Stephen Schwartz on 'The Prince of Egypt,' 'Pocahontas' and Cynthia Erivo's 'extraordinary' performance in the 'Wicked' film

Over the course of his storied career, composing legend Stephen Schwartz has written memorable songs for Broadway, live-action films and animated classics. The Prince of Egypt: The Musical stands at the center of that Venn diagram.

Newly available on digital services in time for the holidays courtesy of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, The Prince of Egypt is a vibrant recording of the 2017 West End stage show based on the 1998 animated film from DreamWorks SKG. In adapting the movie to the stage, Schwartz ported over existing songs like “All I Ever Wanted” and “When You Believe,” and also composed new tunes based on his original research into Middle Eastern music.

“DreamWorks arranged for the creative team to take a field trip to Egypt,” Schwartz tells Yahoo Entertainment. “I listened to a lot of music from the Middle East, like Hebrew lullabies and folk tunes and got a bunch of CDs on the streets of Cairo that were Egyptian pop. I tried to bring all of that to composition of the score.”

In the case of “When You Believe,” Schwartz also made memorable use of the Jewish prayer, “Mi Chamocha,” weaving it into the original lyrics of the song — a device that’s repeated in both the film and the stage show. “The idea was suggested by one of the film’s directors when we were at the Sinai Desert," Schwartz recalls. "The basic song was written then, and later DreamWorks put me in touch with a rabbi who spoke Hebrew and gave the text to what was called the ‘Song of the Sea,’ which is what the Hebrew tribes purportedly sang when they escaped from bondage. I took the parts that were expressions of gratitude and uplift and put together that little section with ‘Mi Chamocha,’ to give it the feeling of a genuine Hebraic folk tune.”

That section is notably absent in the chart-topping 1998 cover version that united two major music icons: Mariah Carey and the late Whitney Houston. Schwartz credits then-DreamWorks animation head, Jeffrey Katzenberg, with pulling off that particular pairing. “That had become the tradition when an animated feature was released,” he says now. “Jeffrey had the idea of getting those two icons to duet together and because he’s very persuasive, he got them to do it!”

While Schwartz attended some of those recordings, hitmaking producer and songwriter Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds took point on adapting “When You Believe” for Carey and Houston. “Kenny felt there needed to be a bridge for the song, so a new bridge was written to make it more pop-oriented,” Schwartz says. “I provided new lyrics for that, but the arrangement was something done by Kenny and his team.”

The composer recently got the chance to hear a new version of another one of his best-loved tracks. The first part of Jon M. Chu’s two-movie adaptation of Schwartz’s 2003’s Broadway smash Wicked is scheduled to hit theaters next November, with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande taking over the roles originated onstage by Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, respectively.

For 20 years, Menzel’s performance of Wicked's signature show-stopper “Defying Gravity” has been the version that every aspiring musical theater star has had to live up to. But Schwartz — who confirms he’s been involved with the recordings for the film — suggests that Erivo is going to set her own standard.

“Cynthia has an absolutely extraordinary vocal instrument,” he raves. “Her performance of that song, as well as ‘No Good Deed’ and ‘The Wizard and I’ are pretty hair-raising. She’s extraordinary. Of course, Idina is also world-class, so I don’t think one can compare them in terms of quality. They’re both extraordinary performances and very personal performances.”

For our latest Composer’s Reel, Schwartz revisits some of his most-loved songs from stage and screen, from Godspell to The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

“Butterflies Are Free” from Butterflies Are Free (1969)

Schwartz launched his composing career by penning the title track for Leonard Gershe’s 1969 Broadway play, which was later adapted into a film starring Goldie Hawn. Ed Ames recorded the version that’s heard in the film.

That was my start in professional theater. I was 21 years old and had just come to New York. I had gotten an agent who was representing the out-of-town tryout version of that show. It was very successful and it was going to come to Broadway. The main character was a blind folk singer, and they wanted a song that he had supposedly written. My agent knew about this and said, “If you want to write a song on spec, I'll submit it.” To make it real for the character, I wrote the song on the guitar, and tried to keep [the chords] very, very simple and include non-visual imagery in the lyrics — it's all about things you feel. The producer decide to put it into the show, and when it was made into the movie, they kept it in the movie!

“Day by Day” from Godspell (1971)

Debuting the same year as Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell was a smash hit that’s been performed countless times since — most famously a legendary 1972 Toronto production that featured Victor Garber, Martin Short and Gilda Radner in their first major roles. “Day by Day” also had a life outside the show, when the Original Cast Album track landed on the pop charts.

