Bbc proms stephen sondheim biography
Stephen Sondheim
American composer and lyricist (–)
Stephen Sondheim | |
|---|---|
Sondheim, c.&#; | |
| Born | ()March 22, New York City, U.S. |
| Died | November 26, () (aged&#;91) Roxbury, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Education | Williams College (BA) |
| Occupation(s) | Composer, lyricist |
| Years&#;active | – |
| Spouse | Jeffrey Romley &#; (m.&#;)&#; |
| Awards | See Full list |
| Musical career | |
| Genres | Musical theater |
Musical artist | |
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (; March&#;22, &#;&#; November&#;26, ) was an American composer and lyricist.
Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical.[1] With his frequent collaborators Harold Prince and James Lapine, Sondheim's Broadway musicals tackled unexpected themes that ranged beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience.[2][3] His music and lyrics are tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of life.[4][5]
Sondheim's interest in musical theater began at a young age, and he was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II.
He began his career by writing the lyrics for West Side Story () and Gypsy (). He transitioned to writing both music and lyrics for the theater, with his best-known works including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (), Company (), Follies (), A Little Night Music (), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (), Merrily We Roll Along (), Sunday in the Park with George (), and Into the Woods ().
Sondheim's numerous awards and nominations include eight Tony Awards, an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, an Olivier Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He also was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in [6] A theater is named after him both on Broadway and in the West End of London.
Bbc proms stephen sondheim biography book According to Sondheim's music director Paul Gemignani , "Part of Steve's ability is this extraordinary versatility". Stephen Sondheim: A Life. My advice would be to take the job. Parr, Andrew MayFilm adaptations of his works include West Side Story (), Gypsy (), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (), A Little Night Music (), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (), Into the Woods (), and West Side Story ().
Early life and education
Sondheim was born on March 22, , into a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Etta Janet ("Foxy"; née Fox; –) and Herbert Sondheim (–).
His paternal grandparents, Isaac and Rosa, were German Jews, and his maternal grandparents, Joseph and Bessie, were Lithuanian Jews from Vilnius.[7] His father manufactured dresses designed by his mother. The composer grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and, after his parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
The only child of affluent parents living in the San Remo at Central Park West, he was described in Meryle Secrest's biography Stephen Sondheim: A Life as an isolated, emotionally neglected child. When he lived in New York City, Sondheim attended the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. He spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin.[7] His mother sent him to New York Military Academy in [8] From to , he attended George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he wrote his first musical, By George, in [8][9] From to , Sondheim attended Williams College.
He graduated magna cum laude and received the Hubbard Hutchinson Prize, a two-year fellowship to study music.[8]
Sondheim traced his interest in theater to Very Warm for May, a Broadway musical he saw when he was nine. "The curtain went up and revealed a piano", Sondheim recalled.
"A butler took a duster and brushed it up, tinkling the keys. I thought that was thrilling."[10]
Sondheim detested his mother,[11] who was said to be psychologically abusive[12] and to have projected her anger from her failed marriage onto her son: "When my father left her, she substituted me for him.
And she used me the way she used him, to come on to and to berate, beat up on, you see. What she did for five years was treat me like dirt, but come on to me at the same time."[14] She once wrote him a letter saying that the only regret she ever had was giving birth to him.[15] When she died in , Sondheim did not attend her funeral.
He had been estranged from her for nearly 20 years.[11][16]
Mentorship by Oscar Hammerstein II
When Sondheim was about ten years old (around the time of his parents' divorce), he formed a close friendship with James Hammerstein, son of lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II, who were neighbors in Bucks County.
The elder Hammerstein became Sondheim's surrogate father, influencing him profoundly and developing his love of musical theater. Sondheim met Hal Prince, who later directed many of his shows, at the opening of South Pacific, Hammerstein's musical with Richard Rodgers. The comic musical Sondheim wrote at George School, By George, was a success among his peers and buoyed his self-esteem.
When he asked Hammerstein to evaluate it as though he had no knowledge of its author, he said it was the worst thing he had ever seen: "But if you want to know why it's terrible, I'll tell you." They spent the rest of the day going over the musical, and Sondheim later said, "In that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime."
Hammerstein designed a course of sorts for Sondheim on constructing a musical.
He had the young composer write four musicals, each with one of the following conditions:[18]
None of the "assignment" musicals were produced professionally. High Tor and Mary Poppins have never been produced: the rights holder for the original High Tor refused permission (though a musical version by Arthur Schwartz was produced for television in ), and Mary Poppins was unfinished.
Hammerstein's death
Hammerstein died of stomach cancer on August 23, , aged [21][22] Sondheim later recalled that Hammerstein had given him a portrait of himself.
Sondheim asked him to inscribe it, and said later of the request that it was "weirdit's like asking your father to inscribe something." Reading the inscription ("For Stevie, My Friend and Teacher") choked up the composer, who said, "That describes Oscar better than anything I could say."[23]
Education
Sondheim began attending Williams College, a liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, whose theater program attracted him.[24] His first teacher there was Robert Barrow:
everybody hated him because he was very dry, and I thought he was wonderful because he was very dry.
