I teach theatre at a college, and every year with my First Years I do an exercise where I have them write out 10 things that are different between reading prose and plays. I do this as an exercise to help them expand their idea of theatre past what they were exposed to in High School.
So, for instance, when they say "in plays you always know who is speaking because the dialogue is labelled" I will give a counter example ("Pool No Water" by Mark Ravenill.) Or "plays are made up of only dialogue," I give them "Small Mouth Sounds" by Beth Wahl, a completely silent play.
This year several have said something along the lines of, "prose cannot contain music." Now, normally I let what they say about the prose side go, because I am here to teach them about theatre, but this is bugging me for some reason. I have several examples of books that contain lyrics. Is there an example of a literary work that provides playable sheet music? Either as part of the text, or as back matter?
by SingleAtom
1 Comment
*The Trumpet of the Swan* by EB White
*Playing with Fire* by Tess Gerritsen (pretty sure, the music in this book can also be found on the author’s website).
EDIT: Nonfiction books with sheet music include *Roll, Jordan, Roll* by Eugene Genovese and any number of music textbooks.
*The Spellman Files* by Lisa Lutz is an entertaining book that is mostly prose but also transcripts dialogue sort of like a play.