By uniting extant scholarship with focused motivic analysis and primary source material from the composer, Stephen Schwartz, my research reveals the dramatic significance of the "defying gravity" motive in the climactic ending of the 2024 film adaptation of the musical Wicked.

My contextual analysis interprets the prominent D♭ — G♭ ascending-fourth motive as the "defying gravity" musical cryptogram (i.e. D♭efying G♭ravity). I outline the ways in which occurrences of the D♭ — G♭ motive align with critical inflection points of magical and metaphorical "defying" in the film. Overall, the most striking recurrence of the "defying gravity" motive is in the last two cadences of the film. For example, the penultimate cadence is a seemingly incongruent expanding polychordal wedge. However, motivic and enharmonic re-interpretation reveals a striking combination of two inflected strands of the defying-gravity motive — one in the ascending melodic line and the other in the chain of descending major six-four triads, thereby forming an intensely conflicted restatement of D♭ — G ♭ as a metaphor for the divergence--and perhaps "defiance"(!)-- on screen. In the end, my synthesis of motivic analysis, primary source references, and extant scholarship offers a nuanced interpretation of "Defying Gravity" that can impact Wicked filmgoers, theorists, and witches of all kinds.