Composer Kari Mäkiranta wants to make versatile music for children
“You don’t have to underestimate children at all, but you can just as easily make interesting music for them,” begins composer Kari Mäkiranta when he talks about Tatu and Patu’s compositional work.
There are a lot of musical numbers in the play, so there has been plenty to compose. When Mäkiranta composes music for children’s theatre, he strives to make the composition as versatile as possible rhythmically and musically.
Mäkiranta has been involved in musical theatre for three decades. She studied musical theatre with an American composition teacher in 1993 and has been doing it as her main job ever since. From time to time, Mäkiranta also conducts musical theatre ensembles.
Music serves the whole
The composition work begins when Mäkiranta receives a script, which is the most important tool for a musical composer. Based on this, Mäkiranta creates a musical dramaturgy for the entire work. The music is composed in such a way that it supports the dramaturgy.
“It is important to perceive dramaturgy musically: How do text and music communicate? How does music support and bring a new dimension?” Mäkiranta ponders.
Mäkiranta considers himself a text-based composer and likes to compose to a ready-made text. The lyrics serve as the basis for ideas and give direction to the composition. After getting acquainted with the script, Tatu and Patu’s composition work got off to a smooth start, also because the Outola brothers were already familiar to Mäkiranta from previous productions.
In Tatu and Patu , the music often starts to take you to the level of imagination, when the actors burst into singing and dancing. There is a lot of music, and especially choir singing, and the music is strongly based on the script. That’s why the songs can’t really be taken out of context, but each song is part of the whole. “Music is used to find a certain world or emotional state for a scene,” Mäkiranta explains.
Scenes were composed in rehearsals
Mäkiranta has a habit of making musical theatre by composing music in rehearsals. This is also how some of the music for Tatu’s and Patu’s scenes was created, even though Mäkiranta had composed the songs before the start of the rehearsal season.
“I’ve been involved in rehearsals a lot and composed what I see there. It’s a holistic approach, as if we were at the same campfire,” Mäkiranta explains.
During rehearsals, he often sits at the piano and improvises scenes that are built and rehearsed. After that, Mäkiranta may put on the phones, finish the scene and write the sheet music on paper.
In addition to music, the scenes include a lot of other soundscapes. The music may dissolve into the soundscape, and it may not be clear which is which. “Sometimes it’s like a line drawn in water. Different elements were put together in the rehearsals at the beginning of the year so that we could get everything to go together rhythmically,” Mäkiranta says.
During the composition phase, Mäkiranta knew the cast and what kind of singers were involved, even though he did not get to sing them in advance. The composer’s duties also included rehearsing music for actors. “In rehearsals, I have been able to take the quality even further, as the actors are so good at singing and moving. It is possible to make versatile musical theatre here.”