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Hamilton take a break1/8/2024 As “My Shot” is stuffed to the gills with internal rhymes, the word parentheses also comes in the middle of a whopping 19 long-E rhymes in a row, squeezed into just 12 bars. But Hamilton is bursting onto the scene with such force, he’s broken out of the parentheses. In the first-act barnburner “My Shot” Hamilton exclaims, “Enter me!” His entourage of Marquis de Lafayette, Hercules Mulligan, and John Laurens adds, “(He says in parentheses.)” It’s a clever stage direction joke in play scripts, entrances and exits appear in parentheticals. It’s not the only time Miranda uses punctuation to land a point. The flirting was shameless, sophisticated, and adorable. And he signed off his letter by repeating the comma sext, only this time in French, making it even more romantic: “ Adieu ma chere, soeur” (“Goodbye my dear, sister”). The proof that you do it rightly may be given by the omission or repetition of the same mistake in your next.” In other words: If you’re saying you like like like me, say it again. It is my interest that it should have been designed but I presume it was accidental. There was a most critical comma in your last letter. Intrigue!Įven more intriguing is that in Hamilton’s and Angelica’s historical letters, it was actually Angelica, not Hamilton, who first employed the comma sext, when she wrote, “Indeed my dear, Sir …” Hamilton, clearly worked up (and a bit unnecessarily sexist), replied: “You ladies despise the pedantry of punctuation. But with the comma, dearest suddenly becomes a noun in apposition: Angelica is the dearest one to Hamilton - not her sister, who’s also his wife. (Writing about grammar is hard making it rhyme is harder.) Without the comma, dearest would be a simple adjective of endearment. It’s a brilliant use of grammatical flirtation, what Miranda calls “ comma sexting.” He’s said it took him weeks to distill the punctuation concept into a few brief lyrics. Did you intend this?/ One stroke and you’ve consumed my waking days./ It says: ‘My dearest, Angelica.’/ With a comma after ‘dearest.’ ” As Angelica in the Philly cast, the radiant Stephanie Umoh sings of a letter Hamilton wrote to her: “In a letter I received from you two weeks ago/ I noticed a comma in the middle of a phrase./ It changed the meaning. ![]() Hamilton gets down and dirty with grammar, which means, of course, the Angry Grammarian is here for it.Īct II’s “Take a Break” provides the most direct punctuation plot point, as it dramatizes the years-long flirtation between Alexander Hamilton and Angelica Schuyler, his sister-in-law. Different forms of the verb write appear more than 60 times in the show. But Lin-Manuel Miranda’s opus - which has finally landed in Philadelphia at the Forrest Theatre - is foremost a musical about writing. Arranged for 2 Trumpets 3 Trombones and Piano.Hamilton may be billed as the story of a forgotten Founding Father. ![]() Break-dance is commissioned by and dedicated to Yvar Mikhashoff and Spectrum. The springy 'body-language' that kicks off the piece suddenly stiffens and freezes into hard-edged blocks and the real 'dance of breaks' emerges into focus. Albeit not an obvious piano concerto the piano part hovers in the front line the same way the horizontal guy ringing himself on the pavement is doubtless aneye-catcher to passers-by. The title of course is a reference to the modern street-dance electric boogie but the very music itself takes the naming most literally indeed: formally and rhythmically after a straightforward head-on opening it breaks into isolated jagged fragments winding up in a bouncing piano cadenza. This piece however combines the roaring despair of the first trio with the twisted rhythmical display of the latter. Break-Dance is an obvious next of kin to the two Clarinet trios Vox In Rama and Tattoo For Three.
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