Beans, Beans, and Nothing but Beans?

A comprehensive guide to the Into the Woods "bean theme"

Those five notes look innocuous enough, don’t they?

Yet generations of Into the Woods fans will recognize them instantly. For the uninitiated, or those in need of a refresher, these notes represent five of the six magic beans that the Baker finds in his father’s hunting jacket. He trades these for Jack’s cow, Milky White—and, when discarded by Jack’s understandably peeved mother, they grow into an enormous beanstalk.

Above, you see the very moment of that fateful transaction. Note the xylophone. “Xylo-” means “wood”; “-phone” means “sound” or “voice.” So, “wood-sound” or “wood-voice.” God is in the details…

In “First Midnight,” Jack tells us confidently that “a bean can begin an adventure.” Much has been written about the five-note “bean theme” you see above, but I don’t believe there exists a complete guide to its many appearances throughout the show. So, let’s embark on our own adventure through Sondheim’s score and look for beans, beans, and nothing but beans.

First, let’s define precisely what we’re searching for. (I can almost hear Cinderella’s mother here: “What, child? Specify.”) One way of describing the bean theme is through its intervalic content: a descending fifth, a rising tone, a descending minor third, and a descending tone. We might note too that the figure begins on the fifth degree of the scale (so, a needle pulling thread), and ends on the sixth degree below (la, a note to follow so). This is important to flag early, because Sondheim really likes this fifth-to-lower-sixth (or so-to-lower-la) motion, and particularly in this score. Pocketing our beans again for a moment, take a look at these examples:

That’s only the 12th measure of the entire show, and already we see that fifth-to-lower-sixth motion on “Festival.” This phrase soon transforms into both Cinderella’s call to the birds and the royal fanfare figure. In both cases, the figures are again bounded by a fifth above and a sixth below (B♭ and C in the E♭ major of each passage):

And once you start to look for this feature, you find it all over the score. Look at “my house” and “our house” below (C♯ and D♯ in their F♯ major context):

… and “nice Prince,” in the first line of “On the Steps of the Palace” (A♭ and B♭ in D♭ major):

… and the last three notes of each measure as “Agony” begins (B and C♯ in E major):

… and, much later, the last two notes of this phrase from “No More” (F and G in B♭ major):

Beyond these woods, there are many more examples of this same melodic instinct. Hum “Anyone Can Whistle” to yourself; the “whi-stle” is, again, our fifth-to-lower-sixth. It dominates Sunday in the Park with George’s “Children and Art” too (A♭ and B♭ in their D♭ major context):

It’s useful to look at these examples first because, while the bean theme shares this particular quality, we need to maintain our focus solely on the precise figure itself as we forage through this score.

Act I

We first hear the bean theme in the Prologue, as the Witch tells her tale. Right from the beginning, we are encouraged to associate these notes with magic:

The figure gets squeezed, constricted, as her story continues—but the contour of the phrase remains easy to see:

The theme’s final appearance in the Prologue comes as the Witch introduces the central quest of the show (look at the upper voice of the lowest staff):

It is after “Hello, Little Girl” that we hear the theme, again in that “witchy” rhythmic guise we heard in the Prologue, underscoring this tense exchange between the Baker and the Witch:

And then we hear Rapunzel. There will be a lot of Rapunzel from here on out; her music, we learn, is her mother’s music. Or perhaps we should think of it the other way around: we know that Rapunzel is always on the Witch’s mind, excessively so, and maybe that is why this theme features so prominently as the Witch tells her story in the Prologue. It’s fun to note too that when we first heard the theme, during the Witch’s tale, it was set in E♭ major. When Rapunzel sings for the first time, she does so in D♯ major. The same notes, enharmonically respelled…

So, by the time we reach the crucial bean exchange, we associate the “bean theme” not with beans at all, but with a mother and daughter, and with magic. And we can see here how the five notes are immediately woven into the softer fabric of “I Guess This Is Goodbye”:

And throughout this brief number, three out of the five beans stay with Jack musically. It’s as if Sondheim has heard Jack’s mother, a few minutes earlier: “Less than five!” You can see the remaining three notes in the upper voice of the middle staff below:

This remains the case for “Maybe They’re Magic,” which “I Guess This Is Goodbye” segues into:

At the end of “Maybe They’re Magic,” there is a cheeky full statement of all five notes again, the first time we’ve heard the figure since just after the handover. Take a look at the final measure below. Sondheim literally “justifies the beans” with the most emphatic of endings, a V-I. But is this end “right?” Or is it, like Act I as a whole, wrapped up all too quickly, all too neatly…?

The next appearance of the bean theme will depend on which production you see. “Our Little World” may follow next. This number was added for the London production, and is now marked optional in the score that is leased for performance. And note that Rapunzel’s version of this theme is the original five notes, plus a looping of four of those five notes, as if she’s stuck—which, of course, she is.

