Stephen Sondheim (1930 - 2021)

[Ein Heldenleben]

Sondheim may have turned against them but I would have thought those songs were a handy step on his career ladder.

True - but he was well connected from the outset.

It’s Sondheim tribute day here.
Started with Original Broadway cast Merrily…

Then Sunday in the Park Original cast

Then Merrily Broadway revival

Then Follies Live at Lincoln centre
Then Company Ethel Barrymore production on YouTube (excellent )
Then Company the Doc following Original Cast recording

[MickyD]

Judging Sondheim and musicals by hearing Ethel Merman is rather like judging Bach by listening to Glenn Gould. It’s not going to be to everyone’s taste. Why not try the original cast album of Company which has some excellent singing in it ( and Elaine Stritch) or Sunday In the Park with Mandy Pantinkin and Bernadette Peters? The New York Phil love concert of Follies with George Hearn and Barbara Cook is also well sung.
PS the music for Gypsy was written by Jules Styne. Can’t think why they didn’t pick a thousand of tunes Sondheim did write.
Good lyrics though - some very clever internal rhyming.

I couldn't agree more. And let's not forget the wonderful original cast album of A Little Night Music.

[RichardB]

Judging Sondheim and musicals by hearing Ethel Merman is rather like judging Bach by listening to Glenn Gould.

Brilliant.

[Katzelmacher]

A genius - that word should not be thrown about, but it applies here.


Sondheim was to Musical Theatre what Beethoven was to the Symphony.


I should add: I didn’t like MT until I discovered SS.

[kernelbogey]

Brilliant.

Yes but... my prejudice goes way back and was not formed by three minutes of Ethel Merman! She was employing a style which, IMVHO, is endemic in the Musical. FWIW I really don't like Gilbert & Sulllivan either (though D'Oyly Carte didn't much go for the shouty American style AFAIK ).

And... thank you EH for the suggestions: but I really don't want to, thanks all the same!

[Ein Heldenleben]

A genius - that word should not be thrown about, but it applies here.


Sondheim was to Musical Theatre what Beethoven was to the Symphony.


I should add: I didn’t like MT until I discovered SS.

I would say Jerome Kern - Beethoven (created the modern musical)

Gershwin - Mozart (music poured out of them)

Sondheim - Wagner (unparalleled emotional depth )

But where does that leave Lloyd Webber ?

[Ein Heldenleben]

Yes but... my prejudice goes way back and was not formed by three minutes of Ethel Merman! She was employing a style which, IMVHO, is endemic in the Musical. FWIW I really don't like Gilbert & Sulllivan either (though D'Oyly Carte didn't much go for the shouty American style AFAIK ).

And... thank you EH for the suggestions: but I really don't want to, thanks all the same!

Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters , Barbara Cook , George Hearn “shouters” ? I don’t think so….

[RichardB]

where does that leave Lloyd Webber ?

At the photocopy shop.

[Ein Heldenleben]

At the photocopy shop.

Oooh!

[LeMartinPecheur]

I only have one disc filed under Sondheim and that is Assassins.


Can't think how I came across it back when it was new c1990 but 'Let's shoot the President' seemed a perfect, archetypal American song, fascinatingly terrible

That of course was before I actually started sympathising with its sentiments and singing it in the bath during the reign of the just-departed one...

[Bryn]

I only have one disc filed under Sondheim and that is [I]Assassins.
. . .

Me too, but in my case, it's Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, twice.

[cloughie]

I think that many of the songs from Musicals are excellent but in most cases only made to sound well outside the context of the musical itself either as Jazz standards or sung by good singers of what is broadly known as the ‘American songbook’.

[Serial_Apologist]

I think that many of the songs from Musicals are excellent but in most cases only made to sound well outside the context of the musical itself either as Jazz standards or sung by good singers of what is broadly known as the ‘American songbook’.

I'm much the same - take the songs out of their context and judge them on that basis. With musicals I've never been able to suspend disbelief enough to accept the way all action has to be suspended while characters launch into singing. The only exception is West Side Story, which I see not as a musical but a hybrid opera/ballet, with great music - Bernstein's best in my view nothwithstanding the obviousness of references, which are rather endearing actually - and dialogue subsidiary to the action, dance and music in the foreground, which isn't always the case in this genre. Bernstein gets away with the hyper-sentimentality in common with most American entertainment, probably because instead of the usual glossing over the story deals with real and still ongoing issues in a multi-levelled way that acknowledges complexity and inner contradictions.

[RichardB]

I think that many of the songs from Musicals are excellent but in most cases only made to sound well outside the context of the musical itself either as Jazz standards or sung by good singers of what is broadly known as the ‘American songbook’.

... or completely reimagined as in the 1975 live version of "Something's Coming" by Todd Rundgren's Utopia...

[cloughie]

... or completely reimagined as in the 1975 live version of "Something's Coming" by Todd Rundgren's Utopia...

I like that one Richard - not heard it before, good driving beat and a good vocal! It doesn’t however eclipse my favourite - Stresand at her best

https://youtu.be/vkVHILfASLY