Orchestral Phantom

[igenlode]

Watch on YouTube

Phantom of the Opera as a 'Symphonic suite' (and not the same as the orchestra arrangement we played).
It's interesting listening to the bits that are *not* the melodies to see what has been added...

But I can't help noting that thanks to the lighting choices the entire orchestra appears to be ginger-haired ;-p

Comments

[igenlode]

Purely orchestral melody is often more emotionally powerful and beautiful than the same music with lyrics attached (as demonstrated by "Love Never Dies", and by the almost universal banality of attempts to take famous musical themes and fit words to them for sale as popular songsheets).

The advantage of lyrics is that you can advance a narrative, and, on occasion, you can deliver a rousing/touching message of its own alongside the musical effect (quite a lot of the numbers from "Les Miserables" fall into the latter category, I think, in that without the lyrics they would actually be lesser -- which is impressive, given that those aren't even the original [French] lyrics to that music!) But something like "Music of the Night" or "All I Ask of You" doesn't really depend on specific words at all, and they're just a general and repeating overall effect... as opposed, to, say "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" or even "Do You Hear the People Sing", where the music becomes a lot more trite without the lyrics.