And Barrow made me realize that all my romantic views of art were nonsense. I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear "dah-dah-dah-DUM." It never occurred to me that art was something worked out. And suddenly it was skies opening up. As soon as you find out what a leading tone is, you think, Oh my God.
What a diatonic scale is—Oh my God! The logic of it. And, of course, what that meant to me was: Well, I can do that. Because you just don't know. You think it's a talent, you think you're born with this thing. What I've found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It's just that some people get it developed and some don't.[14]
The composer told Meryle Secrest: "I just wanted to study composition, theory, and harmony without the attendant musicology that comes in graduate school.
But I knew I wanted to write for the theater, so I wanted someone who did not disdain theater music."[25] Barrow suggested that Sondheim study with Milton Babbitt, whom Sondheim called "a frustrated show composer" with whom he formed "a perfect combination".[25] When they met, Babbitt was working on a musical for Mary Martin based on the myth of Helen of Troy.
The two met once a week in New York City for four hours. (At the time, Babbitt was teaching at Princeton University.) According to Sondheim, they spent the first hour dissecting Rodgers and Hart or George Gershwin or studying Babbitt's favorites (Buddy DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson). They then proceeded to other forms of music (such as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony), critiquing them the same way.[26] Fascinated by mathematics, Babbitt and Sondheim studied songs by a variety of composers (especially Jerome Kern).
Sondheim told Secrest that Kern had the ability "to develop a single motif through tiny variations into a long and never boring line and his maximum development of the minimum of material". He said of Babbitt, "I am his maverick, his one student who went into the popular arts with all his serious artillery".[25] At Williams, Sondheim wrote a musical adaption of Beggar on Horseback (a play by George S.
Kaufman and Marc Connelly, with Kaufman's permission) that had three performances.[27] A member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity,[28] he graduated magna cum laude in [29]
"A few painful years of struggle" followed, when Sondheim auditioned songs, lived in his father's dining room to save money, and spent time in Hollywood writing for the television series Topper.[10] He devoured s and s films, and called cinema his "basic language";[11] his film knowledge got him through The $64, Question contestant tryouts.
Sondheim disliked movie musicals, favoring classic dramas such as Citizen Kane, The Grapes of Wrath, and A Matter of Life and Death: "Studio directors like Michael Curtiz and Raoul Walsh were heroes of mine.
They went from movie to movie to movie, and every third movie was good and every fifth movie was great. There wasn't any cultural pressure to make art".[30]
At age 22, Sondheim had finished the four shows Hammerstein requested. Screenwriters Julius and Philip Epstein's Front Porch in Flatbush, unproduced at the time, was being shopped around by designer and producer Lemuel Ayers.
Ayers approached Frank Loesser and another composer; both turned him down. Ayers and Sondheim met as ushers at a wedding, and Ayers commissioned Sondheim for three songs for the show; Julius Epstein flew in from California and hired Sondheim, who worked with him in California for four or five months. After eight auditions for backers, half the money needed was raised.
The show, retitled Saturday Night, was intended to open during the –55 Broadway season, but Ayers died of leukemia in his early forties. The production rights transferred to his widow, Shirley, and due to her inexperience the show did not continue as planned;[4] it opened off-Broadway in Sondheim later said, "I don't have any emotional reaction to Saturday Night at all—except fondness.
It's not bad stuff for a year-old. There are some things that embarrass me so much in the lyrics—the missed accents, the obvious jokes. But I decided, leave it. It's my baby pictures. You don't touch up a baby picture—you're a baby!"[11]
Career
– Early Broadway success
Burt Shevelove invited Sondheim to a party where Sondheim arrived before him but knew no one else well.
He saw a familiar face, Arthur Laurents, who had seen one of the auditions of Saturday Night, and they began talking. Laurents told him he was working on a musical version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonard Bernstein, but they needed a lyricist; Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who were supposed to write the lyrics, were under contract in Hollywood.
He said that although he was not a big fan of Sondheim's music, he enjoyed the lyrics from Saturday Night and he could audition for Bernstein. The next day, Sondheim met and played for Bernstein, who said he would let him know. Sondheim wanted to write music and lyrics; he consulted with Hammerstein, who said, as Sondheim related in a New York Times video interview, "Look, you have a chance to work with very gifted professionals on a show that sounds interesting, and you could always write your own music eventually.
My advice would be to take the job."[4]West Side Story, directed by Jerome Robbins, opened in and ran for performances. Sondheim expressed dissatisfaction with his lyrics, saying they did not always fit the characters and were sometimes too consciously poetic. Initially Bernstein was also credited as a co-writer of the lyrics, but he later offered Sondheim solo credit, as Sondheim had essentially done all of them.
The New York Times review of the show did not mention the lyrics.[31] Sondheim described the division of the royalties, saying that Bernstein received 3% and he received 1%. Bernstein suggested evening the percentage at 2% each, but Sondheim refused because he was satisfied with just getting the credit.
