Musical Master Class 7 — How To Dramatize A Musical Song

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Michael Kunze remem­bers Robert McKee’s words: “A scene with­out a change is not a scene.” The same can be said about a musi­cal song: A song with­out a change is not a dra­matic song.

“If you want to dra­ma­tize a musi­cal song, you have to write it like a key scene with a built-in turn­ing point.”

The song, “Ich gehör nur mir” (I belong to me), from the musi­cal ELISABETH, depicts Elisabeth’s change from an inse­cure girl to a mature woman who knows what she wants. The girl leaves the stage after the first part of the song, and — fol­low­ing the instru­men­tal mid­dle part — she returns as the woman. To under­score this change, Michael even asked his com­poser, Sylvester Levay, to set the sec­ond half of the song in a lower key.

In a key scene, there is one emo­tional state at the begin­ning, and a dif­fer­ent one at the end. In the cen­ter is the turn­ing point, and that’s where the key song should be placed, as well. To sup­port the change in the scene, this musi­cal song also con­tains a dra­matic turn­ing point.

Toward the end of this video install­ment, Dr. Kunze lays out an entire dia­gram of a drama musical…

Watch the video here!

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This video clip con­tains Elisabeth’s key song, “I belong to me” (start­ing at 3:50)