About the composer
Lin-Manuel Miranda is a 37 year old composer, actor, and playwright. He has written two original musicals. One entitled In the Heights and another titled Hamilton: an American Musical. Hamilton depicts the life of treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton. Miranda employs the lyrical sounds of rap to tell Hamilton’s story. He claims that Hamilton’s life and the revolution are the embodiment of rap music. Miranda uses two main literary devices in his raps. He uses sound devices and figurative language to aid in telling the story of Alexander Hamilton and the revolution. “Miranda says that Hamilton is “a story about America then, told by America now.””(Schulte, Gross, Gonchar) Using rap and different musical styles for different characters engages audiences of all ages and those who have never before enjoyed a musical.
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about the work
The style of music that Lin-Manuel Miranda chose was not an accident. He read Ron Chernow’s book on Hamilton while on vacation and said that he felt that Hamilton’s story was the embodiment of rap. This genre is also popular with today’s youth and young adults. Choosing rap as the medium that Hamilton was written in made it popular and not by just musical enthusiasts. The genre got Hamilton talked about over dinners, on the news, and in classrooms. Theses choices got the work that Miranda had been working on day and night for seven years out to be enjoyed by the public.