Stephen Sondheim pressured the American musical to develop up, taking audiences to locations they’d by no means been earlier than:
And he confirmed me issues
Many stunning issues
That I hadn’t thought to discover
They have been off my path
So, I by no means had dared
I had been so cautious
I by no means had cared
And he made me really feel excited
Effectively, excited and scared
[“I Know Things Now,” from “Into the Woods”]
To turn into like Little Pink Driving Hood in “Into the Woods,” confronted with one thing new, generally scary, at all times thrilling.
He was simply 26 when he wrote the lyrics for “West Aspect Story,” a then-shockingly darkish take a look at gang life in New York Metropolis.
The very subsequent 12 months he wrote the lyrics for “Gypsy,” concerning the mom of all stage moms – an anti-hero for the ages.
You may be swell!
You may be nice!
Gonna have the entire world on the plate!
Beginning right here, beginning now,
Honey, every part’s developing roses!
[“Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” from “Gypsy”]
He might have made a really fantastic dwelling sticking to phrases. However he wished to jot down the phrases and music. And so started a string of artistic, if solely hardly ever industrial, triumphs, with material properly exterior the confines of boy-meets-girl.
“Follies,” that includes getting older showgirls, set in a decaying theater, was about pale desires.
Black sable in the future
Subsequent day it goes into hock
However I am right here
Prime billing Monday
Tuesday, you are touring in inventory
However I am right here
[“I’m Still Here,” from “Follies”]
The Pulitzer Prize-winning “Sunday within the Park With George,” concerning the painter Georges Seurat, obsessively working, “watching the remainder of the world from a window.”
I had thought she understood
They’ve by no means understood
And no cause that they need to
[“Finishing the Hat,” from “Sunday in the Park With George”]
Sondheim himself was raised primarily by a mom he described as a social climber and whom he resented. However as a boy, he met the good lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, of Rodgers & Hammerstein. The connection would set him on his course, as he advised “Sunday Morning” in 1995:
“I connected myself to Oscar within the sense that I wished to be what he was. I’ve usually mentioned that if he had been an archeologist, I might have been an archeologist.”
As a substitute, Sondheim grew to become a form of anthropologist – a grasp observer of human conduct, a person who by no means had youngsters, and but wrote the traditional, “Kids Will Pay attention,” from “Into the Woods”:
Cautious the want you make,
Needs are youngsters
Cautious the trail you are taking,
Needs come true.
Not free.
Cautious the spell you solid,
Not simply on youngsters
Typically the spell might final
Previous what you may see,
And switch in opposition to you.
Cautious the story you inform
That’s the spell.
To jot down his 1970 breakthrough hit “Firm,” a musical about marriage, Sondheim – a homosexual man who till that time was unattached – invited his good friend Mary Rodgers over one night to inform him about married life. He took out a yellow authorized pad, and after two hours he mentioned he had a lot of the rating, together with a private favourite of mine, “Sorry/Grateful”:
You are at all times sorry
You are at all times grateful
You are at all times questioning what might need been
Then she walks in
And nonetheless you are sorry
And nonetheless you are grateful
And nonetheless you surprise
And nonetheless you doubt
And he or she goes out
Every little thing’s completely different
Nothing’s modified
Solely possibly barely rearranged
You are sorry-grateful
Regretful-happy
Why search for solutions
The place none happen?
You at all times are
What you at all times have been
Which has nothing to do with
All to do along with her
Little question about it, nobody did ambivalence higher than Sondheim. Only one cause a few of the biggest actors of the previous few generations are solely grateful to have sung his phrases and music.
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Story produced by Kay Lim and Kim Younger. Editor: Lauren Barnello.
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