Sing Out!
Today really ought to be Musical Theater Day. It is the 65th birthday of the greatest British theatrical composer and impresario of our age, Andrew Lloyd Webber, or to be formal, Baron Lloyd-Webber. His musicals have run for years, sometimes for over a decade, in both the West End and Broadway. A list of his awards and honors, including the knighthood and peerage from Queen Elizabeth, goes on for so long that it gets boring.
Let me put it this way: ever since he teamed up with Tim Rice at age 20 to write Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, everything he's touched has turned to gold. Jesus Christ, Superstar made him a superstar at age 22.
Personally, I'm not a big fan, with the possible exception of his Requiem. But you can't deny that he's been enormously successful and is enormously wealthy. My favorite factoid is that he owns most of Watership Down (the place, not the novel). He currently sits as a Conservative member in the House of Lords.
It is also the 83rd birthday of the greatest artist of American musical theater: Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim also started early. After his parents divorced, he was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein. He wrote a musical that was a great success at school, but when he brought it to Hammerstein, he was told it was the worst thing the composer had ever seen. "But if you want to know why it's terrible," Hammerstein said, "I'll tell you." The rest of the day was a master class in songwriting and musical theater. Sondheim said he learned more in that one day than most people learn in a lifetime.
At the age of 25, he came to the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who hired him to write the lyrics for West Side Story. Two years later, he wrote the lyrics for Gypsy. In 1962 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened, with both words and music by Stephen Sondheim.
Sondheim wrote Company, a concept musical, and Pacific Overtures, one of my absolute favorites - a Japanese view of the invasion of Western intruders starting with Admiral Perry and the Black Ships. A Little Night Music gave us his one Billboard Top 40 song, Send In the Clowns. He ruefully referred to his complex and intricate melodies in Merrily We Roll Along, where an agent derides a musical by explaining that you gotta give the audience a tune they can hum. "What's wrong with lettin' them tap their toes a bit? / I'll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit. / Give 'em a melody!"
Sunday in the Park with George won him a Pulitzer Prize. He also picked up an Academy Award for one of the songs he wrote for Dick Tracy. It was sung by Madonna: Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man).
Sondheim's music is sometimes challenging, but worth the effort. He's known for delightful little internal rhymes and puns, like this line from Into the Woods in which the mother of Jack (of beanstalk fame) tells him sell the cow. "We've no time to sit and dither / While her withers wither with her."
My favorite Sondheim story was told by critic Nancy Melich of an appearance he made a couple years ago.
"He was visibly taken by the university choir, who sang two songs during the evening, 'Children Will Listen' and 'Sunday', and then returned to reprise 'Sunday'. During that final moment, Sondheim and I were standing, facing the choir of students from the University of Utah's opera program, our backs to the audience, and I could see tears welling in his eyes as the voices rang out. Then, all of a sudden, he raised his arms and began conducting, urging the student singers to go full out, which they did, the crescendo building, their eyes locked with his, until the final 'on an ordinary Sunday' was sung. It was thrilling, and a perfect conclusion to a remarkable evening-nothing ordinary about it."
"White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities…" (Sunday in the Park with George)
Let me put it this way: ever since he teamed up with Tim Rice at age 20 to write Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat, everything he's touched has turned to gold. Jesus Christ, Superstar made him a superstar at age 22.
Personally, I'm not a big fan, with the possible exception of his Requiem. But you can't deny that he's been enormously successful and is enormously wealthy. My favorite factoid is that he owns most of Watership Down (the place, not the novel). He currently sits as a Conservative member in the House of Lords.
It is also the 83rd birthday of the greatest artist of American musical theater: Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim also started early. After his parents divorced, he was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein. He wrote a musical that was a great success at school, but when he brought it to Hammerstein, he was told it was the worst thing the composer had ever seen. "But if you want to know why it's terrible," Hammerstein said, "I'll tell you." The rest of the day was a master class in songwriting and musical theater. Sondheim said he learned more in that one day than most people learn in a lifetime.
At the age of 25, he came to the attention of Leonard Bernstein, who hired him to write the lyrics for West Side Story. Two years later, he wrote the lyrics for Gypsy. In 1962 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened, with both words and music by Stephen Sondheim.
Sondheim wrote Company, a concept musical, and Pacific Overtures, one of my absolute favorites - a Japanese view of the invasion of Western intruders starting with Admiral Perry and the Black Ships. A Little Night Music gave us his one Billboard Top 40 song, Send In the Clowns. He ruefully referred to his complex and intricate melodies in Merrily We Roll Along, where an agent derides a musical by explaining that you gotta give the audience a tune they can hum. "What's wrong with lettin' them tap their toes a bit? / I'll let you know when Stravinsky has a hit. / Give 'em a melody!"
Sunday in the Park with George won him a Pulitzer Prize. He also picked up an Academy Award for one of the songs he wrote for Dick Tracy. It was sung by Madonna: Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man).
Sondheim's music is sometimes challenging, but worth the effort. He's known for delightful little internal rhymes and puns, like this line from Into the Woods in which the mother of Jack (of beanstalk fame) tells him sell the cow. "We've no time to sit and dither / While her withers wither with her."
My favorite Sondheim story was told by critic Nancy Melich of an appearance he made a couple years ago.
"He was visibly taken by the university choir, who sang two songs during the evening, 'Children Will Listen' and 'Sunday', and then returned to reprise 'Sunday'. During that final moment, Sondheim and I were standing, facing the choir of students from the University of Utah's opera program, our backs to the audience, and I could see tears welling in his eyes as the voices rang out. Then, all of a sudden, he raised his arms and began conducting, urging the student singers to go full out, which they did, the crescendo building, their eyes locked with his, until the final 'on an ordinary Sunday' was sung. It was thrilling, and a perfect conclusion to a remarkable evening-nothing ordinary about it."
"White. A blank page or canvas. His favorite. So many possibilities…" (Sunday in the Park with George)