The “money note” is a note that a singer can reach and wow the audience with. The term “money note” has been used in the opera, in pop music and in musical theater.
     
“Pavarotti is the last man to underestimate the value of a tenor’s ‘money notes’” was printed in Newsweek (New York, NY) on March 5, 1973. “Pavarotti’s money note” was printed in The Daily Argus (White Plains, NY) on January 15, 1980. “Domingo’s shortening of his range and plans toward the podium when ‘the money notes’ are no longer there” was printed in The Daily Item (Port Chester, NY) on February 12, 1984.
     
“A new musical called ‘Money Notes’” was printed in the Daily News (New York, NY) on January 30, 1985. “I’m told my high E at the end of ‘Ballet’ became known as the money note. That note was mine. It naturally lives in me, because of the passion of the piece” (about the musical A Chorus Line) was printed in the Buffalo (NY) News on November 19, 1995. A song called “Money Note” (2008) by Camille has the lyrics, “And Dolly Parton wrote it, And Whitney Houston stole it, If Celine Dion could reach it, I’ll hit the money note, the money note.” A 2018 Vanity Fair video titled “Lin-Manuel Miranda Teaches You Broadway Slang” explained, “This is the note that you sound great singing. See, Idina Menzel in any Idina Menzel song.”
   
         
5 March 1973, Newsweek (New York, NY), “The Big Tenor” by Hubert Saal, pg. 95, col. 3:
“I (Luciano Pavarotti—ed.) get along fine with conductors. I tell them, ‘You end however you like, and I come in with my high C’.” Pavarotti is the last man to underestimate the value of a tenor’s “money notes.”
 
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21 August 1977, The Herald Statesman (Yonkers, NY), “Vocal Scoops: Measure tenors against Volpi” by Lou Cevetillo, Sunday Magazine, pg. G15, col. 1:
The now-85-year-old divo sang the final verse of the Duke’s big number in the last act of Verdi’s Rigoletto to show the crowd that he still had the money notes.
   
Newspapers.com
15 January 1980, The Daily Argus (White Plains, NY), “TV operatic triumph honors Kostelanetz” by Lou Cevetillo, sec. B, pg. 5, col. 5:
The first time Pavarotti came to the final B natural in the Duke’s famous solo, Mehta brought the orchestra in too soon with the final chord, cutting Pavarotti’s money note.
 
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12 February 1984, The Daily Item (Port Chester, NY), “Vocal scoops: A good tenor is hard to find” by Lou Cevetillo, sec. F, pg. 4, col. 5:
However, we hard already heard the diminuendo of Pavarotti’s vocal sheen; Domingo’s shortening of his range and plans toward the podium when “the money notes” are no longer there; ...
 
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30 January 1985, Daily News (New York, NY), “The star of ‘Money’ talks” by Patricia O’Haire, pg. 40, col. 1:
She (Ernestine Jackson—ed.) was stating her philosophy the other day while talking about her latest project, a new musical called “Money Notes,” which begins performances today at the Baldwin Theater, 160 W. 74th St.
 
The story fascinates her because it spans two worlds, two generations. It’s a backstage story, “A Chorus Line” about singers instead of dancers.
   
Newspapers.com
20 July 1985, The Journal Herald (Dayton, OH), “More than a voice” by Betty Dietz Krebs, pg. 25, cols. 1-2:
While we’re talking about successes, how do you top Luciano Pavarotti? he, like tenor Placido Domingo, tosses off those “money notes” with dazzling aplomb and audiences rush to snap up the tickets.
 
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19 November 1995, Buffalo (NY) News, ‘Every little step they took’ by Jim Santella, pg. G-5, col. 5:
(Review of the book The Longest Line: Broadway’s Most Singular Sensation “A Chorus Line” by Gary Stevens and Alan George.—ed.)
For Kay Cole (original Maggie), it was highly personal. “I’m told my high E at the end of ‘Ballet’ became known as the money note. That note was mine. It naturally lives in me, because of the passion of the piece.”
   
17 October 1997, The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM), “Opera Houses” by J. A. Van Sant, pg. 1:
Heard without such distraction, the voice is a fine lyric mezzo, artfully employed and always expressive. “My money note is the F-sharp,” she (Susan Graham—ed.) said. We were talking about the fourth song in the cycle, Absence, where the voice holds a floated F-sharp. “On a good day, it’s my best tone.”
 
