# Stephen Sondheim



## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

I've always been a fan of musicals, but I'm not as familiar with the works of Sondheim as I'd like to be. Clearly his style is very different from that of many musical composers (being more classically influenced is part of it) and I've liked everything I've heard by him so far. I know "Into the Woods", "Sweeney Todd", and "Follies", but not too familiar with others.

What are your favorite works by Stephen Sondheim and what do you like about them? Any recommendations?


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

A Little Night Music ~ based upon Ingmar Bergman's lovely comedy _Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende)._
I fully recommend watching the Bergman film prior listening to the recording. (A movie was made of the Sondheim musical, but I found it sorely lacking.)

Pacific Overtures ~ just look it up. The score is an excursion into an "Asian Style," and the only more typical 'western musical theater numbers' are but one comedic medley, and a lyric song (Lovely Lady.) Lovely score, overall.

_Sunday in the park with George_. There is a good filming of the stage production of this one.

An earlier work, more typical Broadway genre, but such a damned funny show, is his _A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum._


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Send in the clowns is a really beautiful song.


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

PetrB said:


> A Little Night Music ~ based upon Ingmar Bergman's lovely comedy _Smiles of a Summer Night (Sommarnattens leende)._
> I fully recommend watching the Bergman film prior listening to the recording. (A movie was made of the Sondheim musical, but I found it sorely lacking.)
> 
> Pacific Overtures ~ just look it up. The score is an excursion into an "Asian Style," and the only more typical 'western musical theater numbers' are but one comedic medley, and a lyric song (Lovely Lady.) Lovely score, overall.
> ...


Thanks for the recommendations  I actually have seen the movie version of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" before; we watched it in Latin class 



Art Rock said:


> Send in the clowns is a really beautiful song.


I agree, which is why I should listen to "A Little Night Music"


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## QuietGuy (Mar 1, 2014)

"Company" is another one of his that's a favorite of mine. "Assassins" is another. "Anyone Can Whistle" and "Merrily We Roll Along" are two more. The songs from "Evening Primrose" are fantastic.

EDIT: I forgot "Passion"! What a great show!


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

QuietGuy said:


> "Company" is another one of his that's a favorite of mine. "Assassins" is another. "Anyone Can Whistle" and "Merrily We Roll Along" are two more. The songs from "Evening Primrose" are fantastic.


"Cheers to the Ladies Who Lunch!"-- aren't we too _much_?!

Now I _love_ Elaine Stritch, but Jinkx Monsoon does it better. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. . . Well, its a 'variation' on the original.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

I contributed to the Bacharach/David thread, so I decided to see if there was one for Sondheim. I've been a big fan for decades. I saw the original Broadway casts* of all of the Sondheim shows from "Company" to "Passion," most of them during previews. And I've seen the last four Broadway mountings of "Gypsy" (soon to return to Broadway for the 6th time) along with a number of other revivals.

Watching a preview performance of "Sweeney Todd" was a stunning experience. I'd read about it, so I had some idea what to expect, but I could not anticipate its power.

For anyone who is interested in the craft of lyric writing, Sondheim's two books, "Finishing the Hat" and "Look, I've Made a Hat" are must reads.

*Well, technically, I did not see Dean Jones in "Company" as he left very shortly after the show opened. And I did not see the opening night cast in "Merrily We Roll Along" as I saw it in previews, and the cast changed before it opened. And I've never seen "Assassins" or "Road Show."


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

^
Thank you very much for the enthusiastic post.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

I'm not sure what my all-time favorite Sondheim musical or song is. I do love "Being Alive" (from COMPANY), of which Michael Crawford did a couple wonderful renditions. Sondheim's score for MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG, a show that flopped in its original Broadway run, is also wonderful. 

I wanted to mention, too, that when Sondheim began his Broadway career he was writing only lyrics; he was Leonard Bernstein's lyricist for WEST SIDE STORY and Jule Styne's for GYPSY. His first hit for which he wrote both lyrics and music was A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Can't stand Send In The Clowns, which is probably his most famous song. Although if Barbara Cook sang it I might listen. She's a great singer, and has the sexiest speaking voice I've ever heard for a woman in her eighties. Almost 90 now!


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Barbara Cook singing "Send in the Clowns."






Sondheim wrote it while "A Little Night Music" was in rehearsal and tailored it to Glynis Johns' voice.

I'm not sure I could pick a favorite Sondheim song, but one that always chokes me up is "Sunday," the first act finale to "Sunday in the Park with George." I don't know of a more powerful celebration of the transcendence of art.

Sondheim was good at first act finales. The first act closer of "Gypsy" (music by Jule Styne as Belllinilover notes) is "Everything's Coming Up Roses." Out of context that song can seem like a rather banal, brassy Broadway toe tapper. Seen in a good production of the show, it is devastating.


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## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Start with Into the Woods and A Little Night Music. 
Woods deals with fairytales. The first act is quite light-hearted, but the second turns dark quite quickly.




A Little Night Music is delightful - a bitter-sweet, witty adaptation of Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night. This is where "Send in the Clowns" comes from.
Pacific Overtures is about the American gunboat diplomatic mission to Japan in the 1860s. Fascinating musical; it merges kabuki with Broadway (filtered through a pseudo-Japanese sensibility).





Here are some suggestions of tracks to listen to:

_A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum_
•	Comedy Tonight: 



•	Everybody Ought to Have a Maid: 




_Anyone Can Whistle_
•	Miracle Song: 



•	Anyone Can Whistle: 




_Company_
•	Company: 



•	Another Hundred People: 



•	Getting Married Today: 



 (Madeline Kahn)
•	Being Alive: 



(I rather like the cut song "Multitudes of Amys".)