Sondheim later said he wished "someone stuffed a handkerchief in my mouth because it would have been nice to get that extra percentage".[4]
After West Side Story opened, Shevelove lamented the lack of "lowbrow comedy" on Broadway and mentioned a possible musical based on Plautus's Roman comedies.
Sondheim was interested in the idea and called a friend, Larry Gelbart, to co-write the script. The show went through a number of drafts, and was interrupted briefly by Sondheim's next project.[32]
Gypsy
In , Laurents and Robbins approached Sondheim for a musical version of Gypsy Rose Lee's memoir after Irving Berlin and Cole Porter turned it down.
Sondheim agreed, but Ethel Merman – cast as Mama Rose – had just finished Happy Hunting with an unknown composer (Harold Karr) and lyricist (Matt Dubey). Although Sondheim wanted to write the music and lyrics, Merman refused to let another first-time composer write for her and demanded that Jule Styne write the music. Sondheim, concerned that writing lyrics again would pigeonhole him as a lyricist, called his mentor for advice.
Hammerstein told him he should take the job, because writing a vehicle for a star would be a good learning experience. Sondheim agreed; Gypsy opened on May 21, , and ran for performances.[4]
– Music and lyrics
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
The first Broadway production for which Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which opened in and ran for performances.[34] The book, based on farces by Plautus, was by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart.
The show won six Tony Awards (including Best Musical)[35] and had the longest Broadway run of any show for which Sondheim wrote both music and lyrics.[36]
Anyone Can Whistle
Sondheim had participated in three straight hits, but his next show—'s Anyone Can Whistle—was a nine-performance bomb (although it introduced Angela Lansbury to musical theater).
Do I Hear a Waltz?
Do I Hear a Waltz?, based on Laurents's play The Time of the Cuckoo, was intended as another Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with Mary Martin in the lead. A new lyricist was needed,[37] and Laurents and Rodgers's daughter, Mary, asked Sondheim to fill in.
Although Richard Rodgers and Sondheim agreed that the original play did not lend itself to musicalization, they began writing a musical version. The project had many difficulties, including Rodgers's alcoholism. Sondheim later called it the one project he truly regretted writing, given that the reasons he wrote it—as a favor to Mary, as a favor to Hammerstein, as an opportunity to work again with Laurents, and as an opportunity to make money—were not reasons to write a musical.
He then decided to work only when he could write both music and lyrics.[11]
Sondheim asked author and playwright James Goldman to join him as bookwriter for a new musical inspired by a gathering of former Ziegfeld Follies showgirls: initially titled The Girls Upstairs, it became Follies.[39]
Evening Primrose and other work
In , Sondheim semi-anonymously provided lyrics for "The Boy From", a parody of "The Girl from Ipanema" in the off-Broadway revue The Mad Show.
The song was credited to "Esteban Río Nido",[40] Spanish for "Stephen River Nest", and in the show's playbill the lyrics were credited to "Nom De Plume". That year Goldman and Sondheim hit a creative wall on The Girls Upstairs, and Goldman asked Sondheim about writing a TV musical. The result was Evening Primrose, with Anthony Perkins and Charmian Carr.
Written for the anthology seriesABC Stage 67 and produced by Hubbell Robinson, it was broadcast on November 16, According to Sondheim and director Paul Bogart, the musical was written only because Goldman needed money for rent. The network disliked the title and Sondheim's alternative, A Little Night Music.[41]
After Sondheim finished Evening Primrose, Jerome Robbins asked him to adapt Bertolt Brecht's The Measures Taken despite the composer's general dislike of Brecht's work.
Robbins wanted to adapt another Brecht play, The Exception and the Rule, and asked John Guare to adapt the book. Leonard Bernstein had not written for the stage in some time, and his contract as conductor of the New York Philharmonic was ending. Sondheim was invited to Robbins's house in the hope that Guare would convince him to write the lyrics for a musical version of The Exception and the Rule; according to Robbins, Bernstein would not work without Sondheim.
When Sondheim agreed, Guare asked: "Why haven't you all worked together since West Side Story?" Sondheim answered, "You'll see". Guare said that working with Sondheim was like being with an old college roommate, and he depended on him to "decode and decipher their crazy way of working"; Bernstein worked only after midnight, and Robbins only in the early morning.
Bernstein's score, which was supposed to be light, was influenced by his need to make a musical statement.[42]Stuart Ostrow, who worked with Sondheim on The Girls Upstairs, agreed to produce the musical, initially titled A Pray by Blecht, then The Race to Urga. An opening night was scheduled, but during auditions Robbins asked to be excused for a moment.
When he did not return, a doorman said he had gotten into a limousine to go to John F. Kennedy International Airport. Bernstein burst into tears and said, "It's over". Sondheim later said of this experience: "I was ashamed of the whole project. It was arch and didactic in the worst way."[43] He wrote one and a half songs and threw them away, the only time he ever did that.
