Shut your mouth, 'cause we're about to toss some exposition your way...

January 19, 2018 8:27 PM

Hamilton and Motifs: Creating Emotional Paradoxes [SLYT]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome (20 comments total)

This certainly takes me back to the halcyon days of pre-2016. I enjoyed this video a lot, thank you for sharing it. It's cool to still have new things pointed out to me after having listened to Hamilton approx. billions of times. Like, can't believe I never considered the "wait for it" during the Reynolds Pamphlet in more than a cursory way.

Also props for the creator going above-and-beyond with the presentation, the way he included clips/videos and highlighted lyrics was fantastic. Definitely feeling the influence of Tony Zhou's Every Frame a Painting.
posted by Emily's Fist at 10:29 PM on January 19, 2018 [3 favorites]

Re: The Obamas' laughter at the first 'Alexander Hamilton.' I read that as a laugh of delight not a laugh of mockery. Furthermore, I've always had the sense that, originally, that was the impact Miranda was aiming for.

This is a very good essay.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:22 PM on January 19, 2018 [7 favorites]

That was a great essay. I thought I knew about all the motifs cause I spent some time w that original cast bootleg last year putting subtitles on it so I've seen it a bunch and I still learned something.

The thing where he talks about the "Wait for it" that the chorus sings when Burr sings "I'll keep all my plans close to my chest"; my theory about Hamilton is that Eliza is the secret narrator and Burr is telling the story from her point of view, from her brain. I think this bc there's a video of Hamiltons opening night where Lin reads the first part of the Chernow book that's all about her and he's very taken with her. Anyway the chorus agrees with and supports the characters when they're doing the right thing, and tries to warn them when they're doing a bad thing. And that's Eliza. So there's that.
I also think that "Room where it happens" is Burr's dream sequence. "Non-stop" is Hamilton's dream sequence, especially the end of it when everyone is singing at once.

I also think Burr and ensemble do the Thriller Dance in Room Where it Happens to show that he's becoming one of them.

Also! I just saw the show in NYC last week due to the Ham 4 Ham lottery. A lot of what he describes here about Leslie's beautiful subtle expressive performance isn't replicated by the current Burr. He just acted like a smarmy asshole who hated Hamilton from day 1 and didn't give a shit about anything. It really undercut the whole thing. I felt like all the performances were pretty rote and one-note compared to how much acting was happening in the bootleg. I was glad I didn't pay that much for the tickets.
posted by bleep at 1:53 AM on January 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

the first part of the Chernow book that's all about [Eliza]

that preface broke my heart
posted by thelonius at 2:26 AM on January 20, 2018

Great video, and that was an amazing meta-reprise seven years later. Now to find out if there's any possible way to see the production (I'm guessing not for me).
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 4:44 AM on January 20, 2018

I also think that Alexander Hamilton, the first song in the concept album, was intended to get a laugh while Alexander Hamilton, the first song in the musical, was definitely not. And it was definitely a delighted and surprised response and not a mocking one.

This was really interesting, though I think it ended weirdly abruptly with the "look what happens when Hamilton throws away his shot and Burr doesn't wait for it" which could have been expanded upon. (Though it's very overt, granted.)
posted by jeather at 5:40 AM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

I also took that laugh as one of delight but there is also a sense of, “You’re not really rapping about a dead white founding father no one really remembers, right?”

I loved the juxtaposition of the wild applause at the same line.

Great video - motif is hard to explain in an instructional sense in more than a cursory way, and this did a masterful job of it. I teach Hamilton so I’ll totally use this video. Thanks for posting!
posted by guster4lovers at 9:14 AM on January 20, 2018 [5 favorites]

It's a little weird for me to see motif discussed in a musical almost entirely independently of the actual music, just because there's such a strong association in music history of motif primarily with music, not words. I'm not sure if one were discussing Hamilton strictly as a text the absolute best term to use for "any recurring artifact of any nature" would be "motif" (not that it's clearly wrong, just that I'm not sure it would necessarily be the term one would reach for in talking about a recurring verbal phrase). I expected, e.g., a discussion of the actual "Burr motif," that lovely eight-note musical phrase in cello. If you listen to "Aaron Burr, Sir," where it's first deployed, you can hear how it comes in on the strings, over and over again, but doesn't resolve, until Hamilton sings, "I wish there was a war..." suggesting both Burr's irresolution and the way it ultimately ends up resolving itself--through violence. Anyway, the aggressive use of musical motif to stitch together so many disparate genres of music is very clever of Miranda.

