Stage & Screen
Stage & Screen is AllMusic's catch-all genre for music tied to musicals, film soundtracks, plays, and television scores (Discogs, n.d.). It covers two related but distinct traditions. One is film music, and AllMusic pushes back on the idea that a score is just background filler. At its best, film composers rank among the most important instrumental composers working today, whether their music is released as a full score or a collection built around one composer, like Bernard Herrmann or Ennio Morricone (AllMusic, n.d.-p). Think of a film score like the lighting in a room. Nobody walks in and stares at the light fixtures directly, but change the lighting and the entire mood of the room shifts.
The other branch is musical theater. Its roots trace back to the 19th century, when European operetta and the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain established many of the structural elements that shaped the modern musical (Development of musical theatre, n.d.). AllMusic also points to 19th-century minstrel shows and imported forms like French vaudeville and Viennese operetta as early influences (AllMusic, n.d.-q). Early musical theater split into three main lanes: musical comedy, built around simple songs and everyday characters; the revue, which used a variety show format; and the American operetta, which leaned into more complex music and romantic storylines (AllMusic, n.d.-q).
The genre found its commercial center in New York, where Broadway grew into the heart of the American musical theater scene (AllMusic, n.d.-q). The 1928 show Show Boat is often cited as a turning point, setting a new standard for weaving character, story, and music together, a standard the genre's later golden age would build on and surpass (AllMusic, n.d.-q). Musical theater's success then crossed straight into film. Musical films developed naturally out of stage musicals once sound technology became available, and stars like Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire helped spread that popularity nationwide (AllMusic, n.d.-q; Musical film, n.d.).
Today the Stage & Screen category holds both sides of that history side by side, from original Broadway cast recordings to orchestral film scores, united by the fact that all of it exists to serve a larger story rather than to stand alone.
Sources:
AllMusic. (n.d.-p). Stage & screen music genre overview. https://www.allmusic.com/genre/stage-screen-ma0000004432
AllMusic. (n.d.-q). Musical theater music style overview. https://www.allmusic.com/style/musical-theater-ma0000004437
Discogs. (n.d.). Stage & screen. https://www.discogs.com/genre/stage+&+screen
Development of musical theatre. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_musical_theatre
Musical film. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_film