Does art need to be popularly appreciated to be important? The work of Stephen Sondheim is often ridiculed for its intellectual, emotionless nature that makes it difficult for any audience member to comprehend. These comments come from critics and spectators who go to the theatre to be entertained, and have become fixed in the world of poperettas and spectacle shows. Once an audience can free itself from this trend, and really listen to what Sondheim is saying through his characters, it will discover that his pieces use intellect and wit to create emotionally-fulfilling works that are incredibly powerful.
“Finishing the Hat,” from Sunday in the Park With George, is a song about an artist painting a hat. It is boring and does not make sense and tells us nothing about the character. These are all common critiques of Sondheim’s work by people who have only listened to the surface of what the composer/lyricist is saying. When one pays attention to the intricacies of the piece, “Finishing the Hat” becomes a telling story of an artist’s struggle that can be used as a lens through which one can meaningfully interpret the rest of the play. It is said that those who have absorbed Sondheim’s words have become his group of cult followers, but this contingent does not have to be a limited club of intellectuals. “Most every Stephen Sondheim nut has had a kind of near-mystical conversion experience” that comes from a moment in the theatre when Sondheim’s music, lyrics, and characterization fit together to form a perfect world of true emotion. If the theatre world would change its perception of what a musical must be, and be prepared to learn instead of critique, Sondheim’s pieces would become appreciated for the works of art that they are, and be able to affect a wider audience.
Lyrics are the avenue that the songwriter takes in revealing the soul of a character to the audience. To the majority of people, the musical lyric is defined by well-structured rhyming couplets that show a character’s basic emotions. Sondheim’s lyrics go past this level, as he constructs his lyrics like the human mind that is singing them. Often stream-of-consciousness and contradicting thoughts formulate part of his works, as his characters try to determine their feelings and situation through song. His lyrics “reveal…to the audience the characters who could not have the omniscience to know or explain themselves with total accuracy.”
The lyrics of the classical artist Oscar Hammerstein elucidate what a character is feeling in words, but do not illustrate it in form or style. In “A Puzzlement” from The King and I, the king is obviously confused about matters of control and obedience. Yet this song has a structured form and is characterized by the king clearly stating his uncertainty. When Sondheim’s characters are confused, their songs show this, rather than tell it, to the audience. In “Moments in the Woods,” from Into the Woods, the Baker’s wife tries to lessen her bewilderment about her situation. Instead of her saying “What a puzzlement,” as does the king through the words of Oscar Hammerstein, she sings a list of questions about what her life means and how it will progress: “Must it all be either less or more,/Either plain or grand?/Is it always ‘Or’?/Is it never ‘And’?.” This technique, in which the character explores internal issues through through-composure and lyrical representations of her thoughts is deeply effective in allowing the audience to relate to the character as a real person. No longer is the character one who breaks into song to state in perfect rhyme why she is upset; under Sondheim, characters are representations of people with real emotion and problems, who understand and discover their lives through the arduous situations they encounter.
Just like the revolutionary beginning of Oklahoma! that was written to fit what the situation dictated, rather than the stereotype, Sondheim’s music (like his lyrics) breaks with the cookie-cutter song form, and is written to represent the workings of a character’s mind. This trend has led many to criticize the dissonant, un-melodic nature of Sondheim’s music in favor of the traditional tunes of the classical musicals. In response to this, theatre writer Chip Brown has stated: “a person would have to be deaf not to be swept up in its [the score of Sunday in the Park] harmonies, its soaring arpeggios and dreamy, pulsing undercurrents.” When Dot and George reach the pinnacle of their duet in “Move On” from Sunday in the Park With George, and sing “We’ve always belonged together/We will always belong together,” the statements of critics who claim that Sondheim cannot write melodies that speak to an audience are single-handedly defied. The fact that Sondheim can write soaring melodies to fit love songs such as “Move On,” as well as others like “My Friends,” about an insane barber singing tenderly to knives, illustrates the genius and versatility of his talent.
