Artist: Stephen Sondheim
Genre(s):
Other
Discography:
Into the Woods
Year: 2002
Tracks: 18
According to most critics and dramaturgy historians, Stephen Sondheim (born 1930) stands among Broadway render composers and lyricists not only as the superlative of his generation only as the only when great 1 of his generation. There may be many reasons wherefore Broadway failed to give rise systematically great writers to espouse the Rodgers & Hammersteins and Lerner & Loewes of the '40s and '50s, but the fact remains that though he operates without serious competition, Sondheim clearly ranks with such edgar Lee Masters, as well as with the Jerome Kerns and Irving Berlins of an even sooner generation.
Sondheim became a protégé of Hammerstein's afterwards befriending the lyricist's son in schooling, just he got his number one bragging break when he was hired to save lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's score for West Side Story (1957), which turned out to be one of the biggest hits and about memorable whole kit and boodle of its clip. This light-emitting diode to a tidy sum of lyric-writing exercise, though Sondheim always wanted to write music as intimately. Nevertheless, he worked with Jule Styne on Gypsy (1959), another enormous strike, and would later agree to do the same with Richard Rodgers for the unsuccessful Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965).
Earlier that, nonetheless, Sondheim scored his first success as composer and lyricist with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962). It was his final murder until Company (1970), a render around contemporary life and mores that did very much to revolutionize the Broadway musical and, as Hammerstein's '50s shows had, run it more toward serious and alien subjects. Since that time, Sondheim's shows have been surprisingly daring in footing of field of study matter, with unusual musical ideas and stunningly original lyrics. But they have not always been big hits and have pronounced a clip in dramatic art when Broadway render music became a marginalized fine art form in terms of popular culture.
Yet, Sondheim's shows of the '70s and '80s are benchmarks of the genre: Follies (1971) brought together aging follies girls for a look at middle-aged American life; A Little Night Music (1973) is based on Ingmar Bergman's film Smiles of a Summer Night and contains Sondheim's sole murder strain, "Send in the Clowns"; Pacific Overtures (1976) ambitiously took on the subject of Japanese-American relations; Sweeney Todd (1979) was an operetta based on the British lofty guignol narrative of a murderous barber; Sunday in the Park with George (1984) was a life story of impressionist painter Georges Seurat; and Into the Woods (1987) wove together children's fairy tales with the theories of psychologist Bruno Bettelheim. In 1991, Sondheim wrote his first off-Broadway musical, Assassins, a short piece around presidential killers. He as well turned more than to films (he had scripted a score for Stavisky in the '70s), writing songs for Madonna in Hawkshaw Tracy in 1990 and functional on an original moving picture musical. But his future work to seem was a Broadway melodious, Passion, in 1994. He was occupied in the 1990s educational activity and overseeing various productions of his existing work, simply he also prepared a new melodic, which, after many delays and claim changes, was scheduled to be staged in 2003 under the name Bounce.
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