Eighteen years later, Sondheim refused Bernstein's and Robbins's request to retry the show.[42]
Sondheim lived in a Turtle Bay, Manhattanbrownstone from his writing of Gypsy in Ten years later, he heard a knock on the door. His neighbor, Katharine Hepburn, was in "bare feet—this angry, red-faced lady" and told him, "You have been keeping me awake all night!" (she was practicing for her musical debut in Coco).
"I remember asking Hepburn why she didn't just call me, but she claimed not to have my phone number. My guess is that she wanted to stand there in her bare feet, suffering for her art".[44]
– Collaborations with Hal Prince
Company
After Do I Hear a Waltz?, Sondheim devoted himself solely to writing both music and lyrics for the theater—and in , he began a collaboration with director Harold Prince resulting in a body of work that is considered one of the high water marks of musical theater history, with critic Howard Kissel writing that the duo had set "Broadway's highest standards".[45][46]
The first Sondheim show with Prince as director was 's Company.
A show about a single man and his married friends, Company (with a book by George Furth) lacked a straightforward plot, instead centering on themes such as marriage and the difficulty of making an emotional connection with another person. It opened on April 26, , at the Alvin Theatre, running for performances after seven previews, and won Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Music, and Best Lyrics.[47] The original cast included Dean Jones, Elaine Stritch, and Charles Kimbrough.
Popular songs include "Company", "The Little Things You Do Together", "Sorry-Grateful", "You Could Drive a Person Crazy", "Another Hundred People", "Getting Married Today", "Side by Side", "The Ladies Who Lunch", and "Being Alive". Walter Kerr of The New York Times praised the production, the performances, and the score, writing, "Sondheim has never written a more sophisticated, more pertinent, or—this is the surprising thing in the circumstances—more melodious score".[48]
Documentary filmmaker D.
A. Pennebaker captured the making of the original cast recording shortly after the show opened on Broadway in his film Original Cast Album: Company.[49][50] Stritch, Sondheim, and producer Thomas Z. Shepard are featured prominently. Company was revived on Broadway in , , and / (the last revival began previews in March , but shut down before resuming in November due to the ongoing COVID pandemic; in this revival, the main character was a woman, Bobbie, portrayed by Katrina Lenk).[47] The and productions won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.
Follies
Follies (), with a book by James Goldman, opened on April 4, , at the Winter Garden Theatre and ran for performances after 12 previews.[51] The plot centers on a reunion, in a crumbling Broadway theater scheduled for demolition, of performers in Weismann'sFollies (a musical revue, based on the Ziegfeld Follies, that played in that theater between the world wars).
The production also featured choreography and co-direction by Michael Bennett, who later created A Chorus Line.
The original production starred Dorothy Collins, John McMartin, Alexis Smith, and Gene Nelson. It included the songs "I'm Still Here", "Could I Leave You?", and "Losing My Mind". The production earned 11 Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical.
It won 7 Tony Awards, including Best Original Score. The show was revived on Broadway in and [52][53]
A Little Night Music
A Little Night Music (), based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night and with a score primarily in waltz time, was among Sondheim's greatest commercial successes.
Time magazine called it his "most brilliant accomplishment to date".[54] The original cast included Glynis Johns, Len Cariou, Hermione Gingold, and Judy Kahan. The show opened on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre on February 25, , and ran for performances and 12 previews.[55] Clive Barnes of The New York Times wrote, "A Little Night Music is soft on the ears, easy on the eyes, and pleasant on the mind.
It is less than brash, but more than brassy, and it should give a lot of pleasure. It is the remembrance of a few things past, and all to the sound of a waltz and the understanding smile of a memory. Good God!—[an] adult musical!"[56]
The production earned 12 Tony Award nominations and won 6 awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.
"Send in the Clowns", a song from the musical, was a hit for Judy Collins and became Sondheim's best-known song. It has since been covered by Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, and Judi Dench. The production was adapted to screen in the film of the same name starring Elizabeth Taylor, Dianna Rigg, Len Cariou, and Hermione Gingold. It was revived on Broadway in in a production starring Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury.[57]
Pacific Overtures
Pacific Overtures (), with a book by John Weidman, was one of Sondheim's most unconventional efforts: it explored the westernization of Japan, and was originally presented in a mock-Kabuki style.[58] The show closed after a run of performances,[59] and was revived on Broadway in [60]
Sweeney Todd
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (), with a score by Sondheim and a book by Hugh Wheeler, is based on Christopher Bond's stage play derived from the Victorian original.[61][62][63][64][65] The original production starred Angela Lansbury, Len Cariou, Victor Garber, and Edmund Lyndeck.
Popular songs from the musical include "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd", "The Worst Pies in London", "Pretty Women", "A Little Priest", "Not While I'm Around", "By the Sea", and "Johanna". The production earned 9 Tony Award nominations and won 8 awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Actress, and Best Actor. Richard Eder of The New York Times wrote: "Mr.
Sondheim's lyrics can be endlessly inventive. There is a hugely amusing recitation of the attributes given by the different professions—priest, lawyer, and so on—to the pies they contribute to. At other times the lyrics have a black, piercing poetry to them."[66]
Lansbury's performance was captured alongside George Hearn in the Los Angeles production, which was filmed and shown on PBS as part of Masterpiece Theatre.
