Incidental Music
Music written for spoken theatre, working in entr'actes and the gaps between lines
Related
Incidental music is written for spoken theatre, radio drama and other staged productions, filling the gaps before the curtain, between acts, during scene changes or under dialogue pauses. It has no sung roles; overtures, entr'actes, dances and atmospheric numbers measure the play's time.
In the nineteenth century a single play often produced a whole orchestral score, as with Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream; selected numbers were later arranged as a concert suite. Film scoring absorbed its methods in the twentieth century, while the stage kept live performance.
To hear incidental music, put it back into the play's structure: which passage covers a scene change, which waits for the audience to sit, which leaves space after a line. Its success lies not in a memorable tune but in making stage time pass smoothly.
Sources
- 戏剧配乐的功能与十九世纪代表作品，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Incidental music"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.