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
Wildhorn….taking over Broadway
Alison Franck
Jan 17, 1999, 3:00:00 AM
(...)
SP is better than J & H (IMHO), but because now the songs are better fitted in the script to better tell the story…but, yes, the songs, IMHO, are cheesy…but several as most in J & H are super generic…bland and more about the performer’s spotlight and money note than about the reason why they are singing in the first place.
     
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
Soprano/tenor duet suggestions?
Abfou
Jan 19, 1999, 3:00:00 AM
(...)
Mostly he stays in a comfortable “if I can sing, you can sing” range, from low B (where all his songs rest comfortably) to not-so-high D (his money note).
 
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
If YOU know musicals, PLEASE HELP!!?
Alison Franck
Jul 28, 1999, 3:00:00 AM
(...)
When I was a singer, I always liked to sing about stuff that I could relate to and really tap into, plus I liked to show off particular things my voice could do…(A money note…dynamics, etc)
     
28 November 1999, Newsday (Long Island, NY), “In Her Element: Success has come early—and easily—to Audra McDonald. Now, with “Marie Christine,’ she tackles a ‘difficult but exhilarating’ role” by Justin Davidson, pg. D5:
“People like Audra have an innate instinct for the opportunities in a song,” (Adam—ed.) Guettel says. “They find them where I didn’t know they existed. There’s this crass term, the money note, meaning the point where the idea of the song comes to fruition and when the music really pays off. I might say to her, ‘Make sure you really save up for this, because this is the money note.’ But she’ll find them all over the place.”
     
16 September 2001, The Sunday Telegraph (London, UK), “Golden voice changes his tune Michael Ball, the West End’s favourite son, is giving his usual repertoire a rest to spend two weeks doing intimate cabaret. ‘It’s as if I don’t want to be me,’ he tells Matt Wolf,” pg. 7:
He (Michael Ball—ed.) has what he calls “a natural voice - I just hear the notes in my head and they come out”, and although he cannot read music, inevitably experience has helped him fine-hone his technique. (The Broadway diva Patti LuPone taught him, he says, the value of the “money note”.)
   
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
“Pavlovian” Musical Numbers
Stephen Farrow
Apr 29, 2002, 2:49:00 AM
(...)
And the honking big-ass Money Note at the climax.
     
18 August 2002, Sunday Age (Melbourne, Victoria), “The Profile - MARINA PRIOR” by Lily Bragge, pg. 3:
Not only is she not using “that hair” in Witches, neither is she using “that voice”. The soprano she is famous for is being traded in for a much lower register. “In this production I don’t use `that voice’ much at all, with the exception of one song that ends with me singing a top C - that’s the real money note.”
 
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals 
The Perfect Broadway Musical Score
Mister Newport
Jan 16, 2003, 1:28:27 PM
It shouldn’t end abruptly. The singer needs to build to a huge boffo moment through “Yes, now I have everything, not only everything, I have a little bit MORE” (there’s your easy “money note”) then come to a full stop…
           
March 2003, Opera News (New York, NY), “Denyce Graves: ‘The Lost Days’” by Drew Minter, pg. 72:
A few of the cuts, such as the Guastavino selections, are a little too square harmonically and structurally to capture Graves’s fire. But several of the composers (who are also the accompanists) really know how to exploit her voice, making great use of her awesome G at the top of the staff. It’s what some in the industry would call her “money note.”
     
4-10 April 2003, Back Stage (New York, NY), “Finding and choosing the right songs for your audition” by Erik Haagensen, pg. 24:
If you were at a chorus call, you used your 16 bars to show off your voice and hit your money note.
 
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
Something’s Afoot!
Pure White Evil
May 28, 2003, 12:55:37 AM
Hey, all!
Just getting ready for our last weekend of our production of “Something’s Afoot” here in Queens, NY. Quite the fun show, actually! The few people I know who were familiar with the show said the music was pretty bad, but, truthfully, I really enjoy the songs! I play Nigel, so I get the money note in “The Legal Heir”.
         
7 July 2003, The New Yorker (New York, NY), “Books: Movers and Shakers—Black Music’s Crossover Act” by Hilton Als, pp. 76-77:
As the chorus rolled around for the second time, I sensed that the song was building toward an emotional climax that people in the record business sometimes refer to as “the money note”—that moment on the record which seems to have an almost involuntary effect on your insides. (According to researchers at Dartmouth who recently studied the brains of people listening to music, the brain responds physiologically to dramatic swoops in range and pitch.) The money note is the moment in Whitney Houston’s version of the Dolly Parton song “I Will Always Love You” at the beginning of the third rendition of the chorus: pause, drum beat, and then “Iiiiiieeeeeeiiieeii will always love you.” It is the moment in the Celine Dion song from “Titanic,” “My Heart Will Go On”: the key change that begins the third verse, a note you can hear a hundred times and it still brings you up short in the supermarket and transports you from the price of milk to a world of grand romantic gesture—“You’re here / There’s nuthing I fear.”
 