It later earned five Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Bbc proms stephen sondheim biography wikipedia Jonathan understood that instinctively. Sondheim is known for complex polyphony in his vocals, such as the five minor characters who make up a Greek chorus in 's A Little Night Music. West Side Story [ edit ]. Dodd Mead.It has been revived on Broadway in , , and The production starred Josh Groban, Annaleigh Ashford, Jordan Fisher, and Gaten Matarazzo. A film adaptation was made in directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Alan Rickman.
Merrily We Roll Along
Merrily We Roll Along (), with a book by George Furth, is one of Sondheim's most traditional scores; songs from the musical were recorded by Frank Sinatra and Carly Simon.
According to Sondheim's music director Paul Gemignani, "Part of Steve's ability is this extraordinary versatility". The show was not the success their previous collaborations had been: after a chaotic series of preview performances, it opened to widely negative reviews, and closed after a run of less than two weeks.
Due to the high quality of Sondheim's score, the show has been repeatedly revised and produced in the ensuing years.
Andrew lloyd webber biography: Wharton Al Hirschfeld Musical artist. Contents move to sidebar hide. He then decided to work only when he could write both music and lyrics.
Martin Gottfried wrote, "Sondheim had set out to write traditional songs But [despite] that there is nothing ordinary about the music." Sondheim later said: "Did I feel betrayed? I'm not sure I would put it like that. What did surprise me was the feeling around the Broadway community—if you can call it that, though I guess I will for lack of a better word—that they wanted Hal and me to fail."[44] Sondheim and Furth continued to revise the show in subsequent years.
An acclaimed feature documentary on the show and its aftermath, Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, directed by Merrily cast member Lonny Price, and produced by Bruce David Klein, Kitt Lavoie, and Ted Schillinger, premiered at the New York Film Festival on November 18, A film adaptation of Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Richard Linklater, began production in and is planned to continue for the next two decades to allow the actors to age in real time.[68] An off-Broadway revival starring Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez ran from November to January at the New York Theatre Workshop; it moved to Broadway in fall Merrily won Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical (Jonathan Groff), Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical (Daniel Radcliffe), and Best Orchestrations (Jonathan Tunick).[69]
Merrily's failure greatly affected Sondheim; he was ready to quit theater and do movies, create video games or write mysteries: "I wanted to find something to satisfy myself that does not involve Broadway and dealing with all those people who hate me and hate Hal." After Merrily, Sondheim and Prince did not collaborate again until their production of Bounce.[71]
– Collaborations with James Lapine
Sunday in the Park with George
Sondheim decided "that there are better places to start a show" and found a new collaborator in James Lapine after he saw Lapine's Twelve Dreams off-Broadway in "I was discouraged, and I don't know what would have happened if I hadn't discovered Twelve Dreams at the Public Theatre";[44] Lapine has a taste "for the avant-garde and for visually oriented theater in particular".
Their first collaboration was Sunday in the Park with George (), with Sondheim's music evoking Georges Seurat's pointillism. Sondheim and Lapine won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play,[72] and it was revived on Broadway in , and again in a limited run in [73][74]
Into the Woods
They collaborated on Into the Woods (), a musical based on several Brothers Grimmfairy tales.
Although Sondheim has been called the first composer to bring rap music to Broadway (with the Witch in the opening number of Into the Woods), he attributed the first rap in theater to Meredith Willson's "Rock Island" from The Music Man ().[26]Into the Woods was revived on Broadway in [75] and at the St.
James Theatre in
Passion
Sondheim's and Lapine's last collaboration on a musical was the rhapsodic Passion (), adapted from Ettore Scola's Italian film Passione D'Amore. With a run of performances, Passion was the shortest-running show to win a Tony Award for Best Musical.[76]
– Later work
Assassins
Assassins opened off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons on December 18, , with a book by John Weidman.
The show explored, in revue form, a group of historical figures who tried (with varying success) to assassinate the President of the United States. The musical closed on February 16, , after 73 performances. The Los Angeles Times reported the show "has been sold out since previews began, reflecting the strong appeal of Sondheim's work among the theater crowd."[77] In his review for The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, "Assassins will have to fire with sharper aim and fewer blanks if it is to shoot to kill."[78][79]Assassins was eventually staged on Broadway in [80]
Saturday Night was shelved until its production at London's Bridewell Theatre.
The next year, its score was recorded; a revised version, with two new songs, ran off-Broadway at Second Stage Theatre in and at London's Jermyn Street Theatre in [81]
Road Show
Sondheim and Weidman reunited during the late s for Wise Guys, a musical comedy based on the lives of colorful businessmen Addison and Wilson Mizner.
