Stephen Sondheim

Composer

• Born: March 22, 1930
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: November 26, 2021
• Deathplace: Roxbury, Connecticut

Composer and lyricist

As a lyricist and a composer of avant-garde musicals, Sondheim was an influential figure on Broadway for half a century.

Areas of achievement: Entertainment; music; theater

Early Life

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born to Herbert and Janet Sondheim, who were descendants of Jewish immigrants from Germany and Lithuania but not actively religious. They were affluent because of the dress shop they owned. Stephen Sondheim went to private schools, and he was taught to play piano. Self-taught, Sondheim’s father played competently. Sondheim liked school and had many friends (helped by his wit and his fondness for games and puzzles, both apparent in his later work), but he received little parental attention except on Sundays, and then mainly from his father.

In 1940, his father ran off with a younger woman, precipitating a divorce and destabilizing Sondheim’s family life. His mother treated Sondheim badly, which he later wrote about in an unpublished story (“The Brass Goddess”). This led to many future emotional problems; he was conflicted about his same-sex sexual orientation and eventually grew to hate his mother (though he supported her financially). Some of his musicals show an ambivalence toward marriage (especially 1970’s Company), and many have dark endings often involving revenge themes (especially 1979’s Sweeney Todd).

Sondheim’s background gave him an early exposure to celebrities (his mother knew many actors) and music. The most important connection was Oscar Hammerstein II, who became a family friend during the 1940s and served as a musical mentor. Sondheim’s first musical was a parody of life at George School; he proudly took it to Hammerstein, only to have the latter explain everything wrong with it. Sondheim was so impressed by the score to 1945’s Hangover Square (which later inspired the music in Sweeney Todd) that he wrote a fan letter to composer Bernard Herrmann.

A bright student, Sondheim went to Williams College in 1946, majoring in English and minoring in music. There he studied, acted in plays, and wrote plays and music. After graduating magna cum laude in 1950, he won the Hubbard Hutchinson Prize for two years of musical study, which he did with Irwin Babbitt. For several years he was involved in such work as writing eleven episodes for the television series Topper, and he made several attempts at a musical. The most promising, Saturday Night (1997), written in the 1950s, was ready to start production when its owner died, but it helped lead to Sondheim’s first major break.

Life’s Work

Sondheim’s first important musical was West Side Story in 1957, and he wrote the lyrics (initially cowriting them with Leonard Bernstein). There were many difficulties, starting with getting the financing, partly because of the dark ending, but ultimately both play and film were great successes. Next he wrote the lyrics (but not the music) for Gypsy (1959), another hit.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), for which he was both lyricist and composer, was his most popular musical, helped by a happy ending, and his first musical to win the Tony Award for best musical. After that came his first flop, the avant-garde Anyone Can Whistle (1964), which closed after nine performances. His next musical, 1965’s Do I Hear a Waltz? (with music by Richard Rodgers), was a modest success. It was five years before he could do another musical, though he made do with other work, including a musical adaptation of John Collier’s dark fantasy Evening Primrose and creating cryptic crossword puzzles for New York magazine. He also wrote two mysteries that did not sell well and a screenplay for a film.

In 1970, he finally was able to start on two musicals, directed by Hal Prince: Company, followed by Follies (1971). Each won a Tony Award for best score, and Company won a Tony Award for best musical. Their commercial success was more modest; Follies lost money, despite winning seven Tony Awards, because its ticket sales earned just enough to keep the expensive masterpiece playing. In 1973 came the hit A Little Night Music (for which Sondheim wrote “Send in the Clowns”), which won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. While working on that, Sondheim quickly scored a Yale University musical adaptation of Batrachoi (405 BCE; The Frogs, 1780) by Aristophanes and wrote some new songs for a 1974 revival of the musical Candide (1956). Around the same time, he worked as a screenwriter on the whodunit film The Last of Sheila (1973).

Meanwhile, he was honored with a one-night tribute on Broadway in 1973, followed a few years later by a revue, Side by Side by Sondheim (1977), which ran extensively in London (where his musicals have become quite popular) and in New York; there were many more in future years. This helped make up for the fact that Pacific Overtures (1976), his next musical, was not successful. This was followed by the surprise success of the black comic tragedy masterpiece Sweeney Todd in 1979, which had a long run and won eight Tony Awards, including best musical and best score. Despite having a heart attack (which led to major lifestyle changes), Sondheim soon scored another musical, Merrily We Roll Along (1981), which failed so badly that Prince stopped working with Sondheim (until 2003).

Working with James Lapine, in 1983 Sondheim did Sunday in the Park with George, which was fairly successful (and helped exorcise some emotional demons) and won a Pulitzer Prize. They followed with Into the Woods (1987), which had a long run and won the Tony Award for best score. Sondheim next wrote Assassins (1990), which made it to Broadway in 2004. He and Lapine then did Passion (1994), which was decently successful and won Tony Awards for best musical and best score. Revisions of Saturday Night and Frogs later appeared Off-Broadway, and so did 2003’s Bounce (later revised as Road Show).

At the age of eighty, Sondheim published a two-volume retrospective of his lyrics, titled Finishing the Hat (2010–11). In it, he also critiqued his mentors' work and offered insight into his creative process and collaborations. Also in 2010, a revue of his oeuvre interspersed with interview clips, called Sondheim on Sondheim, was mounted on Broadway. Reuniting with Lapine, Sondheim composed the musical score to the 2014 film adaptation of Into the Woods.

While Sondheim long had a residence in New York City, he also kept a home in Roxbury, Connecticut. He married Jeffrey Romley in 2017. On November 26, 2021, he died of cardiovascular disease at his Roxbury home.

Significance

Sondheim remained a much-admired musician, including after his death, though he never had a smash hit. Many of his works have continued in Broadway revivals or elsewhere (especially A Little Night Music). Sound tracks and cast albums often sell well (more than 1.5 million copies for Company). Singers such as Betty Buckley and Barbra Streisand have done many albums with several Sondheim songs on each. Many Sondheim tributes and revues have occurred since 1973. Sondheim also had a great reputation among his peers (he was president of the Dramatists Guild of America from 1973 to 1981), winning a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2008. The Stephen Sondheim Society and several magazines study his work, and a Broadway theater is named for him. In addition to the honors already listed, his musicals have won many others, including eight Tony Awards and eight Grammy Awards for the cast albums. He taught aspiring musicians through occasional public lectures, the Young Playwrights organization, the Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts, and a one-term seminar at Oxford University. He was even recognized with a National Medal of Arts in 1996 and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Continued appreciation of his work was also illustrated by the numerous film adaptations produced. While a film version of West Side Story had already been released in 1961, renowned director Steven Spielberg helmed a new film iteration of the classic production that premiered shortly after Sondheim's death in November 2021 before reaching theaters in December.

Bibliography

Brockes, Emma. "Stephen Sondheim: A Life in Music." Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 20 Dec. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

Chapin, Ted. Everything Was Possible: The Creation of the Musical Follies. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Citron, Stephen. Sondheim and Lloyd Webber: The New Musical. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Horowitz, Mark Eden. Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2003.

Secrest, Meryle. Stephen Sondheim: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.

Sondheim, Stephen. "Look, He Made a Hat: Sondheim Talks Sondheim." Interview by Terry Gross. Fresh Air. NPR, 28 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.

Weber, Bruce. "Stephen Sondheim, Titan of the American Musical, Is Dead at 91." The New York Times, 26 Nov. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/theater/stephen-sondheim-dead.html. Accessed 18 Jan. 2022.

Zadan, Craig. Sondheim and Co. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.