“One of the initial issues you have to decide on with a musical is, why really should there be tracks? You can put tracks in any story, but what I think you have to look for is, why are tracks required to this tale? If it’s needless, then the present frequently turns out to be not quite excellent.” Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim was the most critical determine in American musical theater of the previous 50 percent-century. [singing] “Will it be? Of course, it will.” In shows like “West Facet Story,” “Gypsy,” “A Funny Factor Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Company,” “Follies,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Sunday in the Park With George,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985, he created tracks vital to the stories and altered the nature of the Broadway musical. “I like to transform models. Which is a single of the issues that appeals to me about stories, is if I’ve by no means done something like it right before. It has to be some not known territory. It’s got to make you anxious. If it doesn’t make you anxious, then you’re heading to create the exact matter you wrote before.” We sat down with him in June 2008 to chat about his have story and his accomplishments. “What is it about the theater that attracted you so, that created you want to spend your profession, your daily life working in it?” “It was very uncomplicated. It was when I was 11 decades aged, I met Oscar Hammerstein, and he grew to become a surrogate father, and I just wanted to do what he did. And he was a songwriter for the theater, so I became a songwriter for the theater. If he was a geologist, I would have become a geologist. Which is, I’m guaranteed, an exaggeration, but not significantly.” [music playing] Sondheim was not recognised for Best 40 hits, but just one of his music, “Send in the Clowns,” from “A Little Night Songs,” rose to the major of the charts. [singing] “But where by are the clowns? Brief, send in the clowns.” He wrote it specially for Glynis Johns, a single of the show’s stars, and it remains without having a doubt his most well known and monetarily thriving perform. “Wrote it throughout rehearsals, introduced it fundamentally overnight. Glynis Johns could not sustain notes, so I assumed, I obtained to generate a song with short phrases. And if they’re likely to be brief phrases, what are far better short phrases than issues? So the total strategy of, ‘Isn’t it wealthy? Are we a pair?’ Concern, which ordinarily would not come about to me, arrived into my head. And as soon as I’ve gotten that, after you get the strategy of inquiries, then it’s rather quick to compose.” [SINGING] “Isn’t it bliss? Don’t you approve?” “Once you get the idea of, ‘Isn’t it rich? Are not we schmucks not to be collectively?’ I signify, you get that tone, that requires a quite brief interval of time.” [singing] “Send in the clowns.” Stephen Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, to higher-center-course mothers and fathers on the Higher West Facet of Manhattan. His father produced dresses, and his mom created them. But his childhood was not all privilege. His relatives everyday living was tough, with a distant and remote mother and dad and mom who did not get along. “When I was 10 many years outdated, my parents divorced. My mother got custody of me, and she purchased a put in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, as a sort of summer season home. And I was an only boy or girl. And since she was a doing the job lady and also a superstar hunter, she knew the Hammersteins slightly, and they experienced a son my age, a yr young, Jimmy. And so we turned pals and companions. And Oscar naturally understood that I experienced some reward for songwriting, so he inspired me during my teenager years, and in fact, taught me. And I introduced him a display when I was 15 a long time previous that I assumed he would want to deliver. It was a present about the college I went to, George Faculty. And I was pretty dissatisfied to obtain out that he wouldn’t produce it. But I wished to be the to start with 15-year-previous on Broadway with a clearly show. But he stated, if you want to know what’s erroneous with the exhibit, I’ll convey to you. And he went about it site by page, starting off from the initially sentence. He addressed me like an adult instead of like a kid. By the time the afternoon was more than, I actually realized a lot more about the nuts and bolts of crafting a musical than most men and women master in a life span.” Hammerstein and his lover Richard Rodgers were refreshing from the achievement of ‘Oklahoma!’ and ‘Carousel’ when they employed the teenage Sondheim to work on their up coming musical, ‘Allegro,’ in 1947. [singing] “His hair is fuzzy, his eyes are blue.” Unconventional for its day, it adopted the lifetime of an everyman from start to age 35. It was their initially failure, but it would impact Sondheim tremendously. “It was experimental, and so that incurred in me the total idea of accomplishing experimental things, which I’ve completed, a person way or yet another, most of the demonstrates I’ve carried out.” Hammerstein laid out a program of schooling for his teenage protégé, suggesting he compose 4 musicals, each and every in a distinctive design and style. “The 1st a single being an adaptation of a perform that I believed was great. The 2nd currently being an adaptation of a participate in that I preferred but was flawed, that maybe I could really feel I could make improvements to. The 3rd, a thing that was a non-theatrical story, but adapt it and make it theatrical. And then the fourth was to publish an primary. And that is specifically what I did above a time period of a long time.” In the mid-1950s, when Sondheim was in his early 20s, he wrote his very first skilled present, ‘Saturday Night time.’ [singing] “The moon’s like a million-watt electric powered gentle. It shines on the city —” It was headed to Broadway when its direct producer suddenly died, forcing the show to near out of town. The ambitious youthful composer was still with no a credit history, but then came an prospect to get the job done on Broadway, albeit as a lyricist only and not as a composer as well. It all started when he bumped into renowned playwright and librettist Arthur Laurents at a celebration. “And we fell to talking, and I claimed, ‘What are you undertaking?’ He reported, ‘I’m about to start on a musical version of “Romeo and Juliet.”’ And I mentioned, ‘And who’s accomplishing the score?’ He stated, ‘Leonard Bernstein.’ I claimed, ‘Who’s undertaking the lyrics?’ And he stated, ‘Oh, my god. Properly, I in no way assumed of you.’ And he basically smote his forehead. And he said, in his usual Arthur Laurents style, he reported, ‘I did not substantially like your new music, but I believed your lyrics had been sort of excellent.’ I explained, ‘All suitable.’ He stated, ‘Would you like to occur and participate in for Lenny?’ Now, I had no intention of just writing lyrics. I wished to write music. But I thought, chance to enjoy for Leonard Bernstein? Why not? So the next morning, I played for Lenny. And Lenny mentioned, ‘I will know inside of a week, and I’ll enable you know.’ And I reported, ‘Thank you so considerably, Mr. Bernstein.’ Sure more than enough, a week afterwards, the telephone rang, and he mentioned, ‘Would you like to do it?’ And I mentioned, ‘Let me simply call you again.’ For the reason that I did not want to do just lyrics. And I called Oscar, who’s my adviser on anything. And I claimed, ‘You know, I really do not want to do this.’ But Oscar claimed, ‘Look, you have a chance to function with very gifted experts on a show that sounds interesting, and you could generally produce your possess music at some point.’ He said, ‘My advice would be to choose the position.’ That’s why I took it. And I discovered a excellent deal.” [singing] “Maria. I just satisfied a female named Maria.” Sondheim did not usually concur with Bernstein on how the lyrics really should be published. “I understood that there were being great dangers of pretension with this whole display, and the only way to produce the lyrics was to underwrite them and make them very very simple.” “You’ve reported about the decades that you are not actually happy with the lyrics you wrote, even nevertheless they are so well-known. You are?” “No, no, no, they are really self-conscious. Lenny wished all the things, the lyrics to be very poetic. But his idea of poetry and my idea of poetry are merely not the exact same. I suggest, you know, I was 25 decades previous, and he was a huge, massive drive, and Lenny saved pushing me to be pretty fruity. ‘Today, the earth was just an handle.’ Which is a properly fantastic line on paper, but the boy from the streets is singing that?” [singing] “Today, the entire world was just an handle, a position for me to are living in.” “And I’ve normally quoted, you know, ‘I Truly feel Pretty’: ‘It’s alarming how charming I sense,’ says this female from the streets, and she seems like Noel Coward.” [singing] “It’s alarming how charming I truly feel.” “I do like ‘Something’s Coming.’ That’s my notion of a poetic lyric, in the sense that it uses imagery.” [singing] “Something’s coming. I really do not know what it is, but it is likely to be great.” “And I like the ‘Jet Song,’ way too.” [singing] “When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way, from your very first cigarette to your final dying day.” “But you know, songs like ‘Somewhere,’ I imply, that is deeply embarrassing. So —” “West Facet Story” acquired combined evaluations when it opened in 1957, and did not get the Tony Award as Finest Musical, but it was groundbreaking in its combination of audio and dance, and in its searing plot. Sondheim experienced made his to start with mark. He nonetheless longed to compose both of those songs and lyrics on Broadway, and it looked as if he was going to get the chance with a new musical based mostly on the early everyday living of the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. [singing] “You’ll be fantastic! Likely to have the full globe on a plate!” But the show’s star objected. “Ethel Merman was previously signed to participate in Rose, the mother, so it was all set. And then Ethel Merman reported she would not have me as a composer, simply because she had just carried out a show named ‘Happy Looking,’ with two youthful writers, and it was a flop. And she didn’t want to take a likelihood on an not known composer. And she’s correctly satisfied to have me do the lyrics. So I stated no, and Arthur tried to persuade me, and I said, ‘No, I truly want to compose tunes, this is nonsense.’ Once more, Oscar stepped into the breach, and he said, ‘Do it.’ He stated, ‘There are two advantages. Very first of all,’ he claimed, ‘you have the encounter of producing for a star, which is diverse than just producing a exhibit. I necessarily mean, you are tailoring product not only for the character, for the character as performed by that certain actor or actress.’ Which is just one thing. He explained, ‘Secondly, it is 6 months out of your life. Do it.’ And that is precisely what transpired. We wrote that display in about 4 months. We wrote pretty quickly. Which is almost certainly the quickest I have at any time listened to of a main Broadway musical remaining published. But it wrote, as Barbra Streisand would say, like butter.” [singing] “Honey, everything’s coming up roses and daffodils!” “It’s deemed a single of the most effective, if not the finest, Broadway musicals of all time.” “Yeah, unquestionably, it is. I consider it’s probably it is the culmination of that period, that informed musicals in chronological buy, in a linear design. I’d definitely say it was the best.” In 1970, Sondheim teamed up with director Harold Prince to create his breakthrough musical, ‘Company.’ Just as ‘Gypsy’ had been the fruits of the period of the narrative musical, ‘Company’ broke new ground. It fractured the narrative, told the tale in a nonlinear method, and opened the way for comparable musicals, like ‘A Chorus Line’ and ‘Chicago.’ Sondheim and Prince followed firm with more breakthroughs: ‘Follies,’ ‘A Minimal Night time Audio,’ ‘Pacific Overtures.’ They ended up groundbreaking, but largely, they weren’t economic hits. “It takes an audience a even though to get used to new strategies of storytelling. There are exceptional plays that crack with the tradition, like ‘Death of a Salesman,’ and are hits at the similar time. But normally, if you provide a new way of storytelling to the stage — ‘Oklahoma!’ is the best instance of having a likelihood and is a gigantic hit, but that is not the normal circumstance.” [singing] “These are probably the worst pies in London!” ‘Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street’ is considered by many to be Sondheim’s very best and most impressive function. A ugly tale of death and revenge, it displays the composer at the peak of his talent. [singing] “Is that just disgusting —” “It was complete of blood and gore and controversy. And even though it, also, did not make funds in its original operate, it has normally been revived, has been performed by opera companies, and in 2007 was turned into a movie starring Johnny Depp.” [singing] “I will have vengeance!” “You want to talk about dark?” “Well, it is not so dark. It is actually form of funny, that clearly show, you know? I necessarily mean, nobody usually takes it severely. It is not dim the way — it’s a melodrama. I don’t believe melodramas are dim. Anyway, but I get it. The level is, yes, there is a ton of blood.” “And there is a large amount of comedian reduction, there’s no question about it.” “It’s not about comic aid. It is the point the mind-set is not a genuine mind-set. They are all cartoon figures. I necessarily mean, it’s an operetta. These are not true persons, and they’re not supposed to be. They’re intended to be massive, more substantial than existence.” “But isn’t there a genuine perception in it about injustice and evil?” “If there is for you, then there is for you. I know Hal always thinks, always thought it was about the Industrial Revolution. I believed it was about scaring persons.” “You all know Steve is a great dramatist and our best dwelling composer and lyricist.” In 2010, Sondheim been given an top stage accolade. “I cry effortless.” A Broadway theater was renamed in his honor. “This is so much additional going, to christen a theater the Stephen Sondheim as opposed to the British Petroleum Playhouse or —” “What do you feel — if you feel about this, what would you like your legacy to be?” “Oh, goodness. Oh, I just would like the displays to preserve obtaining finished. Regardless of whether on Broadway, or in regional theaters, or educational facilities or communities, I would just like the stuff to be performed. Just completed and accomplished and carried out and finished and finished. You know, that would be the entertaining.”