Music in the Bread and Puppet Theatre

Notes by Rosana Danielian Siereky

Introduction:

- music is a very important element in B and P theatre. P.Schuman uses marching bands, rumbas, brass bands, gongs, horns, plainsongs and sacred harp singing.
- We know that in B & P theatre, there is a real sense of community spirit as he ruses local volunteers as part of the singers andbrassband.
- Therefore, P.S. uses very simple material and sounds to create hisinstruments, commun to us all so we can relate to them.

Plainsongs:

Plainsongs, also known as plainchant, is a term that describes a style of singing of the church, liturgy in Europe, developed during the first millenium. Plainsong is monophonic (1 melody, no accompanying chords orinstruments). The principal types of plainsongs in the western part of Europe are of roman and gregorian styles.

Sacred harp singing:

SHS is part of the larger tradition of Shape note music: the notes are printed in special shapes that help the reader to identify them on the musical scale. Each forshape is connected to a particular syllable: fa,sol, la and mi. Each syllable exept for mi is assigned to two distinctnotes.

Source of information on Plainsong:
http://www.dovesong.com/positive_music/archives/plainsong/about_plainsong.asp