Stephen Sondheim was born to Herbert and Janet "Foxy" Sondheim, in New York City, New York, and grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and later on a farm in Pennsylvania. An only child of well-to-do parents living in a high-rise apartment on Central Park West, Sondheim's childhood has been portrayed as isolated and emotionally neglected in Meryl Secrest's biography, Sondheim: A Life.
When Stephen was 10 years old, his father Herbert, a distant figure in Stephen's life, abandoned him and his mother. Under the laws of the day, Sondheim's mother retained full custody. Unfortunately for young Stephen, Foxy Sondheim was narcissistic, emotionally abusive, and a hypochondriac.[citation needed] Stephen "famously despised" Foxy, and when, in 1992, she died, he refused to attend her funeral.[1]
While Foxy had grown up in an Orthodox Jewish family, Sondheim had no formal religious education or association, did not become a Bar Mitzvah, and reportedly did not set foot in a synagogue until he was 19.
In 1950, he graduated magna cum laude from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where he was a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
At about the age of ten, around the time of his parents' divorce, Sondheim became friends with Jimmy Hammerstein, son of the well-known lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. Hammerstein became a surrogate father to Sondheim, as the young man attempted to stay away from home as much as possible. Hammerstein had a profound influence on the young Sondheim, especially in his development of love for musical theater. Indeed, it was at the opening of Hammerstein's hit show South Pacific that Sondheim met Harold Prince, who would later direct many of Sondheim's most famous shows. During high school, Sondheim attended George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He had the chance to write a farcical musical based on the goings-on of his school, entitled By George. It was a major success among his peers, and it inflated the young songwriter's ego considerably; he took it to Hammerstein, and asked him to evaluate it as though he had no knowledge of its author. Hammerstein hated it. "But if you want to know why it's terrible," Hammerstein consoled the young man, "I'll tell you." The rest of the day was spent going over the musical, and Sondheim would later say that "in that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime." [citation needed]
Thus began one of the most famous apprenticeships in the musical theatre, as Hammerstein designed a kind of course for Sondheim to take on the construction of a musical. This training centered around four assignments, which Sondheim was to write. These were:
A musical based on a play he admired (which became All That Glitters)
A musical based on a play he thought was flawed (which became High Tor)
A musical based on an existing novel or short story not previously dramatized (which became his unfinished Mary Poppins)
An original musical (which became Climb High)
None of these "assignment" musicals was ever produced professionally. High Tor and Mary Poppins have never been produced at all, because the rights holders for the original works refused to grant permission for a musical to be made.
Sondheim went on to study composition with the composer Milton Babbitt. In Mark Eden Horowitz's Sondheim on Music, Sondheim says that when he asked Babbitt if he could study atonality, Babbitt replied "No, I don't think you've exhausted your tonal resources yet." Sondheim agreed, and despite frequent dissonance and a highly chromatic style, his music remains resolutely diatonic.
[edit] Move to Broadway and Work as Lyricist
In 1954, he wrote both music and lyrics for Saturday Night, which was never produced on Broadway and was shelved until a 1997 production at London's Bridewell Theatre. In 1998 Saturday Night received a professional recording, followed by an Off-Broadway run in 2000.
Sondheim's big break came when he wrote the lyrics to West Side Story, accompanying Leonard Bernstein's music and Arthur Laurents's book. The 1957 show, directed by Jerome Robbins, ran for 732 performances. While this may be the best-known show Sondheim ever worked on, he has expressed some dissatisfaction with his lyrics, stating they don't always fit the characters and are sometimes too consciously poetic.
In 1959, he wrote the lyrics for another hit musical, Gypsy. Sondheim would have liked to write the music as well, but Ethel Merman, the star, insisted on a composer with a track record--thus Jule Styne was hired. Sondheim questioned if he should write only the lyrics for yet another show, but his mentor Oscar Hammerstein told him it would be valuable experience to write for a star. Sondheim worked closely with book writer Arthur Laurents to create the show. It ran 702 performances.
Finally, Sondheim participated in a musical for which he wrote both the music and lyrics, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It opened in 1962 and ran 964 performances. The book, based on the farces of Plautus, was by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart. Sondheim's score was not especially well-received at the time--the show won several Tony Awards, including best musical, but Sondheim did not even receive a nomination. In addition, some critics felt the songs were not properly integrated into the farcical action.
At this point, Sondheim had participated in three straight hits--he'd yet to taste failure on Broadway. His next show ended the streak. Anyone Can Whistle (1964) was a 9-performance flop, although it introduced Angela Lansbury to musical theatre and has developed a cult following.
