Orestes Fasting
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Recurring melodiesNaming every single melody that B&S recycled in Les Mis would be exceedingly time-consuming, so let's turn it around and try to name which tunes don't get reused.
I can think of four or five songs, and maybe ten more random little snippets of melody. In a three-hour sung-through show, that ain't much.
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Fantine
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Fantine's Arrest?
Lovely Ladies?
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Mademoiselle Lanoire
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| Fantine wrote: | Fantine's Arrest?
Lovely Ladies? |
The 'Lovely Ladies' melody is also the melody for 'Turning', so no.
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kittengoespop
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At The End of the Day
Attack on Rue Plumet
In My Life
... I think.
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EponineMNFF
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The beginning of the Well scene. I mean "Hush now, do not be afraid of me. Don't cry, show me where you live." After that, it goes into Castle on a Cloud. I rather like the beginning melody though.
Is the bit in the prologue that goes "And now I know how freedom feels the jailor always at your heals..." and the other one that's, "Now every door is closed to me..." ever repeated again?
Now that I think of it, I don't think the melody to the beginning of On My Own ("And now I'm all alone again..." etc) is ever reused. Is it?
Is Drink With Me ever repeated?
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EponinesRain
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| EponineMNFF wrote: |
Is the bit in the prologue that goes "And now I know how freedom feels the jailor always at your heals..." |
Yup, this part is repeated in The Bargain when Valjean says:
"I found her wandering in the wood
This little child, I found her trembling in the shadows
And I am here to help Cosette
And I will settle any debt you may think proper
I will pay what I must pay
To take Cosette away."
Good observations for the other songs, though! I'm trying to rack my brain for any other parts without leitmotifs. It's hard b/c some melodies are only repeated instrumentally when they were vocally sung the first time, and they're quite subtle sometimes. Very clever of B&S to piece the show together like that.
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BroadwayBeast
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Random, but I love how some of Les Mis' melodies are repeated in other shows such as Miss Saigon! Not huge parts, but a few times you can hear it!
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EponineMNFF
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| EponinesRain wrote: | | EponineMNFF wrote: |
Is the bit in the prologue that goes "And now I know how freedom feels the jailor always at your heals..." |
Yup, this part is repeated in The Bargain when Valjean says:
"I found her wandering in the wood
This little child, I found her trembling in the shadows
And I am here to help Cosette
And I will settle any debt you may think proper
I will pay what I must pay
To take Cosette away."
Good observations for the other songs, though! I'm trying to rack my brain for any other parts without leitmotifs. It's hard b/c some melodies are only repeated instrumentally when they were vocally sung the first time, and they're quite subtle sometimes. Very clever of B&S to piece the show together like that. |
OH RIGHT! I had forgotten about that part! Darn, I was sure about that one. Hahah!
BroadwayBeast - Really? I definitely hear similar themes, but I've never heard something that's exactly the same. Can you point out an example? *curious*
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Orestes Fasting
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If you listen closely, "A moment of your time, Javert, I do believe this woman's tale" is also the same tune as "And now I know how freedom feels..."
Fantine's Arrest is all made up of recurring melodies: "Here's something new, I think I'll give it a try" is recycled endlessly as a recitative type thing, "It's the same with a tart as it is with a grocer" matches Factory Girl's lines in ATEOTD, "Tell me quickly what's the story" is a recurring motif for Javert, and I already mentioned Valjean's intervention.
Attack on the Rue Plumet is taken from the Robbery scene in Look Down.
I'm pretty sure the OMO intro and the beginning of the Well scene are standalones, ditto the beginning of Every Day and the beginning of Valjean's Confession. In My Life is never reprised.
Drink With Me--that depends which version. In the original version, there was a little reprise of it in the Dawn of Anguish, but it got cut. If we're counting the cuts (boo!), the end of Turning is also unique, since that part in Lovely Ladies got changed.
Tossing a few more out there; they might actually get repeated, but if they are I haven't thought of it.
- The Runaway Cart
- "Eponine, come my dear, Eponine, let me see you..."
- The whole inn scene before Master of the House
- "I have a letter, monsieur..." (Not the reading of the letter itself, though, that gets used in Valjean's Confession.)
- "Bravo, little Gavroche, you're the top of the class..."
- Dog Eats Dog
- Wedding Chorale
- "Alone, I wait in the shadows..."
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Kristin Chenoweth
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Hmmmm...
I Saw Him Once (OLC) is never reprised.
And...um..."She is the first to fall, the first of us to fall upon this barricade..." etc, etc. Is that reprised?
Also..."Monsieur, don't mock me now I pray...It's hard enough I've lost my pride...You let your foreman send me away...Yes, you were there and turned aside."
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Orestes Fasting
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| Kristin Chenoweth wrote: | Hmmmm...
