Stephen Sondheim

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Stephen Sondheim (ca.1970)

Stephen Joshua Sondheim (born March 22, 1930 in New York City , New York ) is an American musical composer and lyricist. He is the recipient of an Academy Award , several Tony Awards (9), several Grammy Awards , the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom .

Life

Stephen Sondheim grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania after his Jewish parents divorced . From the age of 7 he received piano lessons. At the age of ten he befriended Jimmy Hammerstein, the son of Oscar Hammerstein . After Sondheim had written a show for a school performance, he came to Oscar Hammerstein with it. Although Hammerstein's reaction to this was negative, he saw Sondheim's potential and taught him the basic concepts of the musical. For training, he recommended that he write four different pieces, namely:

  • a musical based on a good piece (like All That Glitters )
  • a musical based on a bad piece (like High Tor )
  • a musical based on a novel or short story that has not yet been dramatized (such as Mary Poppins )
  • a musical with an original story (such as Climb High )

None of these "commissioned musicals" were professionally produced. The main reason that High Tor and Mary Poppins were not produced was because the copyright holders of the original works refused to give permission. But Sondheim learned more about writing musicals from the discussion with the musical veteran than he could have learned from studying the entire musical literature.

Sondheim studied with the composer Milton Babbitt . In 1950 he completed his studies at Williams College in Williamstown ( Massachusetts ) magna cum laude, where he a member of the academic communities Beta Theta Pi and Phi Beta Kappa was.

In 1954 he wrote music and lyrics for Saturday Night , which never came on Broadway and was only performed in 1997 at the Bridewell Theater in London .

At 25, Sondheim wrote the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story and in 1959 the lyrics to Gypsy by Jule Styne . In both cases the book was by Arthur Laurents . In 1962, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was performed on Broadway, the first musical for which he wrote text and music. The next musical, Anyone Can Whistle , was a financial failure. But later a cult developed around this work. He then worked for the last time as a lyricist for another composer, namely for Do I Hear a Waltz? with the music of Richard Rodgers . He then devoted himself to composing and writing a number of critically acclaimed musicals.

Sondheim came out at the age of 40 . His partner was for a time the playwright Peter Jones .

Musical style

Sondheim is one of the most musically demanding musical composers of all. Most of his musicals dispense with catchy, easily comprehensible melodies, so that only a few songs from his stage work are known to a wide audience. A typical characteristic of his style is to arrange complex musical structures so skillfully that they are not even noticed by an inexperienced listener. He has a predilection for complex harmonies and melodies, which not infrequently even take on polyphonic forms (such as the choir of five supporting roles in The Smile of a Summer Night , which functions as a kind of “Greek choir”). He names Bach as a model for this . (He once claimed not to have heard anything else.)

His most important work is Sunday in the Park with George . He imitates the pointillist painting style of Georges Seurat through chromatic staccato motifs. Sunday in the Park with George is also a biographical work in which Sondheim addresses his literary and musical views.

Major works

Unless otherwise noted, text and music are by Stephen Sondheim.

Film / television

  • Topper (c. 1953), a television series (without music) for which Sondheim wrote ten episodes
  • Evening Primrose (1966), a television musical with Anthony Perkins about a secret association of people who live in a department store
  • The Last of Sheila (1973), a film written by Anthony Perkins .
  • The Madam's Song or I Never Do Anything Twice , for the film The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976, German " No coke for Sherlock Holmes ").
  • the score for Alain Resnais ' film Stavisky (1974).
  • 1977: Smiles of a Summer Night ( A Little Night Music )
  • Five songs for Warren Beatty's 1990 film Dick Tracy . (Academy Award in the Best Song category for "Sooner or Later")
  • The original English names of the Desperate Housewives episodes are largely named after the titles of his work.
  • the score for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007, UK: silversilver)
  • the score for Into the Woods (2014)

Awards and honors

(Abstract)

Grammy Awards

Tony Awards

Laurence Olivier Awards

Further awards

Sondheim is also a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame .

literature

Web links

Commons : Stephen Sondheim  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Times: Stephen Sondheim: “My ideal collaborator is me”
  2. ↑ Marc Bauch , The American Musical: A Literary Study (Marburg, 2003)
  3. ↑ Music Sales Awards: UK
  4. ↑ Academy Members. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed January 21, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter S. (PDF; 1.4 MB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved August 25, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Sondheim, Stephen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sondheim, Stephen Joshua
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musical composer and lyricist
DATE OF BIRTH March 22, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York, United States