Honors Theatre Research Paper · DRAMH 1310 · November 2025
Music: The Magnifying Glass of Emotions in Drama
Course instructor · Professor Jill Brumer
Project overview
About this research
This honors theatre paper explores how music shapes emotion and meaning in performance. It compares Schubert’s Erlkönig, The Marriage of Figaro, Matilda the Musical, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Glass Menagerie. Drawing on rhetorical ideas such as pathos and ethos, the analysis examines rhythm, harmony, recurring themes, and sound. The paper argues that music helps audiences interpret tension, character, satire, and memory, while also considering the shared emotional experience created by live theatre.
The question
How do rhythm, harmony, recurring themes, and sound shape an audience’s understanding of emotion, character, and dramatic meaning?
The approach
How I explored it
Comparative close analysis of five works using rhetorical concepts including pathos and ethos, supported by theatre and rhetoric scholarship.
Rhythm · Harmony
Theme · Sound
An outline of the interpretive questions in the paper.
What the paper discusses
Ideas & findings
- The paper argues that music intensifies feeling and prepares audiences for narrative changes.
- It examines how recurring themes and sound help establish character, tension, satire, and memory.
- It considers music as part of the shared experience of live performance.
Scope & next steps
This is comparative interpretation of dramatic and musical works. It does not measure audience responses experimentally or describe my participation in the productions discussed.