How Sondheim Found his Sound (review)

Steve Swayne proposes a thorough examination of the sources for Stephen Sondheim's 'sound', which the author does not limit to 'considering music alone. . . . We must draw upon music, theater, and film to begin to enter Sondheim's sound world' (p. 3). The author is as good as his word. There are two chapters on musical influences, 'Sondheim the Classicist' and 'Sondheim the Tunesmith'. 'Sondheim the Dramaphile' explores the composer's foundational theatre experiences and 'Sondheim the Cinéaste' his immersion in serious film. Mixed in are two chapters that analyse a little of Sondheim's music: 'Pulling It Apart', a detailed analysis of 'What Can You Lose?' from the film Dick Tracy, and 'Putting It Together', a criticism of an extended sequence of the same name from the musical play Sunday in the Park with George. Included also are a very useful chronology of Sondheim's works, an appendix discussing the origin of the term 'concept musical', substantial notes, and a bibliography.

Not included are many music examples. There is one complete song, 'What Can You Lose?', a few phrases from 'Putting It Together', and snippets of Harold Arlen and George Gershwin, even though there are numerous references to specific points in a great many other Sondheim songs. To mine these comparisons and references most profitably, one needs a good collection of Sondheim scores by the armchair, and the author himself advises as much before getting into 'Putting It Together', his summary criticism of Sondheim's sound (p. 222). Plot summaries or other contextual background to the songs occur rarely. The book is therefore aimed at the Sondheim specialist or enthusiast. The reader is expected to know the songs and plays very well.

Swayne's method is admirably straightforward. He collects well-documented sources connected to Sondheim that provide evidence of these various formations, for example Sondheim's card catalogue of his collection of over 10,000 (pre-CD) recordings, or his early 'studies' in drama with Oscar Hammerstein II through the musical play Climb High of 1953. He then draws connections from these to various aspects and elements of Sondheim's mature work.

Swayne has a keen and imaginative eye for cross-generic similarities, such as the transformation of cinematic techniques into stage techniques, which he reveals as a common feature of Sondheim musicals. Indeed the chapter on film, and with the composer's relation to the 'new wave' of French cinema and the director Alain Resnais in particular, is the most startling of the book. I do wish Swayne had controlled his rather profligate use of the 'language' metaphor: 'cinematic language', 'dramatic language', and of course 'musical language'. With film and theatre the expression is necessarily vague because those arts, having no small sets of discrete elements that combine hierarchically according to rules of syntax, can never have any but the most tenuous connection to natural speech. In those chapters 'technique' would have served better in almost every case. With music, of course, the relation with language is far stronger and more precise; here, particularly in the discussion of Sondheim's harmony, the author could have pressed the analogy further. His description of Sondheim's harmonic vocabulary is thorough, but there is little discussion of his singular syntax, the relations that obtain among harmonies, except to point out that they are products of counterpoint. This does distinguish Sondheim's compositions from those of some of his Broadway colleagues, but since all kinds of Western harmony may be contrapuntally conceived, the point does nothing to specify any purely harmonic syntax. It is odd that the term 'non-functional harmony' or some equivalent never appears, for this concept makes it easier to explain why the motivic integration of Sondheim's melodies is at once intense and plastic, and yet why they do not stick easily in the memory. It also clarifies his musical debt to Ravel, Satie, and a number of Russian composers whom Swayne identifies as formative influences.

But to get...