Introduction

In my Professional Studies, I have co-composed music and co-written lyrics for a new musical called ‘The Turning’, along with Suzi Salter. During the research and development week (R&D), I was also the musical director. This role included teaching the songs to the cast and maintaining musical standards- including daily vocal warm-ups and fulfilling the requirements of the material.

This is a comedic fantasy, telling the story of the protagonist who is turned into a vampire in order to save their life and their adjustment to the immortal world. At the end of the R&D week, my group was able to showcase our findings and present a twenty-five-minute presentation of the piece.

In my portfolio, I will analyse, evaluate and reflect on my process of composing the musical material and my role as musical director during the R&D week- this includes support with audience feedback from the presentation. Furthermore, I will incorporate relevant reflections on the management and financial processes of these areas, while considering how the show can be commercially viable.

Initial Developments

Our aim was to create music that gave our audience a physical reaction. We knew it had to be complex and embodied. We decided to do this by using the material to build the world setting around the characters through providing explicit indications in the music – this could be location, personalities, etc. This meant that the audience would hear tangible signals which conjure certain feelings or images. It could provoke certain opinions about the characters which includes the audience, creating an active experience rather than being purely entertained.

Suzi and I began developing ideas by creating song playlists, exchanging videos that inspired us from social media and experimenting with chord progressions. I was largely inspired by the dramatic and virtuosic toccatas of classical composer Johann Sebastian Bach(Marshall and Emery, 2019) as well as the intense emotional expression by the Late Romantic composer, Hugo Wolf(Glauert, 2025). I was further inspired by the large and visceral scores of pop-operas, including Wicked and Les Miserable. This discussion with Suzi became very interesting as we both came from different backgrounds: she has more experience with folk and rock genres, whereas, I have a background in western classical tradition (from the Baroque Era onwards) and contemporary musical theatre styles. I will explain how we used this to our advantage in the next section.

Suzi and I collected songs with themes that we wanted our musical to have. We wanted the music to feel supernatural and uneasy with it being accessible and enjoyable at the same time. However, to achieve this, we still needed some separation between the music and the audience. If not, the material could feel too familiar and could sound like every other contemporary musical. One song that provoked us was Fascination Street by The Cure (The Cure, 1989) with the sensory effect it produces. This song uses polyphony in the guitars and a heavy combination of delays and reverb to disorientate the audience, as if they were intoxicated. This physical, visceral effect is what we want our audience to experience. On the other hand, we could write the material so it included a large demographic with multiple stylistic hooks. Both of these ideas we used in our writing. Using these influences really helped us generate ideas and concepts for our style. However, some elements we used leant heavily towards stereotypes that were recognisable but took away from our creativity. For example, in the overture fugue, I used an organ which is often associated with vampiric themes – possibly from the early use of organ accompaniments for silent horror films. Instead, we could have still written a fugue but with an electric guitar instead which would have brought the early structure into the modern era.

Technique and Storytelling Analysis

As previously mentioned, Suzi and I had very different writing experiences. Therefore, we decided to implemented both frameworks into our music by using features of each genre. For example, the instrumentation in our opening number, ‘But Not Us’, included an electric guitar with distortion to add a rock sound which is doubled by a harpsichord continuo often found in Baroque concertos (ABC Classic, 2019). This blending of genres complimented the book nicely as vampires are immortal and can live long lifespans. In our story, they would have experienced the evolution of multiple musical genres. The four prominent genres in our music – classical, rock, folk and pop-opera – enhanced the overall sound profile as they combined to create an intricate but embodied sound. This aided our main aim: to create a visceral atmosphere that built the world around the characters. Reviewing feedback received from the audience after the presentation, this was successful, however only due to the instrumentation. If I were to work on this further, I would aim to create atmosphere with the use of melody, harmony and structure- not just instrumentation. An example of this would be in ‘But Not Us’, where the verses provide a regular repeated accompaniment with a simple melody line over the top. While this is easily accessible to an audience, its the opposite to the supernatural, ominous effect we wanted. For instance, this can be done by the bass guitar playing syncopated beats in contrast to the tune, creating an unsettled foundation and providing an uneasy feel to the accompaniment. This would dramaturgically work too as vampires can fly in ‘The Turning’, therefore the lack of notes on the downbeats create vertical space between the bass and tune. However, what did work was the use of tritones. We used tritones everywhere in our writing. They may not have been as obvious but they definitely underpinned a ghostly mood. The tritone was branded as ‘the devil’s interval’ (Longdon, 2018) during the renaissance because it splits an octave in half, creating a dissonant and tense sound which broke the rules of harmonic consonance during that period. This is very fitting for our characters as it fits the lore of our vampires being associated with demons and always on the cusp of hell.

We wanted to show the toxic obsession Jane has on manipulating Flora for her own benefit. I wrote an ‘11 o’clock’ number (Hall, 2024) which is the climax of the show. I wanted to show Janes constant battle to regain power over Flora. I did this by using contrapuntal melodies. Janes vocal line is constantly towering over Flora’s. The melodies descend in steps: Jane’s line will descend first, causing dissonance, which then Flora’s line has to submit to. However, Flora’s resilience is shown in the second chorus when Janes melodic direction has troughs and peaks, trying to break through Flora’s melody, but clashes and causes Jane’s melody to retreat back up. The relationship between these melodies does cause a lot of jarring dissonance, for example the G and A natural which is the effect we wanted. However, we also resolved this dissonance by using a B major 4-3 suspension. Using details such as this, allowed us to fulfil both of our aims. We were able to show characterisation through Flora’s pressured melody, showing Jane’s need for power. Yet the music was complex while still being accessible.