A Broadway production starring Nathan Lane and Victor Garber, directed by Sam Mendes, and planned for spring ,[82] was delayed. Renamed Bounce in , the show premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in a production directed by Harold Prince, his first collaboration with Sondheim since [83] Poor reviews prevented Bounce from reaching Broadway, but a revised version opened off-Broadway as Road Show at the Public Theater on October 28, Directed by John Doyle, it closed December 28, [84][85][86] The production won the Obie Award for Music and Lyrics[87] and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics.[88]
Sondheim on Sondheim and Six by Sondheim
Asked about writing new work, Sondheim replied in "No It's age.
It's a diminution of energy and the worry that there are no new ideas. It's also an increasing lack of confidence. I'm not the only one. I've checked with other people. People expect more of you and you're aware of it and you shouldn't be."[89] In December , he said that in addition to continuing work on Bounce, he was "nibbling at a couple of things with John Weidman and James Lapine".[90]
Lapine prepared the multimedia production iSondheim: aMusical Revue, which was scheduled to open in April at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta; it was canceled due to "difficulties encountered by the commercial producers attached to the project&#; in raising the necessary funds".[91][92][93] Later revised as Sondheim on Sondheim, the revue was produced at Studio 54 by the Roundabout Theatre Company; previews began on March 19, , and ran from April 22 to June The revue's cast included Barbara Cook, Vanessa L.
Williams, Tom Wopat, Norm Lewis, and Leslie Kritzer.[94]
In , Lapine directed the HBO feature-length documentary Six by Sondheim, which he executive produced with former New York Times theater critic Frank Rich, a longtime champion of Sondheim's work.[95] Sondheim himself acts and sings in the documentary as Joe, the cynical theater producer in the song "Opening Doors".[96]
Sondheim collaborated with Wynton Marsalis on A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Affair, an Encores!
concert on November 13–17, , at New York City Center. Directed by John Doyle with choreography by Parker Esse, it consisted of "more than two dozen Sondheim compositions, each piece newly reimagined by Marsalis".[97] The concert featured Bernadette Peters, Jeremy Jordan, Norm Lewis, Cyrille Aimée, four dancers, and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra conducted by David Loud.[98] In Playbill, Steven Suskin called the concert "neither a new musical, a revival, nor a standard songbook revue; it is, rather, a staged-and-sung chamber jazz rendition of a string of songs&#; Half of the songs come from Company and Follies; most of the other Sondheim musicals are represented, including the lesser-known Passion and Road Show".[99]
For the film adaptation of Into the Woods, Sondheim wrote the new song "She'll Be Back", sung by The Witch, which was cut from the film.[]
Here We Are
Sondheim began collaborating with David Ives in on a musical based on the Luis Buñuel films The Exterminating Angel and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, initially slated for previews at the Public Theater in [] That date was cast into doubt after an August reading for the musical had only the first act finished.[] A November workshop included Matthew Morrison, Shuler Hensley, Heidi Blickenstaff, Sierra Boggess, Gabriel Ebert, Sarah Stiles, Michael Cerveris, and Jennifer Simard.[] After media outlets mistakenly reported that the show had the working title Buñuel, Sondheim said that it still lacked a title in [] The Public Theatre denied reports that the show would be part of its –20 season, but hoped to produce the musical "when it is ready".[] Development reportedly ceased for a time,[] but resumed for a September reading of the show, then called Square One.[]Nathan Lane and Bernadette Peters were involved in a reading of this new work,[] and Sondheim discussed adapting the Buñuel films in the final interview before his death.[] A posthumous production of the collaboration, directed by Joe Mantello, premiered at The Shed in September as Here We Are.[]
Other projects
Conversations with Frank Rich and others
The Kennedy Center staged a week repertory festival of six Sondheim musicals—Sweeney Todd, Company, Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along, Passion, and A Little Night Music—from May to August [][][] The Kennedy Center Sondheim Celebration also included Pacific Overtures, a junior version of Into the Woods, and Frank Rich of The New York Times speaking with the composer for Sondheim on Sondheim on April 28, [][] The two men took their discussion, dubbed "A Little Night Conversation with Stephen Sondheim", on a West Coast tour of different U.S.
cities[][] including Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Los Angeles,[][][] and Portland, Oregon in March ,[] then to Oberlin College in September. The Cleveland Jewish News reported on their Oberlin appearance: "Sondheim said: 'Movies are photographs; the stage is larger than life.' What musicals does Sondheim admire the most?
Porgy and Bess tops a list which includes Carousel, She Loves Me, and The Wiz, which he saw six times. Sondheim took a dim view of today's musicals. What works now, he said, are musicals that are easy to take; audiences don't want to be challenged".[][] Sondheim and Rich had additional conversations: January 18, , at Avery Fisher Hall;[] February 2 at the Landmark Theatre in Richmond, Virginia;[] February 21 at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia;[] and April 20 at the University of Akron in Ohio.[] The conversations were reprised at Tufts and Brown University in February , at the University of Tulsa in April,[] and at Lafayette College in March [] Sondheim had another "conversation with" Sean Patrick Flahaven (associate editor of The Sondheim Review) at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach on February 4, , in which he discussed many of his songs and shows: "On the perennial struggles of Broadway: 'I don't see any solution for Broadway's problems except subsidized theatre, as in most civilized countries of the world.'"[]
On February 1, , Sondheim joined former Salt Lake Tribune theater critic Nancy Melich before an audience of 1, at Kingsbury Hall.
