Recanonizing “American” sound and reinventing the broadway song machine: Digital musicology futures of broadway musicals

Abstract

In 1997 a computer beat a human composer and music professor in composing a Bach-sounding chorale. In 2016, the world’s first computer-generated musical premiered in London’s West End. Now what lies ahead for Broadway musical theatre? This chapter explores the technology behind the computer-generated musical and state-of-the-art digital musicology tools, and points out that Broadway canons largely determine the musical theatre sound that digital tools capture and recreate. It then proposes six metrics of (re)canonizing US Broadway musicals in the digital age, including personal canonization. Stressing the importance of diversifying the “American” sound and reinventing the Broadway song machine (formulas that constitute a hit Broadway song), it argues that digital musicology offers human beings tools to rethink and reassess the past, develop musical theatre pedagogy, and challenge composers to create futures of a new and more varied “American” sound.