Each piece in Sondheim’s oeuvre is unique, and each song within the show musically suited to a particular character so well that the music alone could speak the character’s feelings. The classical “charm song” and “production number,” placed in the score primarily to liven the audience and sell sheet music, are nowhere to be found in Sondheim’s scores. In the composer’s music, every note has its purpose, and nothing is unnecessarily included in response to outside promises of money or popular success: his songs most definitely do not serve as direct pathways to Billboard’s Top Ten charts. “Theater composers like Andrew Lloyd Webber prosper by writing scores for the music industry. First the record; then the show. Not Sondheim, whose dictum has always been: First the show, always the show.” Sondheim’s songs are constructed for particular theatrical worlds, and used as vehicles to further the action of the play and elucidate to the audience the emotionally-charged thoughts of the characters through an engagement in an engrossing situation. Thus, dedication to the story and characters in each particular play is the reason for his lack of popular hits, rather than the oft-claimed reason that he lacks talent.
Rather than suiting each song to the character who is singing it, each of Sondheim’s plays is unique in its sound and construction, according to the particular mood which he hopes to create. This is illustrated in the difference between the syncopated rhythms of the score to Sunday, which represents the pointillist artistry of Georges Seurat, and the dissonant score of Sweeney Todd, meant to embody the industrial age of Great Britain. Repeated intimations and comments occur through the repetition and development of musical themes in Sondheim’s scores. Serving to hint at character’s true identity, as with the Beggar Woman in Sweeney Todd and the Mysterious Man in Into the Woods, or show the relation of two incidents, these motifs add a layer of exposition to Sondheim’s plays that make music serve as much a purpose in plot as dialogue. Lyrics and score are also unified into a discursive relationship, as exemplified in “Good Thing Going” from Merrily We Roll Along. When Charley sings “It’s not that nothing went wrong,” a dissonant chord is played by the orchestra on the word “wrong.” Thus, Sondheim’s scores are integrated with plot, character, and lyric to form a synthesis that creates music perfectly suited to the world of the play.
Time Out critics, in a 2003 review of Sondheim’s work being done at the Royal Opera House, stated the clichéd argument about Sondheim: “The secret of Sondheim’s success is that he’s boring enough to seem like high art, thus suffusing with a warm glow those blue-rinsed matrons of all sexes that make up his public. He’s clever enough to let the ladies-who-lunch brigades congratulate themselves on spotting his cleverness. He famously loves puzzles, intricacy, ingenuity; and wears his cleverness like a flasher’s mac. In both cases you know it doesn’t conceal very much. And he can’t write tunes.”
‘Art is not art if one can’t understand it at first glance’ has come to be the modern belief of critics and consumers alike. Confusion leads to critique, and the audience member who pays a hefty sum to see flashy costumes and their favorite star dressed like a 70s pop singer does not want to be faced with reality at the theatre. Authenticity is what Sondheim presents to his audience, and those that have attention enough to take notice revel in its genius and truth. Those who deem him boring are focusing on what classical elements Sondheim lacks, rather than listening to his words. Johann Hari, quoting critic Frank Rich, notes the rise of the new musical: “Sondheim ‘has changed the texture of musical theatre as radically as Oscar Hammerstein, and may yet leave our theatre profoundly altered.’ He has burned all of the conventions of the musical, such as the need for an upbeat ending, the avoidance of ideas and the fear of any whiff of the intellectual.” It is time to embrace the new theatre that people like Sondheim are creating, and recognize it for the art that it is.
Stephen Sondheim, “Move On,” rec. 1984, Sunday in the Park With George,
RCA, 1984.Chip Brown “Sondheim!,” The Smithsonian Aug. 2002: 45.
Richard Kislan, The Musical. (New York: Applause, 1995) 161.
Oscar Hammerstein II, “A Puzzlement,” rec. 1951, The King and I, Decca U.S., 1951.
Stephen Sondheim, “Moments in the Woods,” rec. 1987, Into the Woods, RCA, 1988.
Oscar Hammerstein II, “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” rec. 1943, Oklahoma!,
Decca U.S. [remastered edition], 2000.
Brown, 45.
Stephen Sondheim, “Move On,” rec. 1984, Sunday in the Park With George, RCA, 1984.
Stephen Sondheim, “My Friends,” rec. 1979, Sweeney Todd, RCA, 1979.
Kislan, 164.
Stephen Sondheim, “Good Thing Going,” rec. 1981, Merrily We Roll Along, RCA, 1982.
Time Out Group, “The Great Sondheim Debate; Debate Sweeney Todd,” Time Out Dec. 2003: 14.
Johann Hari, “Profile: Stephen Sondheim-One of the Great Dissident Voices of
America,” The Independent (London) June 28, 2003: 17.