_Follies_
•	Losing My Mind: 




_A Little Night Music_
•	Liaisons: 



 (Regina Resnik)
•	A Weekend in the Country (Act I finale): 



•	Send in the Clowns

_Pacific Overtures_
•	Four Black Dragons: 



•	Chrysanthemum Tea: 



 (It's a tangled situation...)
•	Someone in a Tree: 



•	Please Hello!: 




_Sweeney Todd_
•	A Little Priest: 



 (a jolly song about cannibalism)
•	Johanna quartet: 




_Sunday in the Park with George_
•	Sunday: 




_Into the Woods_
•	Agony: 



•	Ever After (Act 1 finale): 




_Assassins_
•	Gun Song: 



•	Another National Anthem: 



•	Everybody's Got the Right: 




Sondheim also wrote "I Never Do Anything Twice" for _The 7% Solution_ (Sherlock Holmes and Freud):


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

"Follies" is a problematic musical where the story fails to match the brilliance of the score (or of the original production, the most elaborate of its time).

It contains over 20 songs. They squeezed as much of it as they could (58 minutes) onto the original cast album, but still had to omit several numbers and make cuts to quite a few others. Unfortunately the cuts were predetermined and those passages were never recorded, so even with the advent of 80 minute CDs very little of the missing music could be restored. There have been several cast recordings since then with the complete score (and I understand it will be revived at London's National Theatre this fall), but Sondheim tailors much of his music to the original singers, so nothing can fully replace the original cast album.

Because "Follies" is about Broadway performers from an earlier era, a number of the songs are pastiches of the songwriters of the "Great American Songbook." Sondheim has described the melody of "Losing My Mind" as a theft of Gershwin's "The Man I Love." One of the other standout songs from the show, "I'm Still Here," is a pastiche of Harold Arlen's music with lyrics in the style of Yip Harburg and Dorothy Fields. It has replaced "There's No Business Like Show Business" as Broadway's unofficial anthem. The below version is not from the original cast album (where a verse was cut) but from a concert performance by Carol Burnett accompanied by the New York Philharmonic.






One final note - for anyone curious as to how a Broadway musical is created, I recommend "Anything Was Possible," Ted Chapin's day be day account of his experience working as a gofer on the show.


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## Belowpar (Jan 14, 2015)

So pleased to see him appreciated here. Have seen all but about 3 of his works and he slowly crept up on me. I believe it's because he crafts the song to fit so closely to the right place in a show that they don't tend to be well known outside the theatre. But pick one show and see if you like it. If not wait a year or two and then try another. There's real quality there. I believe he deserves a place near the top of the Musical Theatre pantheon and that his work will survive as long as there is Broadway and Opera companies to revive them

Two "numbers" I would ad to Simon's excellent list. Both from Follies which may well be problematic to stage but because the songs are in the style of an earlier age they tend to stand alone well.

Here's bitter





And here's barnstorming. 





Also a nod to Barbara Cook who I've been lucky enough to have seen twice in concert. She has too much voice for Send in the Clowns. It's ironic that Sondheims' best known song was crafted for an actress with a mere handful of notes and none of them that strong. The fact that it's so simple and no one notices, betrays the lie that he's just to dam cleaver for his own good.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Belowpar said:


> So pleased to see him appreciated here. Have seen all but about 3 of his works and he slowly crept up on me. I believe it's because he crafts the song to fit so closely to the right place in a show that they don't tend to be well known outside the theatre. But pick one show and see if you like it. If not wait a year or two and then try another. There's real quality there. I believe he deserves a place near the top of the Musical Theatre pantheon and that his work will survive as long as there is Broadway and Opera companies to revive them
> 
> Two "numbers" I would ad to Simon's excellent list. Both from Follies which may well be problematic to stage but because the songs are in the style of an earlier age they tend to stand alone well.
> 
> ...


In "Finishing the Hat" Sondheim explains that he wrote "Send in the Clowns" for Glynis Johns's breathy delivery, which resulted in her inability to sustain a note. Hence the short lines, which Sondheim felt would work better overall as questions.

One correction - the first of the two songs is from "Company."


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

Bumping this thread -

Listening to this excellent recital of Sondheim songs as sung by *Cleo Laine*, orchestrated and conducted by *Jonathan Tunick*.

_*Cleo Sings Sondheim*_
Cleo Laine










Doesn't get any better than this.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

_*Children Will Listen*_
Barbara Streisand


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)




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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

SanAntone said:


> Bumping this thread -
> 
> Listening to this excellent recital of Sondheim songs as sung by *Cleo Laine*, orchestrated and conducted by *Jonathan Tunick*.
> 
> ...


A friend of mine worked on the engineering of that album. As I said in some other post (maybe on another forum) I don't know why she opens with "Everybody Says Don't." Other than that the album is great. As I recall (too lazy to check) it includes "Ah, But Underneath," which Sondheim wrote for Diana Rigg for the London premiere of "Follies."


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

> The master of stage musicals, who died in November, left an estate worth $75 million, according to papers filed at Manhattan Surrogate's court.
> 
> Under a will signed in 2017, beneficiaries will consist of 20 individuals and charities. They include his husband Jeffrey Romley, the Smithsonian Institute, Museum of New York City, Library of Congress, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Dramatists Guild Fund and the Irish Repertory Theater Company.


 I am not in I see.


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## jegreenwood (Dec 25, 2015)

Rogerx said:


> I am not in I see.


Nor is my theatre company. But Irish Rep is. Congrats to them!


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