Melich described the evening:
He was visibly taken by the university choir, who sang two songs during the evening, "Children Will Listen" and "Sunday", and then returned to reprise "Sunday". During that final moment, Sondheim and I were standing, facing the choir of students from the University of Utah's opera program, our backs to the audience, and I could see tears welling in his eyes as the voices rang out.
Then, all of a sudden, he raised his arms and began conducting, urging the student singers to go full out, which they did, the crescendo building, their eyes locked with his, until the final "on an ordinary Sunday" was sung. It was thrilling, and a perfect conclusion to a remarkable evening—nothing ordinary about it.[]
On March 13, , A Salon with Stephen Sondheim (which sold out in three minutes) was hosted by the Academy for New Musical Theatre in Hollywood.[][]
Work away from Broadway
Sondheim was an avid fan of puzzles and games.
He is credited with introducing cryptic crosswords, a British invention, to American audiences through a series of cryptic crossword puzzles he created for New York magazine in and [] Sondheim was "legendary" in theater circles for "concocting puzzles, scavenger hunts and murder-mystery games",[10] inspiring the central character of Anthony Shaffer's play Sleuth.[] Sondheim's love of puzzles and mysteries is evident in The Last of Sheila, an intricate whodunit written with longtime friend Anthony Perkins.
The film, directed by Herbert Ross, featured Dyan Cannon, Joan Hackett, Raquel Welch, James Mason, James Coburn, Ian McShane, and Richard Benjamin.[]
Sondheim also wrote occasional music for film: most notably, he contributed five songs to Warren Beatty's film Dick Tracy, including the ballad "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", sung in the film by Madonna, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
He also contributed to Reds (both to the score, and with the song "Goodbye for Now"), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution ("The Madam's Song", later recorded as "I Never Do Anything Twice"), Stavisky (writing the score), and The Birdcage ("Little Dream", and the eventually cut "It Takes All Kinds"). For the movie adaptation of Into the Woods, Sondheim wrote the new song "She'll Be Back" for the character of The Witch (played by Meryl Streep), which was eventually cut.
Sondheim made a posthumous cameo appearance as himself in the Netflix film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.[]
Sondheim collaborated with Company librettist George Furth to write the play Getting Away with Murder in ; the Broadway production closed after 31 previews and only 17 performances.[]
In , he was invited to serve as guest curator for the Telluride Film Festival.[30]
Mentoring
After he was mentored by Hammerstein, Sondheim returned the favor, saying that he loved "passing on what Oscar passed on to me".[23] In an interview with Sondheim for The Legacy Project, composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (son of Mary Rodgers and grandson of Richard Rodgers) recalled how as a year-old boy he showed Sondheim his work.
Guettel was "crestfallen" since he had come in "sort of all puffed up thinking [he] would be rained with compliments and things", which was not the case since Sondheim had some "very direct things to say". Later, Sondheim wrote and apologized to Guettel for being "not very encouraging" when he was actually trying to be "constructive".[]
Sondheim also mentored a fledgling Jonathan Larson, attending Larson's workshop for his Superbia (originally an adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four).
In Larson's musical Tick, Tick Boom!, the phone message is played in which Sondheim apologizes for leaving early, says he wants to meet him and is impressed with his work. After Larson's death, Sondheim called him one of the few composers "attempting to blend contemporary pop music with theater music, which doesn't work very well; he was on his way to finding a real synthesis.
Stephen sondheim biography wikipedia A musical-theater composer "must have a sense of what is theatrical, of how you use music to tell a story, as opposed to writing a song. Archived from the original on April 22, Archived from the original on September 17, Half of the songs come from Company and Follies ; most of the other Sondheim musicals are represented, including the lesser-known Passion and Road Show ".A good deal of pop music has interesting lyrics, but they are not theater lyrics". A musical-theater composer "must have a sense of what is theatrical, of how you use music to tell a story, as opposed to writing a song. Jonathan understood that instinctively."[]
Around , Sondheim approached Lin-Manuel Miranda to work with him translating West Side Story lyrics into Spanish for an upcoming Broadway revival.[][] Miranda then approached Sondheim with his new project Hamilton, then called The Hamilton Mixtape, which Sondheim gave notes on.[][] Sondheim was originally wary of the project, saying he was "worried that an evening of rap might get monotonous".
But he believed Miranda's attention to, and respect for, good rhyming made it work.[]
Sondheim provided a voice cameo for the film adaptation of Tick, Tick Boom!, directed by Miranda, for the scene in which a fictionalized version of himself leaves a phone message. Sondheim worked on a revised text of the message and voiced it himself after Bradley Whitford, who portrays him, was unavailable to rerecord the line.[]
Dramatists Guild
A supporter of writers' rights in the theater industry, Sondheim was an active member of the Dramatists Guild of America.
