10 Styles of Musical Theatre Songs for Your Audition Book (2024 Updated Version)

Perhaps the most common misconception about musical theatre music is that it can all be grouped into a single music genre. In reality, musical theatre is an art form that encompasses many, many styles of music. This has been the case for some time. To demonstrate that fact, let’s jump back a decade and examine Broadway musicals that were nominated for Tony Awards in 2014 (along with the musical styles featured within each one):

• After Midnight (1920s-40s jazz standards)
• Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (1960s-70s pop/rock radio songs)
• A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (‘legit’/operetta-influenced theatre songs)
• Aladdin (1990s Disney tunes)
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1970s-style glam rock songs)

As you can see, musical theatre music is incredibly diverse and incorporates many genres of music from the past of present. I created this post to provide a simple breakdown of the ten major music styles found within musical theatre today. I also included some representative songwriters for each style. When building audition books, performers should consider including songs from each of the styles and periods below. Some pieces should be ballads, and some should be uptempo. Some should be dramatic in nature and others should be comedic. NOTE: These stylistic categories are only meant to be guidelines- there are always exceptions, crossovers, and other reasonable methods for organizing musical theatre music.

P.S. If you need further assistance locating songs for yourself or your students, check out my Singer’s Musical Theatre Anthology guides and my professional repertoire guides in the MTR store.

1. English Operetta Song (c. 1870s-1920s)
o Songs/arias from operettas. Gilbert & Sullivan, Franz Lehar, Sigmund Romberg, Victor Herbert, others
2. Jazz Age Traditional Musical Theatre Song (c. 1920s-40s)
o Older ‘traditional’ theatre & tin pan alley songs (i.e. many jazz/Great American Songbook standards). Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart, Kurt Weill, Noel Coward, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern
3. Golden Age Traditional Musical Theatre Song (c. 1940s-60s)
o ‘Traditional’ theatre songs from the early 1940s to mid ’60s. Richard Rodgers & Oscar Hammerstein, Alan J. Lerner & Frederick Loewe, Leonard Bernstein, Frank Loesser, Jule Styne, Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick, Richard Adler & Jerry Ross, Burton Lane, Meredith Wilson, Harold Rome, Jerry Ross
4. Post-Golden Age Traditional Musical Theatre Song (c. 1960s-70s)
o ‘Traditional’ sounding theatre songs from the mid-1960s to the ’70s and even ’80s. John Kander & Fred Ebb, Cy Coleman, Jerry Herman, Harvey Schmidt & Tom Jones, David Shire & Richard Maltby, Charles Strouse, Marvin Hamlisch, Stephen Schwartz (earlier works), Stephen Flaherty & Lynn Ahrens (earlier works)
5. Stephen Sondheim Song (c. 1960s-present)
o Stephen Sondheim (yes, this titan of musical theatre earned his own category)
6. Contemporary Legit Musical Theatre Song* (c. 1980s-present)
o ‘Contemporary’ theatre songs heavily influenced by classical music styles and vocalism. Andrew Lloyd Webber (some shows), Claude-Michele Schönberg & Alain Boublil, Maury Yeston, Frank Wildhorn (some shows), Sylvester Levay & Michael Kunze, Lucy Simon, Jill Santoriello, Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, Scott Frankel & Michael Korie, Ricky Ian Gordon, Paul Gordon
7. Contemporary Mixed Musical Theatre Song (c. 1990s-present)
o ‘Contemporary’ theatre songs that blend traditional musical theatre and pop music attributes + vocalism. Mel Brooks, Alan Menken, Stephen Schwartz, Stephen Flaherty & Lynn Ahrens, William Finn, Jason Robert Brown, Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman, Robert Lopez, Jeanine Tesori, David Yazbek, Andrew Lippa, Matthew Sklar, Laurence O’Keefe, Tim Minchin
8. Contemporary Pop/Rock Musical Theatre Song (c. 1960s-present)
o ‘Contemporary’ theatre songs heavily influenced by pop, rock and other commercial music styles + vocalism. Gal MacDermot, Elton John, Henry Krieger, David Bryan & Joe DiPietro, Jonathan Larson, Michael Friedman, Tom Kitt, Stephen Trask, Duncan Sheik, Joe Iconis, Ryan Scott Oliver, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Damon Intrabartolo
9. Radio Pop/Rock Song (c. 1950s-present)
o Various Top 40-style radio songs from the commercial music industry. Choose songs from multiple decades and commercial music styles (i.e. pop, rock, country, hip hip, R&B, etc.). 
10. Walt Disney Song (c. 1930s-present)
o Songs from Disney stage musicals, films, TV shows, etc. Could also include songs that sound Disney-adjacent. Alan Menken, Robert & Richard Sherman, Elton John, Robert & Kristen Lopez, Phil Collins, David Nessim Lawrence, Randy Newman, Lin-Manuel Miranda

* This category includes classical music/operetta-influenced theatre scores by songwriters like Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, Ricky Ian Gordon and Scott Frankel– alongside the ‘pop opera’ hybrid scores of 1980s-90s ‘megamusicals’ written by songwriters like Andrew Lloyd Webber, Boublil & Schönberg, Maury Yeston, Lucy Simon, Frank Wildhorn and others (i.e. Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, Miss Saigon, The Secret Garden, Jekyll & Hyde, etc).

– Kevin Michael Jones