Throughout the number, Rapunzel interjects with the theme between the Witch’s lines…

… and she returns to her looping pattern mid-song:

The music that accompanies the lowering of Rapunzel’s hair is also built out of this motif. Sondheim disrupts it by a single semitone, the fifth note of the figure becoming a B♭ where we by now should expect an A. This sets off the chain of chromatic descent you see below:

In the underscore after “Our Little World,” Rapunzel remains musically present as her Prince considers both her name and his prospects:

That was the last time we will hear the theme prior to the beanstalk growing, which occurs just after “A Very Nice Prince.” We don’t hear the motif again until “First Midnight.” Over to Rapunzel again:

And then we reach “Giants in the Sky,” where Jack truly claims this bean theme as his own. The titular words of this number are, of course, the five beans. And this makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? After the adventure of his lifetime, Jack is full of beans (literally).

And we can see how the verses of “Giants in the Sky” are entirely made up of these beans. And as Jack’s melody continues beyond the measures below, it grows, rather like the beanstalk itself…

As we reach the chorus, the bean theme becomes a countermelody. It is as if Jack, having climbed his beanstalk during the verse, has reached its summit and thus has transcended the notes themselves.

After the bean-theme saturation of “Giants in the Sky,” we hear it next as an imitation of Rapunzel within “Agony”:

Just before “A Very Nice Prince (Reprise),” we hear Rapunzel herself again:

At the end of “A Very Nice Prince (Reprise),” we think we might hear the figure in full, during the thrilling passage below—but the fourth note sours and becomes a C♭ (where we would have expected a D):

As “Stay With Me” begins, we recognize (from the distinctive rhythm and those staccato stabs below) the version this theme we first heard in the Prologue, unmistakably introducing the Witch:

And then something fairly significant happens: the Witch sings the theme for the first time in the show. Not only that, she extends the line beyond the initial five-note figure in the same way we have heard Rapunzel do so frequently. Rapunzel may wish to be free from her mother, but she has been singing her song all along:

And as we approach the end of that number, we hear the theme at possibly its most tender, certainly until “No One Is Alone.” “Stay with me, the world is dark and wild,” the Witch sings. “Stay a child while you can be a child.”

The theme continues to churn below the Witch’s confrontation with her daughter just after “Stay With Me.” (“I gave you protection, and yet you disobeyed me” and so on):

We next here the theme in Rapunzel mode as underscore just before “On the Steps of the Palace,” when Rapunzel is mentioned by the Narrator…

… after which Milky White is restored to life. Naturally, at that moment, Jack’s magic harp plays the bean theme:

Here’s a fun one. The theme underscores the Witch’s fury at the Baker and his Wife for using Rapunzel’s hair as part of the quest. But look what’s going on in the music printed below. Rapunzel’s version of the theme is sounding in A♭ major, underneath which the original five-note figure is sounding over and over again in D major. Not only is Sondheim treating us to the dissonance of hearing the two themes concurrently a tritone apart, but the lower version repeats just the original five notes, meaning it quickly gets out of sync with the Rapunzel version above it. Multi-dimensional disorder!

The final time we hear these notes in Act I, it is a calmer affair. The stretched-out figure below accompanies narration concerning Rapunzel:

Act II

Congratulations on making it this far! You are substantially further than halfway through, I promise. The first hint of the bean theme in Act II occurs in its Prologue, played on Jack’s harp again. But, as you can see below, although we hear the right shape, the right contour, the figure is all contained within the span of a fifth. The motif has been compressed, squeezed again. A sign that things aren’t “so happy” as they seem?

Next, we hear it as part of the now-familiar Witch vamp, just before “Do you think it was a bear?”

In “Agony (Reprise),” Sondheim treats us to a nicely unique version of the figure. Rapunzel’s prince sticks mainly to the notes (honoring Rapunzel herself more than he might like to admit by doing so?); Cinderella’s prince, meanwhile, decorates:

In “Witch’s Lament,” what we noted as part of “Stay With Me” remains true. The two numbers are pretty consistent as it relates to our theme:

In “Your Fault,” it feels as though our theme is never far away. Jack very nearly sings it here. Is he, perhaps, spilling the beans in more ways than one?

When we get a more emphatic, full bean statement from Jack, he loops the figure in the same manner as Rapunzel. Does Jack, in this moment, feel similarly trapped?

After several more outings during “Your Fault,” we hear the figure next in “No One Is Alone,” where it famously returns in its most soothing guise as a countermelody to the vocal line:

And just like that, we have reached the Finale! Almost inevitably, Rapunzel provides the first figure here:

We then come to what is essentially a reprise of “No One Is Alone,” so we hear the theme in that guise once again:

And the very last time we hear the five notes we’ve been tracking across this score? It is as an accompaniment to the Witch, as she reminds us that “children will listen.” This “bean theme,” then, is so much more than just that. It begins and ends with the Witch. It lives in this score through her magic, her stolen beans, her smothered daughter.

Never mind the beanstalk. In Sondheim’s hands, beans talk—and this is the tale they tell. That is the spell.