The City College of New York

The Only Truth is in Music: 

How the 

Score of Sweeney Todd

Reveals the 

Horrors of England

Source 1 – “Operatic Borrowing in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd” by Paige Zalman

Zalman, Paige. “Operatic Borrowing in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.” American Music, vol 37 no.1, 2019, p 58-76. Project MUSE

In the article “Operatic Borrowing in Stephen Songheim’s Sweeney Todd” by Paige Zalman, she addresses the topic of the musical influences in Sweeney Todd and argues that opera is used satirically to present various literary tropes. She supports this claim by including arguments made by other scholars, then expanding upon their arguments by dissecting characters Sweeney Todd and Adolfo Pirelli, and finally making comparisons between the two characters and the characters of other operas.Using her a PhD in Higher Education, Masters in Music, and  Bachelors of Music in Music Performance, Paige Zalman carefully analyzes the sheet music and highlights the similar notes in the sheet music of the score of Sweeney Todd and other operas. Zalman’s purpose is to illustrate the ways in which Stephen Sondheim refers to opera as a way to characterize the characters of the show in order to highlight the ways in which art is in conversations with each other. This article will be useful in offering a comparison of how these operatic influences characterize the characters in relation to each other and how these characterizations are used as a reflection of members of society.

Source 2 – “The Main Dramatic Features of Melodrama: A Dramatic Study of Maria Martin and Sweeney Todd And Their Traces In Modern Soap Operas” by Lutfi Hamadi

Hamadi, L. “The Main Dramatic Features of Melodrama: A Dramatic Study of Maria Martin and Sweeney Todd And Their Traces In Modern Soap Operas”. European Scientific Journal, ESJ, Vol. 13, no. 26, Sept. 2017, p. 122, doi:10.19044/esj.2017.v13n26p122.

Lutfi Hamadi, Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, in the academic journal “The Main Dramatic Features of Melodrama: A Dramatic Study of Maria Martin and Sweeney Todd And Their Traces In Modern Soap Operas”, asserts the parallels between Sweeney Todd and other English melodramas and suggests that this comparison can serve as a reflection to the time period in England. He backs up this claim by doing the following: first, he goes into depth on the definition of a melodrama, how this changes from society to society and over time, next, he explains what a melodrama says about the time period in England; last, he analyzes Sweeny Todd and compares it to another melodrama to show the reflection both have on the time period in England. Hamadi’s journal will be useful in demonstrating how Sweeney Todd demonstrates changes within the middle class of England and sheds light on the political, social, and economic changes there through comparing the show to his writings about melodramas.  

Source 3 – The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical by Warren Hoffman 

Warren Hoffman, The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical (Rutgers UP, 2014), pp. 1-28 (“Overture”)

This article serves as a means to call out the racial implications in commercial theatre. Hoffman exposes the politics and subtexts within shows like Show Boat that many often overlook and reflect on the social climate of its time and today. With a PhD and over 10 years of experience in the industry, Hoffman does a great job at minimizing his biases in this article by constantly providing counterarguments and presenting rebuttals throughout the article. An example of one  of the arguments he introduces is the myth of the music featured in musicals being just “pretty music”. Hoffman specifically discuss a moment in which famous singer Frank Sinatra sings a song from the show Show Boat without realizing or at least acknowledging its contextual association with slavery with lyrics that discuss listing bales of cotton, totting barges, and ending up drunk in jail. Although  Sweeney Todd does not touch about racial issues, this article can be useful in describing the type of music the show has as Sweeney Todd is also a show with “pretty music” that holds much more layers and meaning about the injustices of society similar to the show discussed in myth two.

Source 4 – “The Theatre Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig” by Elizabeth L. Wollman

Wollman, Elizabeth L. “The Theater Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig. .” no. 2, 2009, pp. 246–249. 

The article “The Theatre Will Rock: A History of the Rock Musical, from Hair to Hedwig” by Elizabeth L. Wollman explores the ways in which rock music is intertwined with the music we hear in shows on Broadway and the ways in which Rock Musicals are really Black Musicals. Wollman, assistant professor of music at Baruch College, draws the connection between Black Musicals and Rock Musicals by pulling examples from famous shows such as Dreamgirls and speaking about how shows like this were able to bring black playwrights and actors on the stage while drawing a combination of white and black people to the audiences. In my research essay I can refer to this article as a parallel to my work as I will also be examining how a specific genre of music is used in the score of a show and how it can be used as a means of commenting on the political environment of a specific society. 

The Essay 

Part One:

The Annotated Bibliography assignment was an assignment that assisted me in forming better habits towards extensively researching the credibility and reliability of the articles and sources that I use for my academic writing. I have written many essays in the past in which I had to bring forward my own sources but I would say the experiences in researching varied and were very different from one another. Although before, of course, I would do my best to research reliable sources, I would say I have a different definition of what reliable means now. Before I really only checked to see what website or publication published the source I was looking for. Now, however, I know to check to see the credentials of the author of said source, look for quotations within the source and what other sources are being cited, and to also be wary of biases that may arise in the source that can skew information and drop its reliability. This assignment may not have cut the time in which I spend on research down, but it has also introduced me to many more resources I have in order to find sources and articles that I may need for my writing. I came into City College knowing, of course, that we would have libraries with resources for us to use but I was not aware of the vast amount of resources we had within, and even outside technically, these libraries. The website given to us by Professor Crowley at the library showed me to what extent and how many ways there were to look for information and opened the doors to many other websites that could be useful in the future. These sessions we had with Professor Croweley, and really this assignment as a whole, really assisted in preparing me for the research paper as I now have a strong foundation I can use to write the best paper I can with a solid background and library of sources to back up my arguments. 

Part Two: 
This Annotated Bibliography and Research Essay may be isolated assignments that I will leave behind in this class but the skills that I learned while completing these assignments are skills in which I know I will be able to carry with me throughout the rest of my academic career. As I said above in part one of this essay assignment, I now am more aware of the ways in which sources can be deemed as non-credible and can move forward with a process I can use in order to use the best information and sources in my writing. In addition to the ways that these assignments will be able to assist me academically, I can also see the ways in which they can continue to assist me in my personal/non-academic life. Testing the credibility of the media I consume is not only isolated to the research I conduct as a student but also in ways outside of this. For example, the news is one of the biggest ways that disinformation can spread. But after going through the process of determining the credibility of certain sources, I have been able to use a similar process when consuming news, especially from publications that aren’t as well know as say The New York Times or The Washington Post. Although there are still sources and forms of media that will not be trustworthy, I am reminded to always take things with a grain of salt and not look too seriously into something if there isn’t the right information to back it up and support it.  For example, when researching for this annotated bibliography specifically, I was able to notice that there were certain words or phrases that would correlate to more opinion based articles and reviews that may have a level of bias within the source such as looking up words like music breakdown and instead use score analysis in relation to the show Sweeney Todd.