Today is Stephen Sondheim’s birthday.
His first birthday since his death last November.
Stephen Sondheim is one of the most important figures in their contributions for musical
theatre, starting in the 1950s and even working on a new musical until his death.
Fingers crossed that somebody can still posthumously produce it!
His works is often polarizing, with people absolutely loving his music, and others can’t
be bothered by it at all.
I want to quickly reflect on the reason why his music is so profoundly brilliant and unique,
and perhaps the same reason why some people are turned off by his music.
Sondheim uses process to dictate form.
And his process is meticulous, clever, while maintaining this balance of harmonious.
Harmonious, not necessarily as in having harmony, but rather being subjectively musically pleasing.
Sondheim does this in several ways.
I will detail 3 of them in this video.
From his earlier works, Sondheim uses narrative to guide his songs.
As Sondheim says himself “I was essentially trained by Oscar Hammerstein to think of songs
as one-act plays, to move a song from point A to point B dramatically.”
He essentially uses the songs to move the plot forward.
This, of course, often means his songs divulge from a typical song structure, found in most
other non-Sondheim musical songs or like Verse, Chorus, Verse, Chorus, Break, Chorus.
Of course, while Sondheim will employ some of these techniques, he understands that repetition
is important, and doesn’t let it dictate the structures of his songs.
One extreme example is from one of Sondheim’s earlier works, Anyone Can Whistle.
Act 1 ends with a 15-minute song called “Simple”.
During the course of the song, several plot points are moved forward.
First, the protagonist, Hapgood, shows up to this town, asserts his dominance, splits
everybody in town into two different groups, and sows seeds of insanity in everybody.
In doing this, the song weaves in and out with different melodies and motifs, and somehow
does it while consistently making it engaging and non-repetitive.
One of the most brilliant songs in the show.
Lin-Manuel Miranda does a fantastic job of also uses his songs in the same fashion.
Next, Sondheim uses motifs and leitmotifs.
Leitmotifs are short musical phrases used to represent a character or an idea.
My 20-part Sweeney Todd video series covers this aspect of Sondheim’s motif usage in great detail.
For example, Sondheim uses the 15th century hymn Dies Irae, and variations of the motif,
in almost every song in Sweeney Todd, in the melody, harmony, and accompaniment.
How Sondheim uses this motif to such an extent, while simultaneously keeping it fresh, is brilliant.
Another show that uses a lot of leitmotivs is Into the Woods.
For example, here is the Bean motif.
You hear it played it by itself, but also incorporated into melodies of some songs.
By doing this, Sondheim puts a limitation on how he writes.
Of course, creating a work on a blank canvas with unlimited tools is possible, but to Sondheim,
oftentimes overwhelming.
By adding limitations, creates rules that helps dictate Sondheim’s composition.
Another composer who occasionally uses leitmotifs cleverly is Jason Robert Brown.
Lastly, Sondheim uses what he calls “Long-line” composition, a technique he learned when studying
with Milton Babbitt.
Often, when sketching his songs, Sondheim creates markers within the structure to help
formulate the overall shape of the song.
A generalized example is that Sondheim will sketch out that the song in which it starts
at a certain key, but then gradually up to a certain narrative or climactic moment, the
key will change.
The most extreme example of long-line composition is in 1994’s Passion.
This is also the reason why Passion has the least typical song structures out of any of his musicals.
The book “Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions” by Mark Eden Horowitz,
in interview with Sondheim, goes into great details about long-line composition, especially
in Passion.
Sondheim has expressed his admiration for fellow composer’s Adam Guettel’s use of
long-line writing, especially in his musical “Floyd Collins”.
Other musical theatre composers use some meticulous process, but not as much as Sondheim.
Rather, they may often think, let’s make a song that people will like.
Start with catchy lyrics, easy chords, a nice melody, and bam, a song.
While Sondheim approaches it from the other side.
His process results in a well-crafted work, which then in turns, subjectively, is likeable.
His brilliance also comes through his unique writing character.
While his songs sound very unique from show to show, they all retain a certain signature
from the composer.
These thoughts on his music, can also be applied to his meticulous lyrics, story, characters,
and every other element of the musical.
This might be topics for a future video.
Anyways, Happy Birthday Stephen Sondheim.
Thank you all for watching, and please subscribe.