Not the Same Old Song - Part 5

The Wizard of Oz

Today's post is a bit different.  But I'm hoping that friends of Dorothy will enjoy it.  

I have always loved the movie The Wizard of Oz, including the music by Harold Arlen with lyrics by Yip Harburg.  But I have also long felt that at the moment when Dorothy steps from her house into the land of Oz, and the film changes from black and white to Technicolor, the music doesn't do justice to the magic of the moment.

Like I said, I love Harold Arlen's music, and his use of the Over the Rainbow theme in this scene is good, but the rest of the accompanying music doesn't do much for me.  What would it be like, I wondered, if the music were as lush and gorgeous as the visual scene when Dorothy first steps into the land of Oz?

A while ago, I was listening to Samuel Barber's Music for a Scene from Shelley, and it struck me during one passage, that this sounded like the music for Dorothy to enter Oz.  I set to work replacing the soundtrack for the scene, and here is the result.

To set the scene: the tornado has dropped the house into the land of Oz, and Dorothy gets up and opens the door to find out where she is.  Note that the soundtrack is silent until Dorothy opens the door, just like in the original movie.

Would I want to change the original movie?  Not really.  This was just me having fun playing "what if", namely, what if Samuel Barber wrote the music for The Wizard of Oz?

Samuel Barber (1910-1981), at right in the 1936 photo above, was an American composer of classical music.  You might have heard his beautiful Adagio for Strings, but none of his other music has become well-known, which is a shame.  Unlike many other 20th century composers who composed prickly, dissonant music that most people hate, Barber's compositions are lyrical and melodic, and some, like the slow movement of his violin concerto, are hauntingly beautiful.  Music for a Scene from Shelley, from which I took the music for the video, was composed in 1933, so it's nearly contemporaneous with the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie.

Barber was gay.  He lived with his lover, fellow composer Gian Carlo Menotti (at left above).  Menotti is best remembered as the composer of Amahl and the Night Visitors, a Christmas mini-opera about a boy who encounters the three wise men on their way to Bethlehem.

I found the photo above of Menotti and Barber on the blog Vellohomo.  Thanks, Franco!

Finally, so that we have at least one naked man today, this 2021 painting by artist Philip Gladstone is called Tangled (for Samuel Barber).  I don't know anything about the work, but I'm guessing Barber would have liked it.