Music Theory for Musical Theatre is a textbook designed to demystify music theory and analysis to make it more accessible to the musical theatre student. It aims to equip the student with a basic skill set that he or she can directly apply to the art form. John Bell and Steven R. Chicurel explore how musical theatre composers use basic principles of music theory to help illuminate characters and tell stories, while helping the student understand the form, structure, and dramatic power of musical theatre repertoire.

The material is presented in three parts. Part I breaks down key concepts in the rudiments of music theory, including melody, rhythm, harmony, and form, while using excerpts from musical theatre literature to illustrate these ideas. Part II offers full analyses of musical theatre songs, presenting a model for singing actors on how to use musical analysis as an aid in performance. The workbook in Part III provides hands-on drills and exercises that the reader can use to facilitate skill development of the ideas presented in part one. Published with a lay-flat binding for easy use in the classroom and concluding with a glossary that reinforces important terminology, this textbook fills a long-neglected need in musical theatre study that will be beneficial to beginning and advanced students alike.

音乐剧音乐理论》是一本旨在揭开音乐理论和分析的神秘面纱的教科书，使其更容易为音乐剧学生所接受。它的目的是让学生掌握一套基本技能，可以直接应用于艺术形式。John Bell和Steven R. Chicurel探讨了音乐剧作曲家如何利用音乐理论的基本原则来帮助照亮人物和讲述故事，同时帮助学生理解音乐剧剧目的形式、结构和戏剧力量。

本教材分三部分介绍。第一部分分解了音乐理论基础的关键概念，包括旋律、节奏、和声和形式，同时使用音乐剧文献的节选来说明这些观点。第二部分对音乐剧歌曲进行了全面的分析，为歌唱演员提供了一个如何使用音乐分析作为表演的辅助工具的模式。第三部分的工作手册提供了实践演练和练习，读者可以用它来促进第一部分中提出的观点的技能发展。本书采用平装出版，便于在课堂上使用，最后还附有词汇表，以加强重要的术语，这本教科书填补了音乐剧研究中长期被忽视的需求，对初级和高级学生都有好处。