AoS 3 Music for Stage and Screen

‘Defying Gravity’ one of the best-know songs from Wicked. Here it is in the recording released by the original cast, sung by Elphaba, Idena Menzel (‘Elsa’ from Frozen) with some short duet sections with Glinda, Kristin Chenoweth, and then a live version of them, appearing on the David Letterman show.

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The official UK Wicked YouTube Channel is an obvious place to start for other further information.

Here is set work number six, in a couple of different versions.

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It goes without saying that the range of music for stage and screen is vast, but let’s start with another song from Wicked. Details of the rest of the playlist are below.

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Then we need to start exploring other styles within musical theatre to compare and contrast. There a few different types of musicals, and below are songs that represent them.

‘Old-fashioned’ musical theatre

Most of these shows are fairly old, and represent a style of writing which grows out of classical music, but with significant influence from Tin Pan Alley, jazz styles and Hollywood. There are some very famous song-writing teams, perhaps no more than Rodgers and Hammerstein, who were responsible for The Sound of Music, Carousel, Oklahoma, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and many other huge shows. All of these shows started off as musicals in theatre (live performance) and have then been turned into films.

Next is a short montage from a professional production of The Sound of Music.

Now you might not sit through all three hours of Oklahoma, but you could dip into it and find Hugh Jackman playing the lead role (pre-Wolverine here):

What about a bit of classic Broadway, from Guys and Dolls, by Frank Loesser? Here’s a stage revival of ‘Sit down you’re rocking the boat’:

Stephen Sondheim is one of America’s greatest composers, probably best-known for Sweeney Todd and writing the lyrics for West Side Story, with Leonard Bernstein. Here is the song Sunday, from Sunday in the Park with George,a show about the artist Georges Seurat. It’s not that well-known now, but it’s brilliant music and well-performed here, from the 2010 BBC proms:

Tim Minchin’s Matilda the Musical has been a recent smash success in the West End and Broadway, and ‘When I grow up’ is a brilliant song, as is ‘Revolting Children’.

There is so much epic film music composed by John Williams, so choosing some to listen to is tricky.

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