I Saw Him Once (OLC) is never reprised.
And...um..."She is the first to fall, the first of us to fall upon this barricade..." etc, etc. Is that reprised?
Also..."Monsieur, don't mock me now I pray...It's hard enough I've lost my pride...You let your foreman send me away...Yes, you were there and turned aside." |
"The people have not stirred, we are abandoned by those who still live in fear..."
Not sure on the last one.
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eponine5
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I thought that the "hush now, do not be afraid of me..." was taken from Valjeans accompaniment to Cosette's Castle on a Cloud right before The Bargain.
Although I don't think that the main melody of In My Life is repeated, Valjean's part, "Dear Cosette, you're such a lonely child..." is repeated in Valjean and Javert's confrontation at the barricade with "You are wrong, and always have been wrong..."
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EponineMNFF
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| eponine5 wrote: | I thought that the "hush now, do not be afraid of me..." was taken from Valjeans accompaniment to Cosette's Castle on a Cloud right before The Bargain.
Although I don't think that the main melody of In My Life is repeated, Valjean's part, "Dear Cosette, you're such a lonely child..." is repeated in Valjean and Javert's confrontation at the barricade with "You are wrong, and always have been wrong..." |
Whoa that's a good one! I never would have remembered that!
I don't think the beginning of the Well Scene is the same as the beginning of On My Own, though I may be wrong. It's had a similar feel to me, but I'm not sure that there's a note for note reprise.
This is actually a lot harder than I thought. Hm...
Is the beginning of I Dreamed a Dream ("There was a time when men were kind..." to "Then it all went wrong") ever repeated?
Also, the students' bit in One Day More ("One day to a new beginning!" to "Do you hear the people sing?") repeated? I'm sure that answer is really obvious, and I'm just not noticing it. "One day to a new beginning" is similar to a lot of the lines in One Day More, except that it goes up a bit at the end. Does anything else do that?
It'd be interesting to see what melodies were put together to make One Day More, because it really is quite a lot of songs put together.
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EponinesRain
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| EponineMNFF wrote: | Also, the students' bit in One Day More ("One day to a new beginning!" to "Do you hear the people sing?") repeated? I'm sure that answer is really obvious, and I'm just not noticing it. "One day to a new beginning" is similar to a lot of the lines in One Day More, except that it goes up a bit at the end. Does anything else do that?
It'd be interesting to see what melodies were put together to make One Day More, because it really is quite a lot of songs put together. |
I think you're right about the beginnings of IDAD and OMO, but that student part in One Day More is a slight derivative of IDAD's "But the tigers come at night..." to "And they turn your dreams to shame." The only difference is that the students sing it in its alternating-line form, with harmony and extra SATB parts. This melody is more obviously repeated by both Eponine and Enjolras' in One Day More, as you indicated.
Let's dissect the melodies in One Day More, yeah! 
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music is my life!!!
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i dreamed a dream?
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Orestes Fasting
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| EponineMNFF wrote: | Also, the students' bit in One Day More ("One day to a new beginning!" to "Do you hear the people sing?") repeated? I'm sure that answer is really obvious, and I'm just not noticing it. "One day to a new beginning" is similar to a lot of the lines in One Day More, except that it goes up a bit at the end. Does anything else do that?
It'd be interesting to see what melodies were put together to make One Day More, because it really is quite a lot of songs put together. |
The students' lines in One Day More (and Enjolras' "One more day before the storm") are the same melody as "But the tigers come at night..." (Edit: Oops, EponinesRain got there first.  )
One Day More isn't actually made up of that many melodies--it has Who Am I, I Dreamed a Dream, Master of the House, and Javert's "Tell me quickly what's the story..." theme.
If Valjean's counterpoint to Castle on a Cloud is considered a separate motif, I suppose Marius and Cosette's little "Will we ever meet again? / I was born to be with you" thing in One Day More is fair game as well. Can anyone think of a place it gets used outside ODM?
It took me ages to figure out that big chunks of Valjean's Confession use the same tune as the letter scene. I think what clued me in was Eponine's "I have a letter, monsieur..." which is never reused in the English version, but which was part of Valjean's Confession on the OFC. In the present version of the show, "Not another word, my son, there's something now that must be done" and everything after "What can I do that would turn you from this..." are the same melody as "Dearest Cosette, you have entered my soul and soon you will be gone..."