18 April 2004, Home News Tribune (East Brunswick, NJ), “Life is a cabaret Cabaret singer Andrea Marcovicci serenades New Brunswick” by Leslie Granieri, pg. 1:
The cabaret artist is much less interested in the `money note’ and much more interested in the `money word’ or two. Is there a good story in that song? Is there drama in the lyric? Can I get somewhere in the song?”
 
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
Brantley
Noel Katz
Mar 28, 2005, 10:37:41 AM
(...)
Something I’m often telling young performers is that it’s not about the money note, it’s about your individual personality coming through. Brantley correctly identifies a major problem with today’s Broadway, but also acknowledges that there are still idiosyncratic stars, in the grand tradition, still doing musicals.
       
Genius (lyrics) 
Money Note
Camille
Track 7 on
Music Hole (2008—ed.)
(...)
And Dolly Parton wrote it
And Whitney Houston stole it
If Celine Dion could reach it
I’ll hit the money note, the money note
 
Money note, money note, money note, money note
 
I wanted to take it higher
Ooh you would be amazed
I just want to beat Mariah
Oh, let me deserve their place
       
January 2009, Today’s Woman (Louisville, KY), “Reach for the Ecstasy” by Mary Cartledgehayes, pp. 46-47:
It was an adventure (in 2002—ed.), indeed, and then, near the end of the concert, Yo- Yo Ma began to play a piece of western music on his cello. He sat near the edge of his seat to bow or pluck strings. He leaned back into the chair, pulled the cello toward him, held and stroked it, caressed the body of that instrument as though it were a woman he adored. The music came to me, stepped into my eyes and hair and clothing, lifted me off my feet and held me spinning in its grip above the concert hall, holding, holding me. And then came that one moment, what I’ve heard is called the money note, that one amazing moment when everything I’ve ever felt of love and woe and joy was united in the note he played, and tears splashed down my cheeks and into my lap with no awareness on my part until it was over.
   
Twitter
Erin Quill (she/her)
@Equill
Life is better in a musical, cuz Eleven O’Clock number redeems all personality flaws your character has shown thus far in one ‘money’ note
9:53 PM · May 25, 2010
     
Twitter
@PiaGlenn
@PiaGlenn
Cerrome you’re clearly hitting the money note of the big ballad that ends Act 1 of most musicals. This is Musical Theater Posing 101🎵🎶
Quote Tweet
MonsterKing
@CerromeRussell
·
Oct 4, 2016
I need to find out why I’m doing this move onstage 83% of the time
10:13 AM · Oct 4, 2016
 
YouTube
#Camille
Camille - Money Note (Official Music Video)
Camille
Mar 16, 2017
 
YouTube
Lin-Manuel Miranda Teaches You Broadway Slang | Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair
Nov 27, 2018
Vanity Fair cover star Lin-Manuel Miranda teaches you Broadway slang.
 
Vanity Fair
SLANG SCHOOL | SEASON 1 | EPISODE 35
Lin-Manuel Miranda Teaches You Broadway Slang
Vanity Fair cover star Lin-Manuel Miranda teaches you Broadway slang.
Released on 11/27/2018
Transcript
(...)
Money note.
This is the note that you sound great singing.
See, Idina Menzel in any Idina Menzel song.
♪ Let the storm rage ♪
You know the one I’m talking about, money note.
 
Twitter
The Avery-Jean Brennan (They/She)
@TheAveryJean
If ending a musical on a money note being held forever is overdone, then I don’t want to be innovative.
1:39 AM · Aug 9, 2019
 
Twitter
Mat
@Blazi0
I was meant to sing female musical theatre
20% low notes
79% sweet spot
1% money note
2:25 PM · Dec 15, 2019
 
Twitter
Actual Size Productions
@ActualSizeTC
Actual Size Theatre Company are proud to present this astonishing musical theatre revue ‘The Money Note Club - Online’ consisting of a phenomenal line up of West End talent. Streaming live on 24th November @ 7:30pm
Tickets available at http://moneynoteclub.co.uk
7:41 AM · Nov 15, 2020