Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheimis an American composer and lyricist known for more than a half-century of contributions to musical theatre. Sondheim has received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, the Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been described by Frank Rich of The New York Times as "now the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theater." His best-known works as composer and lyricist include A Funny...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth22 March 1930
CountryUnited States of America
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.
Every single song I've ever written is sung by a character created by somebody else. Some might have a jaundiced view of love, some don't. But none of these songs is me singing - not a single one.
Stephen Sondheim was there to coach us. It was wonderful. He'd say surprising things: I shouldn't enunciate too fully when I sang 'Not Getting Married Today' from 'Company' because it would throw the rhyme scheme off. Usually you are encouraged to enunciate as clearly as possible. But his tips would make a song more effective.
I like songs that are part of a dramatic texture, and therefore I like the scenes to be active. I wanna follow the story and that means you lean on the actors.
I don't write songs apart from theatrical pieces. I'm not interested in writing songs qua songs.
I get some flak for and some resistance from colleagues for because I'm interested in storytelling. I mean what I like about songwriting is songs used to tell a story.
A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.
If you told me to write a love song tonight, I'd have a lot of trouble. But if you tell me to write a love song about a girl with a red dress who goes into a bar and is on her fifth martini and is falling off her chair, that's a lot easier, and it makes me free to say anything I want.
On stage, generally speaking, the story is stopped or held back by songs, because that's the convention. Audiences enjoy the song and the singer, that's the point.
In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies.
So many good songs get written fast, because you know exactly what has to work.
I don't listen to recordings of my songs. I don't avoid it, I just don't go out of my way to do it.
If you're dealing with a musical in which you're trying to tell a story, it's got to sound like speech. At the same time it's got to be a song.
There's something inimical about the camera and song.