As a youth in rural Pennsylvania in the 1940s, Stephen Sondheim had the good fortune to count among his neighbours the already eminent lyricist Oscar HAMMERSTEIN II, whose songwriting team with composer Richard RODGERS would help raise Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals to a peak of sophistication and entertainment rarely scaled before or since. Sondheim himself would later take the musical theatre into areas of psychological examination never attempted before. But his first schoolboy efforts met with harsh yet invaluable criticism from his distinguished neighbour.
Sondheim studied music at Williams College and trained in New York under the tutelage of Milton Babbitt. After writing scripts for the popular early 1950s sitcom Topper, Sondheim stumbled across another piece of good fortune. He met the playwright Arthur Laurents at a party, who told him that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was being updated and turned into a musical with a score by Leonard BERNSTEIN. The musical became West Side Story (1957), and as a result of this chance encounter, the young Sondheim got to write the lyrics for the Broadway hit. Sondheim also worked with Laurents and composer Jule STYNE on the musical Gypsy in 1959-Both shows were also made into hit movies.
Sondheim became responsible for both the music and the lyrics in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1962, which has enjoyed many successful revivals. He continued writing for Broadway and television throughout the 1960s, but had to wait until the 1970s for new hits, Company in 1970 and Follies in 1971.
Company was directed by Harold Prince, a collaborator from West Side Story, and it began Sondheim’s fascination with the minutiae of domestic relationships. A Little Night Music (1973) is perhaps best remembered for one song, “Send in the Clowns,” a touching and truthful number which became a popular hit for singer Judy Collins.
Sondheim continued to crave experimentation and innovation to sustain his interest and output. Pacific Overtures made use of Japanese musical conventions and kabuki. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979) turned the unlikely fare of murder and cannibalism into a musical comedy with operatic overtones. Merrily We Roll Along (1981) moved its action backward in time. Sunday in the Park with George (1984) was a fictionalised biography of French pointillist artist Georges Seurat that brought the painter’s work to life on stage. Into the Woods (1987) re-examined children’s fairytales from the perspective of adult aspirations. In 1990, the same year he won an Oscar for the song “Sooner or Later” sung by MADONNA in the film Dick Tracy, Sondheim opened the short musical Assassins about America’s historical gallery of successful and would-be murderers of its presidents.
It is an interesting paradox that out of such a long list of critically acclaimed works, Sondheim produced only one popular hit song. However, two hugely successful revues—Side by Side by Sondheim (1976) and Putting It Together (1993)—have celebrated the composer/lyricist’s outstanding output.
Unlike the musicals of overtly populist composers such as Andrew LLOYD WEBBER, Sondheim’s pieces tend toward finding a balance between the emotional, the intellectual, and the entertaining. Although some have criticised him for being too high-brow, Sondheim, who has won numerous Tony awards, is far too savvy not to understand the financial realities of musical theatre. Making money is easy; making art is the hard part.
Jeff Kaliss
SEE ALSO:
FILM MUSICALS; MUSICALS; POPULAR MUSIC.
FURTHER READING
Gordon, Joanne, ed. Stephen Sondheim: A Casebook
(New York: Garland, 1997);
Secrest, Meryle. Stephen Sondheim: A Life
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998).
SUGGESTED LISTENING
Anyone Can Whistle; Company;
Into the Woods; Side by Side by Sondheim;
Sunday in the Park with George;
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.