The "Into The Woods" song no one talks about
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- Опубліковано 4 лют 2025
- We all know and love Giants In The Sky, On The Steps of the Palace, The Witch's Rap, Moments In The Woods, I Know Things Now, Your Fault / Last Midnight, etc. But here's one song from "Into the Woods" (Music & Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, Book by James Lapine) that nobody is talking about! So in this video, I give my full analysis of "Maybe They're Magic," sung by the Baker's Wife, which includes the Bean Motif, the Witch's Chord, the "I Wish" motif, the Baker's Wife's melody, and more.
Into the Woods recently had a Broadway Revival starring Sara Bareilles, Brian D'Arcy James, Gavin Creel, Joshua Henry, Patina Miller, Montego Glover, Joaquina Kalukango, and more.
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Check out the "Moments In The Woods" video:
• Analyzing "Moments In ...
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ABOUT THE CHANNEL:
Hi! My name is Mateo, I'm a professional musical theatre composer, splitting my time between Toronto & NYC right now.
Every Thursday on this channel, I post a video analyzing the music theory behind some of the great Broadway musicals of all time! In the past, I've analyzed works by Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown, Pasek & Paul, Jeanine Tesori, and Stephen Schwartz, just to name a few. I also recently recorded a video reacting to Aaron Tveit being cast in Sweeney Todd, despite the fact that he's not a baritone.
Every Sunday on this channel, I post a video update of the progress I'm making on my writing projects, so you can follow along with the process as I create new musicals from scratch.
And every Tuesday on this channel, I post a video reacting to a performance by a star of musical theatre, discussing what makes them so amazing.
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The depth of Sondheim's brilliance is far beyond what most of us realize. Thanks for teaching us how to see, Mateo
Mind blown! The way Sondheim buried all these musical information in the score is pretty insane!
You made me think back to "No One Is Alone" because I thought, hmm, doesn't Cinderella start that song? What,does she start with? Oh, right -Mother cannot guide you-, just like the mother of the baker's baby, who cannot guide them anymore like she did in "Maybe They're Magic".
I knew this show backwards and forwards for YEARS before I got the joke of this song 😅
Love your analysis. I think it was Sideways who did a video about the bean motif, but he didn’t go into this song at all, and it’s always been one of my favourites. 🥰
the pun at the end is everything though
This song is amazing I can't believe it's only like one minute long
I'm half convinced the entire musical was built around the 'end justifies the beans' pun :P
I was so hoping this would be the song you would talk about when I saw the title of the video! This is my favourite song from Into The Woods, I love it so much
Instant subscribe - I am constantly talking about how no one ever talks about (and productions rarely get right) Maybe They're Magic!
Literally one of my favourite songs from this musical. Partially because I love the Baker's Wife and therefore have sung her songs more than any others. I just love how the lyrics are so right but wrong.
I’m playing the witch in my college production of ITW and the slightly different witch chord is so fascinating and makes so much sense!
Watching this feels like a great celebration on the day Sondheim would have turned 94 ;) Your analysis-videoes are always brilliant and so interesting and this was very enlightening and makes me love Into the Woods (my favorite musical) even more.
Thank you so much for this amazing video! Into the Woods is my favorite musical ever. Would love an Into the Woods dissection song by song, your passion is contagious!
omggg that idea is so crazy that I just might have to do it 😂😂😂
the part at 10:16 also sounds like a sped-up version of the piano for Children Will Listen. I can hear it best right when the Baker starts telling his son their story
Loveeee this analysis and how thorough you were! Especially since I don’t play piano but have always wanted to, this is so insightful for me ❤
Thx for doing this. Would you believe that the HS production I saw the other night was the first time I had seen the show.
Into the Woods is probably my favorite musical and ive had the honor of playing Cinderella twice (first time as a senior in high school and a few months ago as an adult 16 years later) and I feel like i'm always finding something new in the show. I remember in college i had to write journals for psychology and one of them was discussing this song
And that motif is in Stay With Me too I never realized
To be fair, I always liked this song but never focused on it, but when I heard the most recent recording with Sara Bareilles it clicked :)
Brilliant! I had no idea how much I didn’t know. Stephen, we are ALL below your level of genius, boy, we all are in the dark, AND the Woods!
