We cannot verify your location
Browse Book and Journal Content on Project MUSE
OR
Browse > Film, Theater, and Performing Arts > Theater and Performance Studies
title

How Sondheim Found His Sound

Steve Swayne

Publication Year: 2010

“Steve Swayne’s How Sondheim Found His Sound is a fascinating treatment and remarkable analysis of America’s greatest playwright in song. His marvelous text goes a long way toward placing Stephen Sondheim among the towering artists of the late twentieth century!” —Cornel West, Princeton University “Sondheim’s career and music have never been so skillfully dissected, examined, and put in context. With its focus on his work as composer, this book is surprising and welcome.” —Theodore S. Chapin, President and Executive Director, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization “. . . an intriguing ‘biography’ of the songwriter’s style. . . . Swayne is to be congratulated for taking the study of this unique composer/lyricist into hitherto unnavigated waters.” —Stage Directions “The research is voluminous, as are the artistry and perceptiveness. Swayne has lived richly within the world of Sondheim’s music.” —Richard Crawford, author of America’s Musical Life: A History “Amid the ever-more-crowded bookshelf of writings on Sondheim, Swayne’s analysis of Sondheim’s development as a composer stands up as a unique and worthy study. . . . For the Sondheim aficionados, there are new ideas and new information, and for others, Swayne’s How Sondheim Found His Sound will provide an intriguing introduction into the mind of arguably the greatest and most influential living Broadway composer.” —talkinbroadway.com “What a fascinating book, full of insights large and small. An impressive analysis and summary of Sondheim’s many sources of inspiration. All fans of the composer and lovers of Broadway in general will treasure and frequently refer to Swayne’s work.” —Tom Riis, Joseph Negler Professor of Musicology and Director of the American Music Research Center, University of Colorado Stephen Sondheim has made it clear that he considers himself a “playwright in song.” How he arrived at this unique appellation is the subject of How Sondheim Found His Sound—an absorbing study of the multitudinous influences on Sondheim’s work. Taking Sondheim’s own comments and music as a starting point, author Steve Swayne offers a biography of the artist’s style, pulling aside the curtain on Sondheim’s creative universe to reveal the many influences—from classical music to theater to film—that have established Sondheim as one of the greatest dramatic composers of the twentieth century.

Published by: University of Michigan Press

Cover

pdf iconDownload PDF (13.9 KB)
 

Title Page and Copyright

pdf iconDownload PDF (47.0 KB)
 

read more

Acknowledgments

pdf iconDownload PDF (36.6 KB)
pp. vii-ix

This book represents the culmination of work that began more than ‹fteen years ago in a classroom at the University of Washington. I had no idea that a term paper on Merrily We Roll Along would lead to graduate study at the University of California at Berkeley, a serendipitous...

Contents

pdf iconDownload PDF (31.3 KB)
pp. xi-

A Chronology of Sondheim’s Creative Career

pdf iconDownload PDF (36.5 KB)
pp. xiii-xvi

read more

Introduction

pdf iconDownload PDF (40.2 KB)
pp. 1-4

Upstairs, of course, refers to the brownstone in Turtle Bay, not far from the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan. When Sondheim moved in, Katharine Hepburn, who lived next door, complained about the duration and volume of his piano playing. Sondheim began his creative life...

read more

1 Sondheim the Classicist

pdf iconDownload PDF (189.8 KB)
pp. 5-45

The American musical theater is ‹lled with composers who wrote, performed, knew, and loved classical music. Herbert, Romberg, Friml, Weill, Blitzstein, Loewe, Bernstein, Coleman, Kander: Sondheim is hardly unique. Each of these composers would favor different composers,...

read more

2 Sondheim the Tunesmith

pdf iconDownload PDF (221.0 KB)
pp. 47-96

As was revealed in the previous chapter, Sondheim named George Gershwin and Harold Arlen as signi‹cant in›uences on his musical development. Together with Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, and Cole Porter, Gershwin and Arlen make up what many...

read more

3 Pulling It Apart

pdf iconDownload PDF (189.9 KB)
pp. 97-124

By the time “What Can You Lose?” is sung in the movie Dick Tracy, quite a bit of Sondheim has already gone by.1 The movie’s sole love song, it is the fourth of five Sondheim songs in the movie. It begins under the dialogue, with a faintly heard string sound stealing in from the...

read more

4 Sondheim the Dramaphile

pdf iconDownload PDF (152.9 KB)
pp. 125-158

This is the standard story that tells how Sondheim learned about the theater, and quite a good story it is. It lays out a course of study that would bene‹t any would-be writer of musicals. It shows Sondheim’s initiative and industry. It shows Hammerstein’s interest in a young protégé...

read more

5 Sondheim the Cinéaste

pdf iconDownload PDF (136.3 KB)
pp. 159-195

In this chapter, which traces Sondheim’s cinematic loves and ‹nds vestiges of them in his musicals, two ideas intertwine. First, while Sondheim did not propose most of the stories that he and his collaborators set to music, the stories bear striking similarities to ‹lms that he knew and...

read more

6 Putting It Together

pdf iconDownload PDF (275.6 KB)
pp. 197-256

While Sondheim’s comments here focus narrowly on the music (with its concomitant lyric), his description starts with the dramatic. The music must account fully for every action on stage. A song (which here is apposite to “piece” or “composition”) may have a structure that follows...

read more

Appendix: The Concept Musical and Sondheim

pdf iconDownload PDF (38.3 KB)
pp. 257-259

While writers have tried to de‹ne the concept musical, few have troubled to trace the genesis of the term. In his dissertation Eugene Robert Huber cited Martin Gottfried’s 1979 definition of the concept musical and asserted that the term “seemed to enjoy a great popularity in the sixties...

Notes

pdf iconDownload PDF (118.3 KB)
pp. 261-288

Bibliography

pdf iconDownload PDF (56.6 KB)
pp. 289-298

Credits

pdf iconDownload PDF (37.2 KB)
pp. 299-301

Index

pdf iconDownload PDF (75.0 KB)
pp. 303-315


E-ISBN-13: 9780472026357
Print-ISBN-13: 9780472032297

Page Count: 336
Publication Year: 2010

Research Areas

Recommend

UPCC logo
  • You have access to this content
  • Free sample
  • Open Access
  • Restricted Access

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the Search box at the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the results page. Use the Browse box to browse a selection of books and journals.

Connect with Project MUSE

Project MUSE | 2715 North Charles Street | Baltimore, Maryland USA 21218 | (410) 516-6989 | About | Contact | Help | Tools | Order

©2013 Project MUSE. Produced by The Johns Hopkins University Press in collaboration with The Milton S. Eisenhower Library.