Stephen Sondheim Biography

Stephen Sondheim Biography

Stephen Sondheim, born on March 22nd, 1930, did not discover his interest in musical theater until he was an adolescent. Born to a rich dress-manufacturer from New York, he was encouraged to follow in his father's footsteps. However, when his parents divorced, and he moved with his mother to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Sondheim met the man who was to be his first "mentor," Oscar Hammerstein II. Hammerstein, it turned out, lived next door to Sondheim and his mother, and was working on Oklahoma when Sondheim and his mother first moved to Bucks Country. Inspired by Hammerstein, Sondheim began taking lessons in composition with Milton Babbitt. However, he later chose to stray from the teachings of Babbitt, who had encouraged Sondheim to direct his talents towards teaching or a similar profession, and decided to test his luck on Broadway. One can see Hammerstein's influences on Sondheim in a few areas. For one thing, they have both written a few pop songs (a practice somewhat alien to most musical lyricists or composers). Sondheim's most "popular" pop song, entitled "Sooner or Later," was written for the film Dick Tracy. However, a larger similarity between Sondheim and Hammerstein is the fact that, after all their pop successes, they have both returned time and again to the theater.

Sondheim's first musical success was in collaboration with the already well-established Leonard Bernstein on West Side Story in 1957. Sondheim took an immediate liking to the "Broadway lifestyle," and two years later, he started work with Jule Styne on Gypsy. However, these were simply starting points for the ever-changing, ever-experimenting Stephen Sondheim. As one of his songs says, "I never do anything twice." Sondheim has followed this philosophy throughout his career, and each new musical he works on is completely different from the one before it, and the one before that. Sondheim's first score as composer-lyricist was the 1962 A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. In this show, Sondheim won over critics with crude jokes and witty rhymes. Many believe it to be the only successful musical farce ever written.

West Side Story

In the following years, Sondheim developed a specific style. In his composing, he created intricate harmonies based off Ravel and Debussy, contrasting his other harmonies meant to "destabilize" the melody. In his lyrics, Sondheim used a wide range of vocabulary and seemed to be a genius for rhyming. However, the most impressive thing about Sondheim is his versatility, his ability to write funny, light shows like A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, contrasted with his ability to write serious, almost depressing shows like Passion. Similarly, Anyone Can Whistle, a show that came out in 1964, is characterized by an explosive pit-band score, while Sondheim proceeded, twelve years later, to write a score based off of Oriental musical influences in Pacific Overtures. Sondheim could bend all the rules, creating musicals that went backwards instead of forwards, for example, yet he showed an extensive knowledge of American culture in Follies, a 1971 musical combining sounds of Kern, Berlin, Gershwin, Dorothy Fields, and Yip Harburg. Still, Sondheim wrote Company in 1970, which could never be put in the same category as A Little Night Music, written only three years later.

Sondheim was also famous for his numerous collaborations and the close relationships he formed with these people. Among them is Hal Prince, a producer-director who worked with Sondheim to change the face of Broadway, creating many eccentric shows. Their first collaboration, in 1979, was a musical called Sweeney Todd, about the evil Mrs. Lovett, who convinces a visiting man to sell "meat pies" with her, that is, pies made out of baked humans. In this, Sondheim and Prince effectively blurred the line between lyrics and dialogue, a new idea in theater. Other examples of their collaborations include Company, which appears to have no plot, Pacific Overtures, which appears to have no characters, and Merrily We Roll Along, a musical that goes backwards instead of forwards.

Next, Sondheim began a collaborative relationship with author and director James Lapine. With Lapine, Sondheim created Sunday In The Park With George in 1984, a musical based on the life of artist George Seurat. Three years later, the two worked together again on Into The Woods, a musical creating pessimistic "twists" on familiar nursery stories such as those of Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, or Rapunzle.

Sondheim was and remains a revolutionary composer-lyricist. With each new musical, he continues to test the limits of Broadway in plot, lyrics, music, or dialogue. Having worked on over fourteen musicals, he has significantly changed the face of Broadway and continues to do so, coming out with a new musical later this year.