The five notes

Last month I shared some thoughts on a piece of music from Into the Woods, by Stephen Sondheim. Still working on this show … and am finding all sorts of musical treasures. Case in point – the “five notes.”

There are five notes that appear throughout the score in various forms and I believe for various purposes / reasons. These are also probably the five most important notes in the entire show! The first time we hear these notes, they are played by the violin as the Witch makes her entrance at the beginning of Act 1. These five notes are a part of the music used as the Witch is recounting the tale of her garden (an event that happened before the show actually starts).

They signify five beans … beans being very important to the story. Ya know – Jack, beanstalk, and all that. Now these five notes appear several times throughout the score.

First time spells disaster

This first appearance is the violin playing them above a very dissonant series of chords in the rest of the orchestra (minor seconds galore!). So the musical impression is one of these beans as part of the problem; they are perhaps even a cause of the problem; and they are immediately associated with disharmony, broken promises, and even some bit of tragedy.

Underpinning a soliloquy

At a later point in the show, the character of the Baker has a brief soliloquy as he contemplates whether or not to take Little Red Riding Hood’s cape. She’s made it clear that she is very partial to her cape, and the Baker is considering the implications of stealing it from her.

The accompaniment in the orchestra is a variation of the five notes. The top note of each chord are the same interval. (Go ahead and play them on the piano to hear what I mean … I’ll wait). When we first learn about the beans from the Witch she tells us that many of the problems started when they were first stolen some 17 years before. And now the Baker is contemplating whether or not to steal a cape. He believes that he is justified because his reason for having the cape outweighs Little Red’s reason … hers is more that it is a comfort because it was something her mother made just for her; but the Baker needs this cape as one of the objects that will help to lift a curse from him and his wife.

Theft is the main consideration here … And so, as the Baker is weighing the opportunity and implication of just taking the cape from Red, as he sings the five notes underpin his soliloquy.

We all know what happens next …

The beans, of course, figure prominently in the story of Jack (you know – of “Jack and the beanstalk” fame). The Baker and his wife have to gather several objects – a cape as red as blood is one and another is a cow as white as milk. And who should have such a cow? Why, Jack of course! The Baker and his wife convince Jack that these five beans (which they found in the Baker’s father’s jacket pocket by the way) are magic and extremely valuable. Jack agrees to the trade. The Baker gives Jack the beans one at a time … with the xylophone accompanying the transaction:

Well, we all know what happens next in the fairy tale story … Jack’s beans grow into a giant beanstalk and he encounters a, well, giant.

Yet here again we have these five notes. They are prominent at this point in the music because the characters are referencing the beans themselves onstage. The notes are unadorned … they are the beans themselves. And since, we’ve already heard their theme in the music at other times, and each time is dissonant, we get a sense that things aren’t going to go very well with these characters.

Sure enough … the rest of the show deals with the impacts of the choices made and the repercussions of the actions each character takes. The five beans play a pivotal role in all of this – even as the characters don’t yet realize how their decisions are intertwined and that they do indeed affect others along the way.

A resolution is near

Later in the second act, four main characters are confronting the possibility of having to work together to solve a problem – a “giant” of a problem in the form of an actual giant. Of course they are scared, both at the task at hand and at the prospect of what this task is truly asking of them. As the song, “No One Is Alone,” is sung we hear those five notes in the flute – again floating on top of the rest of the orchestra …

But this time the orchestra is completely consonant – not a single note of dissonance. It’s as though the beans are part of something beautiful rather than something terrifying. There is reassurance as we hear the five notes. And then …

Their curse is reversed

Within the same song, “No One Is Alone,” we hear the five notes … but they are inverted now (“people make mistakes”).

The beans’ effect has been reversed. When once their effect was to tear people apart, to facilitate people lying to each other, whereby everyone acts in their own selfish interest … now people have come together; they are being honest with one another; and they are figuring out how to work together, as a community, to tackle and solve their problems and to support each other.