I may have a musical idea and expand on it, but I never go far without bringing the other one in, because you can paint yourself into a corner if you write a whole tune or even half a tune with no idea what you're going to say in it — because you're then going to be hard-pressed to find words that fit inside the music easily and accomplish exactly what you want them to accomplish. None of the people profiled in this show were particularly remarkable, other than John Wilkes Booth, who was a well-known actor before he … He is not unique in writing the lyrics and music to all his shows in the past 40 years, but no one else comes close as a master of both words and melody. The six films he picked for his birthday tribute were The Mind Reader (1933), starring the under-appreciated Warren William as a con-man posing as a clairvoyant; The Clock (1945), Vincente Minnelli's classic film of war-time love, starring Judy Garland & Robert Walker; … No one would say that of Sondheim.
I’m delighted. "There are certain rhymes Sondheim says he would never use again — "They're words that have many meanings and many connotations so that's what I mean," Sondheim says.And words, he says, are why he's in theater in the first place. How smart of the organisers of tomorrow night’s Olivier theatre awards to bestow their 2011 Special Award on Stephen Sondheim, placing him in a (mostly British) coterie that includes Harold Pinter, John Gielgud, Maggie Smith – and Laurence Olivier himself. "Then I try to start from the first song, and if I have a lyric line or a phrase, I'll expand a bit. Hulton Archive/Getty Images I’ve often thought anyone who writes for a living (including humble journalists) could profit from studying Sondheim’s lyrics closely. "During this musical sketching process, Sondheim doesn't record himself — he just makes notations on what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. "Otherwise I would be in concert music. 24 Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: a life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Incorporated, 1998), 3-4.
There’s no look-at-me artifice in Being Alive, his great anthem from Company. Genres: Musical theatre: Occupation(s) Composer; lyricist; Years active: 1954–present: One of the … Yet over the years, some have admired his talents without actually enjoying them. ... You make a list of rhymes that are in some way relevant, and then you use them. So I won’t tell you what to think about Assassins, but I will say this: I think it’s vitally important for Americans to consider what can drive people to such horrifying acts. And then you'll say 'All right, I've got this line that ends with "day" and I want to say "She loves him,' " and then you go through the rhyming dictionary. "We had four-hour sessions once a week and we would spend the first hour analyzing songs by Though Babbitt influenced Sondheim's compositional techniques, he says it was the film composer Sondheim says he wrote the music to mimic the madness that's taking place in Sweeney's head — and that he originally resisted writing a conclusion that would move an audience to applaud. Sondheim c. 1976. ... At the same time, I'm also jotting down any lyric," he says. Once I sang Moments in the Woods by Stephen Sondheim and The Audition Sequence by Jason Robert Brown, I realized the amount of extra detail there was in their work in comparison with other songs I previously sang. But Sondheim also writes lyrics with emotionally direct, heart-stopping simplicity. I'd be in another kind of profession. Before him, its dominant tone was frothy and comic. As an adult, I’ve known a handful of memorable experiences in the theatre, and Sondheim has been responsible for a fair portion of them. Frank Sinatra, who had a hit with Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns, once groused: “He could make me a lot happier if he’d write more songs for saloon singers like me.” Well, tough, Frank, because he doesn’t. So, much of the music for Sweeney Todd has a lowering, operatic quality; A Little Night Music feels like an operetta and is largely in waltz time. 27 Ibid., 19.
Nor in this, from Merrily We Roll Along: “Not a day goes by, not a single day/But you’re somewhere a part of my life/And it looks like you’ll stay.” While his lyrics frequently dazzle, what I most admire is their rigorous precision. One thing is clear, both use text and narrative to guide their … He gave the form a dark, dramatic edge, updating it joltingly to mirror the troubling times in which he was working, yet maintaining allegiance to a tradition that included Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hart and his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein. He’s 80 now, and a more benign, jovial figure. Each word is just right, and in its right place. The award gave Sondheim the opportunity to study with avant-garde composer "I wanted to learn compositional technique, and that's what I learned from him," Sondheim says. This is a man who single-handedly changed the face of the American musical. But there's so many rhymes for 'day.' Stephen Sondheim was born in 1930, in New York City, but he moved to Pennsylvania when he was about 10 years old after his parents divorced. Stephen Sondheim. Jordan Fredericks 2017 7 The reason why his experiences while he was young are important is because it eventually led Sondheim to meet his first musical theatre mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, who taught some of Sondheim’s most important musical theatre lessons. Stephen Joshua Sondheim (/ ˈ s ɒ n d h aɪ m /; born March 22, 1930) is an American composer and lyricist known for his work in musical theatre.