I think the laughter at the White House performance was at two things: (1) the immediate shock of the incongruity of rapping about Alexander Hamilton, of all people; and (2) Miranda's acting at that moment--he's shifting into the role of an uncertain teenager, and his body language and tone become very sheepish.
posted by praemunire at 10:14 AM on January 20, 2018 [7 favorites]

That was amazing.
posted by flamewise at 12:40 PM on January 20, 2018

On a related note, someone's doing videos about how the songs work: 10 Duel Commandments, My Shot, Stay Alive, Aaron Burr, Eliza.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:10 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

There's a series by The Analytic analyzing characters:
The Secrets to Hamilton's Popularity, Best of Wives and Best of Women: An Analysis of Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, Hamilton From Burr's Perspective, Who Dies: An Analysis of Hamilton's Hamilton
posted by jenfullmoon at 2:03 PM on January 20, 2018 [3 favorites]

The Hobo household has been playing the soundtrack at least once a week during dinner preparation for the past year, and we finally saw it on New Year's Day, and stage-doored with a young little pootler. I've been discussing the leitmotifs in this for ages, even down to little phrases in the backing music, with Mrs. Hobo who has far better musical training than I do. So she tends to pick out the musical themes and I tend to be able to draw the connections between all the lyrics.

My proudest moment was in comparing Wait for It to I Know It's Today from the Shrek musical. Yes, I know Shrek has become an Internet meme and the musical of it isn't high art, but we go to everything with Little Hobo, and something about that number really struck me in how it portrayed the princess as a fairytale character.

Both songs are about someone who was born into privilege, but that status limited their life choices in some way. Both characters believe that if they hold fast, the system is built to work for them and they will emerge from their loneliness to a happy ending. It's only the other characters who have grown up with nothing to lose who rampage through the story in Mercurial fury and upset what they thought was their rightful inheritance.

So, yes, Alexander Hamilton is the donkey from Shrek. You're welcome.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:18 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Finally, the Helpless/Satisfied dyptich is largely fiction added by Miranda to simplify a lot of the Schuyler family situation and enhance drama. I refer to it at home as "the play within the play", and it's enough to make me tear up and never make it to Yorktown!
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:21 PM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

That's part of why my headcanon is that Eliza is the secret narrator, it gets interesting if you think of it as her portrayal of their relationship, especially with how every time Alexander and Angelica have an exchange Eliza pops up to interrupt them (it takes a little longer after "The Reynolds pamphlet" but still).
posted by bleep at 2:28 PM on January 20, 2018 [2 favorites]

Well, bleep, that is kind of one of the messages of the play. Two of Eliza's major moments in act two are when she tells us she's removing herself from the narrative, and then when she puts herself back in. And we hear George Washington's words again about how none of us can decide "who lives, who dies, who tells your story."

Eliza's epilogue was very much about how she was the narrator of Hamilton's tale, and may very well be the reason we are taught the simple "Burr as selfish rival and villain who killed Hamilton" story that Burr himself acknowledges just before curtain.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:41 PM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

I know I just thought if I asserted it too strongly I didn't want to be reflexively disagreed with
posted by bleep at 3:58 PM on January 20, 2018 [1 favorite]

The part about not wanting to miss their shot (!).

Lin Manuel Miranda's performance is so much more compelling than other versions of this I've heard. Is there a recording of him doing the whole thing or is that too much to ask from life?
posted by karmachameleon at 5:16 PM on January 20, 2018

You mean, doing the whole musical? There's an OCR that periodically goes on sale for a dollar or two.
posted by praemunire at 7:50 PM on January 20, 2018

This made my entire weekend.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 11:29 PM on January 20, 2018

The guys who used to do the Tuner podcast had a really good episode about My Shot.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 4:49 PM on January 21, 2018