Broadway MusicalStephen Sondheim

Week 9段馨君 Iris Hsin-chun Tuan

Associate ProfessorDepartment of Humanities and Social

SciencesNCTU

• To survive, the Broadway musical would either destroy the past and construct itself in an entirely new image, or retain to the tradition in a revitalized from suitable to new sense of modern life.

• Stephen Sondheim committed himself to the latter course that accounts for a first-rate body of work.

Influence

• Oscar Hammerstein II, neighbor, friend, father-image, model, and mentor, passed on to Stephen Sondheim that Richard Roaders inherited impersonally from Jerome Kern.

Oscar Hammerstein

• Hammerstein outlined a course of study that became the basis for Sondheim’s serious preparation for professional career.

Stephen Sondheim’s production.

• First, take an admired play and turn it into a musical.Second, take a bad play or one.Third, take a nondramatic work.Fourth, create an entirely original musical.

• From Bert Shevelove, coauthor of A funny Thing Happened on the way to the Forum, he learned never to “sacrifice smoothness for cleverness.”

Philosophy and principles

• Stephen Sondheim writes songs for the theater, virtuosic songs.

• Before him, a Broadway musical evolved from stories audience wanted to hear.

Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum Lyrics by Stephen Sondheum.

• A lesson learned from Oscar Hammerstein II: Write only what you believe.

• The book determines the musical, its style, tone, mood, and nature and placement of the songs- everything.

• The book is the show.

Comedy TonightThe opening number to Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forumhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-hZhr2k2hk

• Oklahoma! Opened with the uncommon scene because the text generated that kind of an opening.

• Sondheim conceived a score where songs interrupt the action and that could be removed from the show without destroying the development of the plot.

Oklahoma ! Oh What a Beautiful Morning and Morehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C6J9gij5SQ&feature=related

Lyrics

• First, all lyrics exist in time.

• Second, lyrics live on the sound of their music and must be underwritten.

• A good song in a musical must generate a type of theatrical moment that cannot be duplicated in the nonlyric theater.

• The good dramatic songwriter must build subtext into the lyric. Give the actor something to act! Give the director something to play!

Kiss Me, Kate (Original 1948)

• A good lyric reveals to the audience the character who could not have the omniscience to know or explain themselves with total accuracy.

• Good song lyrics find humor in character. People make us laugh through the lines they speak.

• The humor of character demands an appropriate dramatic situation; it fails out of context.

"Wunderbar" - Kiss Me, Kate (1958) - Drake, Morisonhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=205BqSO6lwk"Wunderbar" from Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate - performed by original leads Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison from a 1958 television production.

• Good lyrics use rhyme to focus attention on the rhymed word and make it the most outstanding word in the pattern.

Do I Hear a Waltz? - Carol Burnett and George Hearnhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRJ012WnZI0Carol Burnett and George Hearn sing "Do I Hear a Waltz?", originally from Stephen Sondheim's musical of the same name.

Music

• It shows in his shows- in their complexity, their uncompromising artistry, their unwillingness to cater to public sentiment.

• It shows in his music as well.

• As theater composer, Sondheim writes music to sound the specific drama at hand.

• It might reflect period, atmosphere, character or tone, embody concept, or reveal motive, but aim it must for a perfect fit with dramatic and theatrical function.

"Opening Doors" - Merrily We Roll Alonghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qukaC5ri-QQFrom the ECU workshop production of Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim, featuring Erinn Nelson, Andrew Britt, Ashley Burke, Jonathan Coarsey, Daniela Hart, Lauren Wenick and Kate Blain.

• Predictable, Stephen Sondheim composes highly personal music to match the character and tone of his lyrics.

• Music and lyrics develop in the same way and climax at the same time.

'Merrily We Roll Along'

• The individual song to become the specific content of a dramatic moment on stage.

• The entire score to reflect the concept of the show.

• To capture the delicate, romantic old world flavor of A Little Night Music.

• Sondheim commits totally to creative freedom and its corollary incentive to experiment.

• Those detractors who grant him intellect, skill, and craft, find fault in their product.

• Sondheim and his collaborators continue to experiment from a solid base within the established tradition they know and love.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim

• Stephen Joshua Sondheim (born March 22, 1930)is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film.

• He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim

• Described by Frank Rich of the New York Times as "the greatest, and perhaps best-known artist working in musical theatre", his most famous scores include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Assassins. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.

• In addition to theatre, he has contributed to movies as well, including the 1981 Warren Beatty film Reds, contributing the song "Goodbye For Now".

• He also wrote five songs for the 1990 movie Dick Tracy, including Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man), which won the Academy Award for Best Song.