Stephen Schwartz – Haller Music Studio

I confess that I am extremely resistant to listening to soundtracks of new musicals.

A hit song or two from a show is fine — it’s what I use to train Broadway singers, but I’m a composer also. I don’t want to be influenced by someone else’s hooks constantly looping in my brain.

Entire soundtracks do that to me.

And I don’t need to write LES MIZ music.

It’s been done.

A lot.

By the same guys, as a matter of fact.

Show after show after show…

So, I rarely listen to Original Broadway Cast Albums unless forced.

And that’s how I got into listening to WICKED.

Two years back, my five year old daughter insisted on listening to it every day on the way home from kindergarten.

She could read a little bit by that time and her vocabulary really increased by reading and singing along with the WICKED soundtrack lyrics. It was fun to hear her sing in the back seat.

Oh sure, we listened to “Popular” three or four times a day. “The Wizard and I,” “Defying Gravity,” “I’m Not That Girl” and that guy with the funny sounding pudding-in-the-throat tenor voice on the first track always got a laugh from her.

“No One Mourns The Wicked!”

**gargle**

So, my resistance became futile and, having been a “Son of Sondheim” these last thirty years, I finally had to come to the conclusion that musical theatre had moved on and, with WICKED, Stephen Schwartz had just changed the game for us all;

HIGH FIBER LYRICS

No “chicks and ducks and geese better scurry”

no repetitive “this is the moment,” “this, too, is the moment,” “and, oh yeah, this is also the moment”

no already drawn “Send In The Clowns” summations.

These are “high fiber lyrics.” They have layer upon layer of character exposition and development.

Each character speaks to, and in many cases, denies/accepts, their own truth. The King in THE KING & I had three hours to debate with himself. The folks in WICKED have about three minutes before making a move.

Inside rhymes are EVERYWHERE. And not the obvious clever composer, “look at my lyric” inside rhymes — these rhymes are rhythmic, conversational and belong because they are right.

Philosophy: Not every character has their own musical theme (in an opera sense) but each character has a definable philosophy through song. Wagner would be proud.

THE HUMAN VOICE:

Elphaba is a rock star. She belts a high F (as do all my student/client belters), but good on ya, Stephen Schwartz for recognizing that the use of one’s true vocal chords can also be “unlimited” for eight shows a week.

THE IMPACT

It’s already happening, but in the next five years, a “critical mass” of interest in musical theatre will occur at the junior high and high school levels due to WICKED.

And where the chicks go — green though they may be — so do the boys.

So, yeah, Stephen Schwartz changed the game with WICKED; artistically (high fiber lyrics), physically (uh, high fiber belting), and, best of all, he guaranteed those of us who love musical theatre a whole new generation.

Oh, lol, and I still haven’t seen the show.

The Dramatist Guild held its first “annual” West Coast membership meeting yesterday at Theatre West on Cahuenga.

I put “annual” in quotes because you can’t really have a “first” annual because annual events only become annual when you have a “second” annual.

Go figure.

Anyway, Stephen Schwartz was the special guest and, as he is a member of the Dramatist Guild board, the discussion was mostly around the mission of the DG, assistance they can offer to playwrights, composers, et al, and some of the current issues facing dramatists.

About a hundred members and guests attended the meeting.

As a musical theatre composer, I felt a little outnumbered — most of the attendees were obviously non-musical playwrights who asked about copyright, copyright infringement and submission policies. I figured many of them would be able to sing “Day By Day,” but was confident that only two or three of us actually knew the lyrics to “Lion Tamer.”

I didn’t get around to asking Stephen whether he writes lyrics or music first or both at the same time.

I kinda wanted to know that.

I also wanted to ask him about “Meadowlark” (from “The Baker’s Wife”) and how it came to be at such a young age that he composed what is easily one of the greatest musical soliloquies for a woman in the theatre — next to, of course, his newest greatest musical soliloquy for a woman in the theatre, “The Wizard and I.”

And then I wanted to ask him where is the male counterpart to “Meadowlark” and “The Wizard and I.”

Of course, afterwards, I didn’t ask him any of those questions because I had a more important mission.

I wanted to get his autograph for my daughter Julia Rose (who could sing the “Wicked” score backwards and forwards at the age of five).

For those of you with five year olds running around, you KNOW how much they like to listen to their favorite music in the car….over and over and over and over….

I saw it this way: getting Stephen’s autograph for my daughter (now seven) would have been like my dad getting me Richard Rodgers’ autograph or Cole Porter’s or Willie Mays, Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax. I wouldn’t have cared if my dad had talked to any of those guys (he was a bartender in Santa Monica in the early 60’s, I’m sure he talked to plenty of athletes and artists) — that wouldn’t have been a big deal.

But what’s thrilling to a child is a person of achievement or celebrity taking a moment — albeit an incredibly quick moment — to recognize them.

Upon my request, Stephen immediately obliged and signed his name on a lined sheet of paper in my notebinder.

And when I brought it home to Julia

and told her that I met the guy who wrote all the music for “Wicked,”

and that I got his autograph for her,

her eyes got big as she read the lined piece of paper

“To Julia Rose, Defy gravity! Stephen Schwartz”

Then she laughed and jumped up and down and cheered “Oh, wow!”

It’s now in a frame on the family piano.

Yup.

Daddy did the right thing!