Love this!
So many details hidden in one song! Well done, Mateo.
Yes this is one of my favorite songs i love that you talk about it!!
Very interesting! Love this video.
What a lovely video! The show is the first show I fell in love with when I saw it as a trial on PBS
I am not proficient in music reading or theory, but I’ve been singing the songs since I was old enough and maybe before lol
It was so cool to see the intention behind the music.
I went to college from vocal music even though I couldn’t read music. I just had a talent for singing and so the words “music theory“ filled me with terror because obviously that degree did not work out. Thank you for giving me a taste of music theory with this lovely video❤
i had no clue what song it was gonna be and i’m so glad to see what song you picked even if it surprised me !! like yes absolutely this song is underrated i’m so excited to hear your take on it
Loved this!
Another Into the Woods video! Yay! I just watched your video on Moments in the Woods and so loved it, awesome break down.
This song and motif set the stage for my1998 thesis, in which I argued that we're exploring Freud's balance of Id, Ego, and Superego. It. Clearly sets unfettered ego and Superego in place .
Great analysis.
Thanks for the great analysis. Where can one purchase these Piano-Vocal scores?
Your channel’s awesome! So glad to discover it through this vid!!
Thank you so much! I hope you'll stick around for future videos :-)
Love your videos on Into the Woods, they've been super helpful for researching in prep for doing the show.
Can I ask your opinion on why you think the bean motif is made up of five notes when there are six beans? It always bugs me as I can't figure out why that last bean gets missed. I know Jack was only responsible for five of the beans but the sixth bean, the bean Cinderella throws, is the on that allows the Giant to come down into the Kingdom and destroy it. I wondered your thoughts on this.
Really interesting point! My instinct is that it has to do with the looped ending.
Many times when the bean motif comes up, the last 4 notes are looped (such as in the melody of Giants in the Sky, or when Rapunzel is singing “ahhh”).
One possible explanation is that the bean motif can loop infinitely to represent any number of beans.
This isn’t a very good explanation, though, because it doesn’t address the fact that we usually only hear it in its 5-note form, even before the Baker’s Wife gives Jack only five beans and pockets the other one, or even when referring to the beanstalk which grew out of one single bean.
I think a better explanation is that, actually, each note does not represent an individual bean; rather those five notes represent “magic beans” as an idea.
What does everyone else think? Curious to hear!
@@MusicTheatreTheory Thank you for your response, I like the idea that the notes represent the magic beans as a whole. Thanks for this!
Analysis on "It Takes Two" and "Last Midnight" would be great, sir, please. And, for as much as I deslike to admit it, "Hello, Little Girl" is also a nice song
After watch your videos, I want to make my music that much better. I think I need to end one my liter songs with a pun!
15:46 Beautiful
Sondheim has no rivals. He's the epitome of his art form. My favorite moment in Into the Woods is in fact a pair of songs: it's how Your Fault's counterpoints lead into The Last Midnight and how both songs relate to each other. The lyrics are also terrific. I'm Brazilian, the songwriting tradition I feel more connected to has a different flavor. But anyone vaguely interested in songs should see Sondheim as an absolute master of the craft. He's right there with Schubert, Puccini, McCartney, Michel Legrand, Jobim, each one in his own lineage but equally impressive songwriters.
I've always loved this number and in my opinion it's the ONLY number where the Original Cast Recording is inferior in ANY way.
The way Sara Bareilles sings the vocal line on the new cast recording is absolute perfection, ESPECIALLY the lines "No one waits / When fortune intervenes / And maybe they're really magic / Who knows?". I don't know why Joanna Gleason chose to sing a B natural on "intervenes" every time but it really skews the vocal line tbh. Only when the new cast recording came out did this number really land for me so huge props to Sara Bareilles.
first?
Do people really still really do this?
@@julesk2629 lol No, not really, especially not me. But Mateo’s a good friend of mine so I just did it ironically :P
@@AustinNebbia Haha fair. And I wasn’t trying to come after you I just was teasing since it’s SUCH an old thing to comment :)