R&D Week

During the R&D week, we encountered a lot of issues with the music and discovered a lot of new effective material. This week we practically explored these while putting the show on its feet. This week, I also debuted as musical director.

My process for this role began by recording rehearsal tracks and printing music. The rehearsal tracks meant that I could send the cast music to familiarise themselves with the music before we began rehearsals. During rehearsals, I began every day with a vocal-warm so that casts’ voices were well prepared and it meant I could use the full potential of their voices if harmonies need changing. I taught our opening number first because it was the largest with a lot of complex harmonies so this number would take the most time. However, I hadn’t adequately prepared to play the harmonies on the piano. ‘Note bashing’ was about all I could do. When writing the harmonies, I wrote it on Sibelius because I’m familiar with the interface and we used this audio for the tracks. When it came to playing these harmonies, I would often get it wrong and this made learning harmonies confusing. In a future production, I will write the harmonies on the piano. This will help me learn the shapes of the harmonies on the piano and will avoiding wasting time trying to sight read complex chord progressions.

That being said, I was successful in creating powerful storytelling through the choral vocals. In a section of the opening number, the vampires threaten to kill Flora if she reveals their secrets. To provoke a visceral reaction from the audience, I directed the cast to focus on articulation and dynamics to create a threatening tone. We experimented with how we accented the notes and found that Marcato on every lyric gave the delivery strong and heavy stresses which supported an intimidating sound.

After our first creative team meeting, we realised that the script and score were very divided. This took a toll on our aim because the flow of the story was disturbed by rigid blocks of dialogue then song. To help integrate the script and music, we improvised with backing vocals and underscoring the dialogue. I used fragments of previous material, not only for integration, but it gave the music relevance past the songs by supporting the story all the way through the scene. We also played with characters moving in and out of song. E.g, we played with vampires switching between singing and speaking. This successfully put emphasis on important information for the audience and dramaturgically, it gave the vampires a supernatural effect because they had the power to communicate through different modes of communication without it necessarily being a song – human characters did not.

 Analyse Potential Funding Bodies

Commercially, The Turning has a big scale and is a very ambitious production due to the large cast, big orchestration and relying on elements such as set and costume- not to mention special supernatural effects. We had to adopt a realistic and scalable financial model.

• We would employ an early-development model, which is suited towards early workshops instead of full-scale shows, where creatives will double as the cast. This reduces expenditure of cast wages – £630.90 per week per person (Equity, 2024). Our own wages would have to be split from any net-profit.
• Instead of hiring live musicians, I would produce the music digitally using a software such as, Sibelius. This would avoid the score being reduced to a lone piano which limits the visceral impact on the audience.

As standard industry practice, I would establish the production as a limited company, meaning the production is its own entity and my personal finance would be protected. I would need to carefully manage this to make sure the company is transparent to build potential investors trust

For the initial production costs, I would apply for an Arts Council National Lottery Project Grant (Arts Council England, 2025). This scheme is suitable to support new theatre works. However, to reach this stage we would need further thought on what significant value our show has culturally for it to get past other competitors. This would just be a starting point as this is not a viable long-term investment.

Another financial support system, along sing a grant, would be to pitch our show to a producing house, such as, Leeds Playhouse (Anon, n.d.). A guarantee contract would lower the financial risk as we have a minimum income regardless of ticket sales. With a 70% to 30% split, we would gain 70% of any sales at the box office, increasing financial insurance. However, for this to be attractive to a theatre, we would need to prove the future success of the production. Whether this is through audience interest or prior workshops.

Conclusion

This process has revealed strengths and weaknesses in my current compositional and leadership methods. Through collaborating with Suzi, I have created a distinct and intricate score that supports the storytelling successfully through strong musical techniques and instrumentation choices.

My first time as a musical directors gave me further understanding of translating my composition into practice. Although there were challenges in my efficiency in rehearsal, I was able to deliver clear musical direction to guide the cast towards clear storytelling; improving cohesion in my writing by integrating song and dialogue. While the productions would require significant investment, cost-reduction strategies have shown me the potential sustainability of this production. Overall, my skills as an composer and MD have been strengthened. I will move forward applying this experience to other work and the aim of developing this piece into a viable piece of theatre.

Bibliography

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Longdon, V. (2018). What is a tritone and why was it nicknamed the devil’s interval? [online] Classic FM. Available at: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/music-theory/what-is-a-tritone/ [Accessed 23/04/2026].

Marshall, R.L. and Emery, W. (2019). Johann Sebastian Bach. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Johann-Sebastian-Bach [Accessed 23/04/2026].

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www.classical-music.com. (n.d.). Wolf, Hugo. [online] Available at: https://www.classical-music.com/features/composers/hugo-wolf [Accessed 23/04/2026].