In 1965 he donned his lyricist-for-hire hat for one last show, Do I Hear a Waltz?, with music by Richard Rodgers - the one project he has since openly regretted working on. [citation needed] In 1966, he semi-anonymously provided the lyric for The Boy From..., a parody of The Girl from Ipanema that was a highlight of the off-Broadway revue The Mad Show. (The official songwriting credit went to the linguistically-minded pseudonym "Esteban Ria Nido," which translates from the Spanish to "Stephen River Nest." In German, "Sond" means sound, or body of water, and "heim" means home, or nest. In the show's Playbill, the lyric was credited to "Nom De Plume").
Since then Sondheim has devoted himself to both composing and writing lyrics for a series of varied and adventuresome musicals, beginning with the innovative concept musical Company in 1970.
Sondheim's work is notable for his use of complex polyphony in the vocal parts, such as the chorus of five minor characters who function as a sort of greek chorus in 1973's A Little Night Music. He also displays a penchant for angular harmonies and intricate melodies reminiscent of his hero, Bach; Sondheim once claimed that he listens to no one else. To aficionados, Sondheim's musical sophistication is considered to be greater than that of many of his musical theater peers, and his lyrics are likewise renowned for their ambiguity ("Send in the Clowns"), wit ("Buddy's Blues") and urbanity ("The Little Things You Do Together").
An avid fan of games, in 1968 and 1969 Sondheim published a series of word puzzles in New York magazine. These crossword puzzles were models of form and creativity, and started the rise of cryptic crosswords in the United States.
It was something of a surprise [citation needed] when "Send in the Clowns", a song whose lyric is cryptic apart from the context of A Little Night Music, became a hit for Judy Collins. Although it was Sondheim's only Top 40 hit, his songs are frequently performed and recorded by cabaret artists and theatre singers in their solo careers.
Sondheim collaborated with producer/director Harold Prince on six distinctive musicals between 1970 and 1981. Company (1970) was a concept musical featuring a series of scenes rather than a traditional plot. Follies (1971) was a production filled with pastiche songs echoing styles of composers from earlier decades, and book songs in Sondheim's voice. A Little Night Music (1973) was one of his greatest successes [citation needed] with each song composed in a variation of waltz time. Pacific Overtures (1976) was the most non-traditional of the Sondheim-Prince collaborations, an intellectual exploration of the westernization of Japan. Sweeney Todd (1979), arguably Sondheim's greatest score, once again explores an unlikely topic, this time murderous revenge and cannibalism. The libretto, by Hugh Wheeler, is based on Christopher Bond's 1973 stage version of the Victorian original.
[edit] Later Work
Merrily We Roll Along (1981) is Sondheim's most traditional score and held potential to generate some hit songs (Frank Sinatra and Carly Simon each recorded a different song from the show). Sondheim's music director, Paul Gemignani, said, “Part of Steve’s ability is this extraordinary versatility.” Merrily, however, was a 16-performance flop. "Merrily did not work, but its score endures. Sondheim had set out to write traditional songs… But after that there is nothing ordinary about the music." [citation needed] The failure of Merrily greatly affected Sondheim. He was ready to quit theater and do movies or create video games or write mysteries. He was later quoted as saying, "I wanted to find something to satisfy myself that does not involve Broadway and dealing with all those people who hate me and hate Hal." [citation needed] Unfortunetly, the collaboration between Sondheim and Prince would end after the collaboration of Merrily We Roll Along, and their partnership was wrecked for 10 years after and their friendship was far worse.. The two reunited for Bounce (2003), which was mounted in Chicago and Washington, DC. Unfortunately, Bounce proved disappointing and never reached Broadway.
Instead of quitting the theater following the failure of Merrily, Sondheim decided "that there are better places to start a show", and found a new collaborator in the "artsy" James Lapine. Lapine has a taste "for the avant-garde and for visually oriented theater in particular." Sunday in the Park with George (1984), their first collaboration, was very much the avant-garde, but they had blended it together with the professionalism of the commercial theater to make a different kind of musical. Sondheim again was able to show his versatility and his adaptability. His music took on the style of the artist Georges Seurat's painting techniques. In doing so, Sondheim was able to bring his work to another level. "Sondheim’s work has such reach, there is so much emotional resonance, that many observers take it personally and become as fascinated with the artist as with the art; they see him in his work."
In 1985, he won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Sunday in the Park with George. It is one of the only six musicals that have taken this prestigious award. The Sondheim-Lapine collaboration also produced the popular fairy-tale show Into the Woods (1987) and the rhapsodic Passion (1994).
Evaluating his own work, Sondheim asserts that Gypsy is one of the greatest musicals written in the Rodgers & Hammerstein mode. As for his songs, Sondheim cites "Someone in a Tree" from Pacific Overtures as his favorite, with "The Miller's Son" from A Little Night Music coming in a close second.
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