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SONDHEIM, STEPHEN 1930-

COMPOSER, LYRICIST

Musicals

Young Stephen Sondheim's path was made clear when, at age twelve, he was befriended by a family friend, the esteemed lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. Hammerstein taught him all he knew about songwriting, and by the late 1940s Sondheim was working as a production assistant on Broadway musicals such as South Pacific (1949) and The King and I (1951). He then won a two-year fellowship to study with avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt, who helped him analyze popular songs and classics. In 1953 plans for Sondheim's first full-length musical composition, Saturday Nighty were cut short by the death of the producer, so Sondheim turned to scriptwriting for the television series Topper. A chance encounter with playwright Arthur Laurents led to Sondheim's meeting with Leonard Bernstein, who was composing the music to West Side Story. Impressed with the lyrics to Saturday Night, Bernstein asked Sondheim to collaborate on the new songs. The result was a Broadway (and Hollywood) classic, featuring Sondheim's versatile and witty lyric-writing style on songs such as "America," "Tonight," "Maria," and "I Feel Pretty."

Growth

Gypsy (1959), a collaboration with composer Jule Styne, was a runaway hit, featuring more classic Sondheim lyrics ("Everything's Coming Up Roses," "Let Me Entertain You," "Rose's Turn"). By now his style was established: his lyrics were intelligent and complex but always effortless and always integrated into the character singing them. Sondheim's Broadway success did not completely satisfy him, however. He wanted to write both music and lyrics, and he was given that opportunity with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), which won a Tony for best musical and became Sondheim's biggest commercial success. It was also his first collaboration with director-producer Harold Prince, who was to work with Sondheim on all of his musicals in the 1970s.

Innovation

After several failures in the mid 1960s, Sondheim returned to Broadway in 1970 with Company, a concept musical that used a plotless series of vignettes to comment on modern marriage. With Company Sondheim broke from the musical tradition of writing hits, instead keeping each song firmly integrated into its context in the show. Sondheim won Tonys for his lyrics and score, and the show won a New York Drama Critics Circle prize for best musical. Equally innovative was Follies (1971), a nostalgic revue that employed flashbacks and simultaneous past and present action among two couples. A spectacle about the ghosts of lost tradition and the sadness of memory, Follies won the Drama Critics award and won Sondheim a Tony for his unusual music and lyrics.

Acclaim

With A Little Night Music (1973) Sondheim became the first artist to receive Tonys for three consecutive years as composer and lyricist. A Little Night Music was hailed as his greatest work to date, producing his first hit ("Send in the Clowns") and refuting his reputation for writing unhummable scores. Based loosely on Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), the show was delicate and enchanting in mood, using sophisticated songs as interior monologues for the characters. Sondheim composed the music in traditional waltz time in order to create the effect of an operetta. "Send in the Clowns" won a Grammy, as did the original cast album. By 1973 Sondheim was being credited with rejuvenating the once-dying Broadway musical almost single-handedly. On 11 March of that year he was honored with a gala four-hour musical tribute featuring more than forty Sondheim songs.

Departures

In 1976 Pacific Overtures mixed Broadway musical traditions with those of the Japanese Kabuki theater. Using native Japanese music, haiku chants, and Oriental choreography, costuming, and sets, the show was daring and original, a radical departure from anything even Sondheim had tried before. Although Overtures won a citation for best musical from the Drama Critics Circle, it closed after a short run. Far more successful with Broadway audiences was Sweeney Todd (1979), a Grand Guignol opera about "the demon barber of Fleet Street." A mix of the darkly comic and wildly gothic, Sweeney Todd was hailed by most critics as sensational and brilliant. It went on to win six Tonys, including Sondheim's musical score, and the original cast album snared a Grammy.

Later Success

Sondheim's highly original musical Sunday in the Park with George (1984) featured a minimum of plot, character, or dance. Instead, music under-scored the gradual piecing together, through lighting and staging, of Seurat's painting La Grande Jatte. The show won the New York Drama Critics Circle award and a Pulitzer Prize in drama. Although many considered Sunday in the Park with George to be Sondheim's best work, he also achieved major successes with Into the Woods (1987) and Passion, which was a Tony WINNER in 1994.