Sondheim: March 2008 Archives

Another repost from my old blog...

In Craig Zadan's book Sondheim & Co., Stephen Sondheim is quoted on the subject of the music in Sunday in the Park with George:

The way the score was constructed was based on the relationship of the two central characters. Theirs is a continuous and continuing love song that isn't completed until the end of the show. In the song "Sunday in the Park with George", Dot, in one section, begins a lyrical theme, which is her affection and her love for George. This is picked up later in "Color and Light", and it develops and starts to reach a climax, and just at that point, they break off and they speak.

Then in "We Do Not Belong Together" it's picked up and further developed as if it's almost where they left off, and ends with an unrhymed line where she sings, "I have to move on." And when their love is finally consummated, which is the end of the second act, it all comes together and becomes a completed song in "Move On". "Move On" is a combination of all the themes involving their relationship, including every harmony and every accompaniment; it's where everything culminates. Only it's over a period of four major scenes covering a hundred years. It's one way of threading the theme through time.

I thought it would be fun to edit those parts together. I ran into some problems because of the Youtube limit of ten minutes, so some material that I would have liked to include is cut, but here is the Love Music of George and Dot.

If it's 2008 that means it's time for another Gypsy revival. And why not? It's only been five years since the last revival.

Naturally Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents were present.

As was Angela Lansbury, who played Momma Rose in the 1974 revival, and thus became the Best Momma Rose of Them All!

More coverage of the opening night can be found at TheaterMania.

Reposting this from the old blog...

When James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim first discussed a collaboration on a musical, they wanted to do some sort of theme and variation. The show that resulted, Sunday in the Park with George, uses that concept both textually and musically.

But I doubt that most viewers get many of the connections, so I thought it would be fun to put together a video that highlights some, but by no means all, of the variations on a theme. In particular, I left out most of the love music, since I finished a separate video of that yesterday. (See previous blog post.)

Also, it's worth pointing out that I didn't find all these connections by myself. I relied on Mark Eden Horowitz's excellent Sondheim on Music and Stephen Banfield's somewhat more specialized Sondheim's Broadway Musicals for ideas, although I did come up with a few of my own.

Note that I saved the best for last. As Sondheim describes it in the Horowitz book, even Mandy Patinkin, who had been singing the two songs for a year and a half, didn't realize that X and Y were the same melody. I'll leave the discovery of those two songs as a, one hopes pleasant, exercise for the viewer.

One more word about Horowitz's Sondheim on Music; it's a fascinating and quite accessible interview with Sondheim. Although it's filled with musical examples, one doesn't need to be a music expert to enjoy it. For example, Sondheim's description (too long to quote here) about Seurat's work habits and the true nature of the Grande Jatte painting should be must reading.