Frank Wildhorn, “Confrontation”

“Confrontation” from Jekyll and Hyde

by Valeriia Honchar | March 16, 2021

Jekyll and Hyde is a musical that was composed in 1990. Its first premiere happened in Houston, Texas. The story was based on the novel written by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. A talented physician Dr. Jekyll tries to cure his father’s mental illness by separating “good” from “evil” in the personality. But with unpredictability of the experiment he creates an alternate personality of pure evil, Mr. Hyde. Hyde brings lots of blood on the streets of London. With all the thriller elements of the story there is a dramatic, romantic element involving two ladies Lucy and Emma. But the main struggle for the main character is how the evil side Hyde wants to take control over the good side Jekyll. Jekyll must fight to win this race with himself.

Frank Wildhorn decided to mirror the insanity of the twisted story and put that into music. Its unpredictability creates chaos in the analytical perspective of melodic progression. Melodic line plays an important role in providing a general image of expression, but it is very vague, since it is not able to indicate the detailed image of the story. Text is that key element to the musical puzzle, which provides the basis and decorative principle of the melodic component. When these two units are combined, the result is a rich work of art. The melody is like a mirror to the text; it adds that extra twist to emphasise a specific message. An example of such unique creation is a musical selection “Confrontation” from the musical Jekyll and Hyde.

The storyline features one person with two unique, different personalities: a regular personality named Jekyll and an evil personality Hyde. The musical as well as this piece of work have many different artistic elements to depict characters, including words, music, performance, and stage directions. The pacing of the piece reflects the contrast between two characters. It begins in 3/4 with a slower tempo, letting Jekyll think in his own head “Lost in the darkness, silence surrounds you. Once there was morning, now endless night…”. With a slower tempo, the audience can hear a more clear, legato melodic phrasing. At the entrance of Hyde, tempo changes, and the meter changes to 4/4. A much faster, more spoken characteristics in melody and speech is seen from a different character. The change between tempos (characters) is very sudden, so that it is impossible to predict.

The change between characters is also shaped by harmony. A pivot in the melodic line as well as lyrics appears at the end of measure 17 into measure 18. Transition in the text happens in the listener’s head. Jekyll does not get a chance to say the word “DIE” although he is about to, but that is where Hyde is taking over the body. He starts his replica on “DO”. The last word of one personality starts on the same letter as when the other personality takes over. Jekyll’s harmonic progression appears in a B minor diatonic scale that becomes a functional harmony. Hyde’s harmonic progression starts with E minor. Jekyll’s chords were stable when in Hyde’s part there is an alternation between minor triads related by minor thirds. The choice of text combines with melody and the dramatic development of characters. At first, both personalities have their own melodic theme. Near the end, when the conflict between two sides rises, the difference between themes is indistinguishable. The melodic line of Jekyll and Hyde’s speech-like words turn into screams and aggressive communication with each other. Hyde’s aggressive temper takes over Jekyll and they became as one. An example of such action is in measures 73-80.

Performance of such work requires a very focused and controlled actor. The actor needs to deeply understand each personality and dive into them, that they become automatic. In the recording of the Broadway production, David Hasselhoff did phenomenal work with these characters. The transformation between character happens within a second. There is no time to think, realize who you are now and change. It happens so fast that he convinces that he is insane, and he has two personalities living in him.

Makeup artists as well as costume designers gave a clear physical appearance of two different characters. Jekyll is represented as a sane man with a nice look, including a white clean shirt and nicely pulled back hair. Hyde’s shirt is covered with blood and his hair style is very messy and greasy. Differentiating characters also benefited from technical support of stage lighting. Jekyll had a warm, natural white lighting. Hyde had a cool tone of white lighting with a tint of blue. A choreographer gave certain physical traits to characters. Jekyll had a straight posture, and his torso was faced to the right. Hyde had a hunched back and faced to the left. These physical traits are usually used as a label of good or bad. Good is strong, powerful, uplifted and bad is weak and omitted. All these elements create the difficulty of bringing character to life. Same process applies to the vocal technique. By standing still, vocalists already have so much to think about such as posture, proper breathing and control, language, character thoughts, proper vowel positioning and much more. Looking at this complex work for vocalist, it only brings out a professionalism and bravery of the singer.

Analyzing vocal music has many layers to it. It all depends on what angle the work is being looked at. It can be looked from the performer’s, composer’s, or audience’s perspective. But there is one main element that will be the same for each perspective. That element is the unity of melody and text, their reflection and content. This analysis shows the way music and text work together to give life to a distinctive character—with a twist of one actor’s role who performs two characters at the same time. Text is that key element to the musical puzzle, which provides the basis and decorative principle of the melodic component. Although there is so much more to discuss and explore in “Confrontation”, the main key elements were brought forward to emphasis the importance of music with text.