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MOS Composer of the Month: Previous Page, Next Page, Index |
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Composer of the Month - January, 2006 Stephen Sondheim, b. 1930
It pays to be kind. Stephen Sondheim's father is technically the one who introduced young Stephen to music, but the family broke up before the boy's eleventh birthday, and Stephen was in his mother's custody until he graduated from high school, when he went to live with his father. After the divorce, Stephen was soon sent to school in Pennsylvania, where he became a friend of schoolmate Jamie Hammerstein. At the age of fifteen, he wrote his first musical and asked Jamie's father to review it. Having Oscar Hammerstein as one's first critic is bound to have a sharpening effect on one's skills. Hammerstein saw enough in the teenager's work to cause him to pay attention and put Sondheim on the right track for becoming one of the most important composers of Broadway and film music ever. After a number of early compositions of classical music and several scores for TV and the stage, none of which were particularly noteworthy, Sondheim was selected in 1957 as co-lyricist, eventually becoming the only lyricist, for West Side Story. The attention garnered from this show's success led to Gypsy, the last show Sondheim would do in the style of Rogers and Hammerstein. He had learned enough by then to set his own path in the literature of Broadway and Hollywood. The first Broadway production with his music and lyrics was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, in 1962. This musical netted him his first Tony, for best musical of the year, the following year. Altogether, Sondheim has collected a record seven Tonies for songwriting, to go along with his only Oscar (for Best Song, "Sooner or Later," Dick Tracy, 1990). But Sondheim is noted for more than just the ability to put a singable song together. When he set his own course in the theater, he established himself as a composer-lyricist with an eye toward significant literature. This focus reached its pinnacle in 1984 with Sunday in the Park with George, about French pointillist painter George Seurat. This was the last Broadway musical to win a Pulitzer Prize until Rent in 1996. Sondheim continues to produce. His most recent work, Bounce, about the lives of Addison and Wilson Mizner, has played in Chicago and Washington, but has not yet reached Broadway. The title of the musical is derived from the brothers' ability to bounce back after whatever setback befell them. Sondheim's career has definitely not provided him enough raw material for such a theme, since he has been the standard-setter for live musicals since he began his career forty years ago. Stephen Sondheim will be featured in the 2006 Michael O'Neal Chamber Singers concert, Bach to Broadway, at Reinhart College and Roswell Presbyterian Church. For further reading on Stephen Sondheim: Click here for more information about the MOS Composer of the Month feature.
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MOS Composer of the Month: Previous Page, Next Page, Index
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