Circle & Yearn in the Wizard of Oz

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ROB KAPILOW, Composer: You know, amazingly, the answer to that starts with the very first two notes. In this famous opening idea, there’s really only two ideas. One of them, I call leap. The other one, I call circle and yearn. And it’s important.

(CROSSTALK)

JEFFREY BROWN: Leap and circle and yearn.

ROB KAPILOW: It’s important you learn these technical terms, Jeffrey.

JEFFREY BROWN: Oh, I see.

ROB KAPILOW: Circle and yearn.

So, it starts off with this.

JEFFREY BROWN: I didn’t learn that with piano lessons, by the way, right?

ROB KAPILOW: It’s time.

We start off with this big leap. This is a full octave leap. That’s a big leap for a popular song. In fact, producers were worried that nobody would buy the song because it would be too hard to sing this opening leap.

Now, this leap isn’t just a big leap musically. It’s a leap between two different worlds and two parts of the voice. The first note is kind of low down there in chest voice. It’s Dorothy’s troubled reality. It’s Kansas, aridity, no flowers. It’s the black and white of the beginning of the film.