When I was starting out, there was a big gap between pop music and show music. But thanks to Hair, theater songs could become pop hits as well. In fact, the record company tried to get The 5th Dimension, which had had a big hit with “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” from Hair, to do “Day by Day,” but they kept stalling and stalling. Finally, when Godspell won for the Grammy for Cast Album, I talked to the executive running the record company and he said, “Why don’t you just put out the version from the album while you’re waiting for an actual single?” We did, and it became a hit record! I heard it at the beach coming out of radios.

The lyrics for “Day by Day” were written as a prayer by St. Richard of Chichester in the 12th or 13th century. It was originally just those six lines, and when the show become a hit, the publisher asked for more verses. They said, “You can’t have a hit with just six lines repeated over and over!” But I said, “I don’t know what to tell you — that’s all there is.” Several of the songs in Godspell are baed on Episcopal hymns. If you get the hymnal and thumb through it, you’ll see some of those lyrics.

“I Guess I’ll Miss the Man” from Pippin (1972)

The 5th Dimension may have stalled on recording “Day by Day,” but The Supremes didn’t throw away their shot to put this song from Schwartz’s cult Broadway show on wax. Their version crested into the Top 20 on the Billboard charts.

Our producer successfully interested Motown — which had never done a cast album before — in releasing the cast album of Pippin. Part of the deal was that Motown artists would record pop versions of some of the songs, and I was thrilled because I was a complete Motown freak. Not just The Supremes, but also The Temptations and Martha and the Vandellas — those groups completely changed my life in terms of the kind of music I listened to and the kind of music I wrote. “I Guess I’ll Miss the Man” is actually very different in the show, because the character isn’t supposed to be singing a song at all. She starts out a cappella and then the orchestra comes in very reluctantly. So there’s a whole dramatic event happening onstage that’s different to just hearing the song.

“Colors of the Wind” from Pocahontas (1995)

Schwartz made his Disney debut alongside regular Mouse House composer, Alan Menken, who had helped relaunch the studio’s animated musical fortunes with hits like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Schwartz stepped in for lyricist Howard Ashman, who died in 1991 after collaborating with Menken on those seminal movies.

“Colors of the Wind” was actually the first song that Alan and I wrote together. As with so many of these songs we’re discussing, the origins had to do with storytelling. We worked with our collaborators on the film in terms of the structure of the story and then identified what the musical moments might be. I always try to start with the path of least resistance — what's the song that seems clearest? For me, it was the song that Pocahontas sings to John Smith in which she espouses the Native American philosophy as opposed to the British colonial philosophy. I read a lot of Native American poetry and tried to bring that philosophy into it, while also trying to write a song that was right for the character and for that moment. It became something larger than the movie itself, but weren’t thinking that way. We were just trying to tell our story.

“Hellfire” from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

For his second Disney collaboration with Menken, Schwartz penned one of the riskiest songs in Mouse House history. Sung by the movie’s villain, a deeply repressed judge, “Hellfire” explores topics of lust and desire — things you don’t typically expect to hear in a Disney cartoon.

We thought we would never get away with that song! Alan and I were like, “There’s no way this is going into the movie.” Once again, we wrote what we felt should be there. I talked to Alan about the end of the first act of Tosca, which is one of my favorite operas. Disney was a very, very adventurous company in those days. They’d had a lot of success by pushing the envelope, and I admired that. I don’t do much work for Disney these days, but I think that a lot of movie companies have retreated from a place of courage and become more [about] playing it safe and corporate. I think that’s too bad. Disney has enough success — it seems to me that they could be a little braver now then they are.

“That’s How You Know” from Enchanted (2007)

A decade after Hunchback, Schwartz and Menken reteamed for Kevin Lima’s spirited live action version of a traditional Disney princess musical. While Enchanted seems like a shoo-in for a Broadway adaptation, it has yet to tread the boards. Still, Schwartz remains hopeful that the curtain could rise on a stage version one day.

Enchanted was fun because we were making fun of Disney and making fun of ourselves. With “That’s How Your Know,” we were satirizing the idea of an Alan Menken song like “Under the Sea.” And then Kevin Lima, the director, had the idea that it would be set in Central Park and everyone there would be magically attracted to Giselle [played by Amy Adams], whether it was animals or people. She would gradually accumulate all these people around her and the song would start a cappella and then grow and grow into this enormous production number with people dancing and street bands playing. Meanwhile, the Patrick Dempsey character is very embarrassed about how public it’s all getting!

I think it would be really cool to see Enchanted on Broadway — there's been discussion of it from time to time. You’d have to figure out how to jump back and forth between animation and live actors, but the technology definitely exists now. I could see it happening someday, although I can’t tell you that there are immediate plans for doing that.

The Prince of Egypt: The Musical is now available on most digital services from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment