figure 6.18 on page )

Figure 6.18: Diegetic music in Parlour Songs

Instead of working only in the external communication system, this time the music works in the internal communication system as well. As we can see in the figure, Mrs. Lovett isn't only the sender of the music, but a receiver as well. This use of music is called diegetic. This is almost the only example of this use of music in Sweeney Todd. It is arguable whether the serenades sung by lovers, as Johanna by Anthony, could be called diegetic. Do they know they are singing? Is the music working in the external communication system, as well as the external communication system? I find this highly debatable.

In the case of a love-song sung by one or both of the lovers, the music works only in the external communication system, in most cases. I will make one possible exception from Sweeney Todd which is Green Finch and Linnet Bird.

It is obvious that Johanna is singing, and it is this singing that attracts Anthony in the first place. We could say that this is only other use of diegetic music in Sweeney Todd.

What is remarkable about both the Parlor Songs and Green Finch is the fact that they are written in styles which differ greatly from the rest of Sweeney Todd. Green Finch is a small operatic coloratura aria, while in Sweet Polly Plunkett

> he recalls not only the Sullivan ''madrigal'' convention with its pert cadences but also the rambling melodiousness of eighteenth-century song and even the renaissance madrigal or lute song itself with its touches of Lydian and Mixolydian modality, to which the Dorian mode is added in The Tower of Bray. ) (There were more overt madrigal references in the lyric sketches for Parlor Songs including in ``In the garden of life there are thistles & thorns / Falalala...'' and ``A lover lay with his lass / In the grass...'')6.19

It's often not clear whether music is uses diegetically or not. In this case it's clear because of the fact that the Beadle is seen to play an instrument to accompany himself. It is the gesture that makes the music diegetic.

There are other ways to diegetize music. One of them is to place music in a certain location. We can expect to hear monks singing in a monastery, and when we make our location an opera-house we can expect to hear some opera-aria's, as in the Phantom of the Opera.

As I said, the one criterion which we can use to discern diegetic from non-diegetic music is the fact that diegetic music works in the internal as well as the external communication system, while non-diegetic music works on the external communication system only. The fact that there is so little use of diegetic music in Sweeney Todd may have several reasons. The main reason is the fact that the show is constructed like a film-score. Sondheim realized that if this piece was to work it had to ``function the way 'old movie scores' do''6.20. Sondheim realized that ''the only way to sustain tension was to music continually, not to let the heat out, so that even if they're talking, there's music going on in the pit''6.21 Music that is constructed with these ideas in mind can never be diegetic, because the dramatic figures can never be aware of the music, as the characters in a movie are never aware of the music. It's only in Parlour Songs that the characters become aware of the music, and the music is used in such a way to prevent the beadle from inspecting the bake-house. Although not quite succesfully Mrs. Lovett comes up with different excuses, but as soon as Tobias joins in the song, the beadle becomes quite suspicious and Mrs. Lovett has to cook up a story about Tobias being locked in ''for his own security''. She changes the subject, to the songbook, and this distracts the Beadle enough, for Todd to return, persuade the beadle to have a shave first. This gives him the opportunity to kill the beadle. If Mrs. Lovett hadn't stalled the beadle by means of music, their plans would have been completely messed up.

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