Wicked

image by WxMom, from Flickr

Once upon a time, there was a man named L. Frank Baum.  He was an American journalist, actor, salesman and chicken fancier, but most significantly for us, he was an author of children's stories.  His best known work is the series of novels set in the land of Oz, beginning with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900.

image from LibraryThing

This book has had a profound effect on popular culture, spawning sequels, plays and films, influencing fashion, language and the American psyche.  Am I over-reaching to state that we all have experience of some aspect of Baum's creation?

image from LibraryThing

The writer Gregory Maguire was also inspired by the world that Baum created, and by the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland.  Maguire has written four novels set in Oz.  These stories provide an alternate viewpoint of the incidents described in Baum's books, focussing on the witches.

The Broadway musical, Wicked, was based on the first of Maguire's novels, Wicked:  the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.  Music and lyrics are by Stephen Schwartz (who also wrote the lyrics for the movies Pochahontas, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and both music and lyrics for The Prince of Egypt).  The musical tells the life story of the Wicked Witch of the West, whose name, Elphaba, is an amalgam of the initials of L. Frank Baum.

The Wikipedia entry for Wicked (musical), contains some interesting factoids.  For example, as an homage to Harold Arlen, the composer of the movie The Wizard of Oz, Schwartz used the first seven notes of "Over the Rainbow" as part of a recurring theme throughout the score, including in the song "Defying Gravity".  As well, you may already know that two songs from Wicked have been covered on the tv show Glee:  "Defying Gravity" and "For Good."

And now, let's turn to the arrangement of Wicked songs that we're playing.  According to his entry in Wikipedia, the arranger, Michael Sweeney, is a full time employee of music publisher Hal Leonard, where he is Director of Band Publications.  Like many of the composers and arrangers whose works we are playing, Sweeney is a former public school music teacher.  He's composed/arranged over 500 publications (including one called "When Drummers Take Over the World", a prospect both delightful and frightening to contemplate*).

Here's a link to the Music from Wicked audio file on the publisher's webpage, played by professional musicians.

Here's a version by a middle school band.

*Edited to clarify that I make this joke as a member of the support group Parents of Percussionists, and also to add in this link to a performance of the awesome "When Drummers Take Over the World."

Reference
Murphy, B. (2000). L. Frank Baum. Dictionary Of World Biography: The 19th Century, 1-3.