Some really great music has been created for Broadway shows, with composers like Steven Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber etc. The last couple days have been difficult for me with the pipe bomb mailings and the massacre in Pittsburg. So often when confronted by sad things out of my control, I turn to music as a healing prescription.
So it was I turned to the music of one of my favorite musicals, Wicked, with music by Steven Schwartz for comfort. The musical made its debut in 2003 and ran more or less continuously until 2013. The lead actress and singer, Idina Menzel really was the main reason for the play’s success. The play was based on a 1995 book, The Wicked Witch of the West, which was essentially an allegory about the nature of good and evil. Stephen Schwartz turned the book in the dramatic long lasting musical by writing the music and most of the lyrics.
There are two songs in this play that are, to borrow a title, “Chicken Soup for the Soul”. The first is “Defying Gravity” about the ability of the human soul to summon the energy to defy tragedy and problems to rise above it all and carry on as in “Defying Gravity”. The second song is “For Good” to remind all of us of the beauty of most human relationships and how our existence is enriched by the good in most humans. So here are two You Tube videos to help us make the coming week even better.