Editor’s note: Arachnophonia (“Arachno” = spider / “-phonia” = sound) is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
All links included in these posts will take you to either the library catalog record for the item in question or to additional relevant information from around the web.
Today’s installment of Arachnophonia is by student assistant Isaac (class of 2025) and features the piano/vocal selections score for the 2003 musical Wicked. Thanks, Isaac!
I remember my mom waking me up to go watch my first musical in the downtown of my city, much to my chagrin. I never showed an interest in musicals––really, ever––so spending the first few hours of my weekend attending a show about a movie I’d seen a billion times was never on the top of my bucket list.
Finding our seats in the dark and cramped theater after buying $8 bottles of water just added to my annoyance, especially after finding out that ushers would be watching vigilantly for phone users, so I couldn’t even resort to that. And then the show started. Immediately, I knew this was definitely NOT The Wizard of Oz I’d grown up watching. The dynamic expressions, the mercurial lighting, and the most handsome of musical notes filled every corner of my surroundings: I smiled, I relented.
The cast of Wicked, from the verdant “villain” of the story to the anthropomorphic bat-monkey-things that legitimately frightened me, were equal in energy to the score that is still stuck in my head. “Are musicals my new thing?” I thought to myself. Maybe not fully. Was I puerile to dismiss them in their entirety? Definitely.
So if you haven’t, I would highly recommend watching Wicked, it remains one of my favorite Saturday 12:10 pm’s ever; if you can’t attend a full show (they can be pretty popular), check out the score and imagine yourself on the indelible yellow brick road.