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EponinesRain
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| Orestes Fasting wrote: |
If Valjean's counterpoint to Castle on a Cloud is considered a separate motif, I suppose Marius and Cosette's little "Will we ever meet again? / I was born to be with you" thing in One Day More is fair game as well. Can anyone think of a place it gets used outside ODM? |
I don't know that the Marius and Cosette melody is exactly the same outside of ODM, but the instruments (strings and then...flutes?) also counterpoint "But the tigers come at night." So, M&C's counterpoint is the harmony of the instruments' counterpoint in IDAD. Whereas in IDAD that part is: Ab Bb C C C Ab G, ODM's is C Bb Ab Bb C Ab Bb. I think those are Cosette's notes, at least. So, adding Marius and the IDAD part, there's perfect three-part harmony. Well, at least we know the source of ODM's counterpoints!
Hope I didn't just state the obvious  But, yes, this musical relies heavily on leitmotifs and their derivatives, if not repeated vocally then instrumentally. It's very much intended that B&S' work is "reprised, reworked, and fragmented, with vary degrees of recognizability." ALW does the same thing, but with new melodies in repeated situations.
Also, Stars isn't ever repeated, is it? Unless you count that instrumental bit right after Javert's Suicide? And I'm pretty sure Eponine's "One more day all on my own/What a life I might have known!" in ODM is never used anywhere else, if it even counts for this topic.
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Kristin Chenoweth
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Eponine's bit in ODM is the same melody as "But the tigers come at night..."
Is Eponine's part in AHFOL used anywhere else? I don't think it is...but there might be a really obvious answer that I've forgotten. 
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Colle
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| Kristin Chenoweth wrote: | Eponine's bit in ODM is the same melody as "But the tigers come at night..."
Is Eponine's part in AHFOL used anywhere else? I don't think it is...but there might be a really obvious answer that I've forgotten. |
Yes, the melody of Eponine's part of AHFOL is repeated, it is the same melody as Valjean's part of "Every Day"(she was never mine to keep...).
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Orestes Fasting
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| Kristin Chenoweth wrote: | | Eponine's bit in ODM is the same melody as "But the tigers come at night..." |
Not at the very end of ODM where everyone's all jumbled up singing together.
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wtwt5237
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Don't you think that the recurrences are too much.
In Weber's the Phantom of the opera, you can hardly find any recurring melodies(of course there are some)
But in this musical, the recurrence makes you think Sondheim has a lack of inspiration even, which makes him uses the same piece again and again.
A side question:empty chairs at empty tables is not reused, is it?
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windbelle
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| wtwt5237 wrote: | Don't you think that the recurrences are too much.
In Weber's the Phantom of the opera, you can hardly find any recurring melodies(of course there are some)
But in this musical, the recurrence makes you think Sondheim has a lack of inspiration even, which makes him uses the same piece again and again.
A side question:empty chairs at empty tables is not reused, is it? |
I found recurring melodies equally often in Phantom of the Opera. They're even more easy to tell and sum up, though maybe not necessarily related to a certain person or motif.
Empty chairs at empty tables is a recurrence of the Bishop's main melody in the first act.
And...what are you talking about? Sondheim? 
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Orestes Fasting
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Er... Phantom has a much more limited number of motifs to draw on than LM, and yet it repeats itself almost as often. Aside from the never-repeated faux-opera scenes and Wishing, it's composed almost entirely of the recycled tunes of Angel of Music, The Phantom of the Opera, Music of the Night, AIAOY, Masquerade, a dash of Point of No Return, and the generic recitative (e.g. "I remember...") Trying to name the oft-repeated tunes of Les Mis would take much longer than that. The LM score is almost entirely made up of repeated melodies, true, but the selection of melodies is much richer than the six or seven endlessly recycled tunes of Phantom.
And wtf are you smoking, Sondheim didn't write Les Mis.
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Pannic
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Stars? I don't think that's repeated, except for the instrumental at the end of Javert's Suicide. And A Little Fall of Rain isn't repeated either. >_>
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EponinesRain
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| Pannic wrote: | | And A Little Fall of Rain isn't repeated either. >_> |
Don't forget that the melody of ALFOR is prefaced by "Eponine's Errand".  I guess that track isn't included in many of the cast recordings, so it's easy to forget its recurrence.
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Mademoiselle Lanoire
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| EponinesRain wrote: | | Pannic wrote: | | And A Little Fall of Rain isn't repeated either. >_> |
Don't forget that the melody of ALFOR is prefaced by "Eponine's Errand". I guess that track isn't included in many of the cast recordings, so it's easy to forget its recurrence. |
It's included on at least five of them.
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Pannic
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And the two melodies in The Confrontation. I don't think those are repeated, either. The parts before and after those melodies are, though. >_>
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Orestes Fasting
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| Pannic wrote: | | And the two melodies in The Confrontation. I don't think those are repeated, either. The parts before and after those melodies are, though. >_> |
I think the confrontation between Valjean and Javert in the sewers reprises those.
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Pannic
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No, I don't think so. The part before the counterpoint is reprised by Valjean, but the melodies that they sing at the same time aren't. >_>
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