In , he was elected as the Guild's 16th president, serving until []
Unrealized projects
According to Sondheim, he was asked to translate Mahagonny-Songspiel: "But I'm not a Brecht/Weill fan and that's really all there is to it. I'm an apostate: I like Weill's music when he came to America better than I do his stuff before&#; I love The Threepenny Opera but, outside of The Threepenny Opera, the music of his I like is the stuff he wrote in America—when he was not writing with Brecht, when he was writing for Broadway."[] He turned down an offer to musicalize Nathanael West's A Cool Million with James Lapinec.&#;[][]
Around , Sondheim and Burt Shevelove considered making a musical of the film Sunset Boulevard, and had sketched out the opening scenes when they approached the film's director Billy Wilder at a cocktail party on the possibility.
Wilder rejected the idea, believing the story was more suited to opera than musical theater. Sondheim agreed, and resisted a later offer from Prince and Hugh Wheeler to create a musical version starring Angela Lansbury. This occurred several years before a musical version was produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber.[]
Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein wrote The Race to Urga, scheduled for Lincoln Center in , but after Jerome Robbins left the project, it was not produced.[]
After writing The Last of Sheila together, Sondheim and Anthony Perkins tried to collaborate again two more times, but the projects were unrealized.
In , Perkins said he and Sondheim were working on another script, The Chorus Girl Murder Case: "It's a sort of stew based on all those Bob Hope wartime comedies, plus a little Lady of Burlesque and a little Orson Welles magic show, all cooked into a Last of Sheila-type plot".[] He later said other inspirations were They Got Me Covered, The Ipcress File, and Cloak and Dagger.[] They had sold the synopsis in October [] At one point, Michael Bennett was to direct, with Tommy Tune to star.[] In November , Sondheim said they had finished it,[] but the film was never made.[] In the s, Perkins and Sondheim collaborated on another project, the seven-part Crime and Variations for Motown Productions.
In October they had submitted a treatment to Motown.[] It was a page treatment set in the New York socialite world about a crime puzzle; another writer was to write the script. It, too, was never made.
In , Sondheim worked with Terrence McNally on a musical, All Together Now. McNally said, "Steve was interested in telling the story of a relationship from the present back to the moment when the couple first met.
We worked together a while, but we were both involved with so many other projects that this one fell through".
Bbc proms stephen sondheim biography It's age. Winer, Linda October 20, Archived from the original on May 1, Wikiwand for Firefox.The story follows Arden Scott, a something female sculptor, and Daniel Nevin, a slightly younger, sexually attractive restaurateur. Its script, with concept notes by McNally and Sondheim, is archived in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.[] In February , it was announced that Sondheim would collaborate on a musical titled All Together Now with David Ives and he had "about 20–30 minutes of the musical completed".[][][][][] The show was assumed to follow the format of Merrily We Roll Along.
Sondheim described the project as "two people and what goes into their relationship&#; We'll write for a couple of months, then have a workshop. It seemed experimental and fresh 20 years ago. I have a feeling it may not be experimental and fresh anymore".[] Ives later described All Together Now as "a musical that exploded a single moment in the lives of two people meeting for the first time.
We'd see the moment without music and then we'd explore it musically." Ives and Sondheim worked on the piece intermittently until Sondheim's death, but it was ultimately unrealized.[]
Sondheim worked with William Goldman on Singing Out Loud, a musical film, in , penning the song "Water Under the Bridge".[][] According to Sondheim, he had written six and a half songs and Goldman one or two drafts of the script when director Rob Reiner lost interest in the project.
"Dawn" and "Sand", from the film, were recorded for the albums Sondheim at the Movies and Unsung Sondheim.[]
In August , Sondheim expressed interest in the idea of creating a musical adaptation of the comedy film Groundhog Day,[] but in a live chat, he said that "to make a musical of Groundhog Day would be to gild the lily.
It cannot be improved."[]The musical was later created and premiered in with music and lyrics by Tim Minchin and book by Danny Rubin (screenwriter of the film) with Sondheim's blessing.[]
Nathan Lane said that he once approached Sondheim about creating a musical based on the film Being There with Lane starring as the central character of Chance.
Sondheim declined on the basis that the central character is essentially a cipher, whom an audience would not accept expressing himself through song.[]
Major works
Main article: Works of Stephen Sondheim
Honors and legacy
Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Stephen Sondheim
Sondheim received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards, and eight Grammy Awards.
He also received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George (, shared with James Lapine) and was honored with the Kennedy Center Honors, Lifetime Achievement ().[] He received the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition () and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters ().
He was also awarded the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member James Earl Jones (),[][] the Algur H. Meadows Award from Southern Methodist University (),[] a Special Laurence Olivier Award () "in recognition of his contribution to London theatre",[][] and a Critics' Circle Theatre Award (), which according to drama section chair Mark Shenton "is effectively a lifetime achievement award."[] He became a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame ().[] In , Sondheim was awarded The Edward MacDowell Medal by The MacDowell Colony for outstanding contributions to American culture[] In November , Sondheim was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom