How Sondheim Found His Sound

Notes

— — — — — Notes Introduction 1. Mark Eden Horowitz, Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2003), 79. Wilson Mizner is one of the characters from Bounce, which premiered in Chicago in June 2003; Sondheim ’s remarks date from October 1997. 2. Stephen Sondheim, conversation with Elvis Mitchell, as part of the Telluride Film Festival, Sunday, August 31, 2003, in Telluride’s County Courthouse (hereafter “Sondheim at Telluride”). I thank Bill Pence, cofounder of the Telluride Film Festival and director of the Dartmouth Film Society, for making a videotape of this ‹fty-minute conversation available to me. 3. Horowitz, Sondheim on Music, 25. 4. Marni Nixon, “Soundtracks,” episode 7 of Popular Song: Soundtrack of the Century, Bravo Network, n.d. 5. Horowitz, Sondheim on Music, 25. 6. Sondheim: “The two best writing experiences I’ve ever had in terms of fun were The Last of Sheila and the movie score for Stavisky . . . because it didn’t involve lyrics, which are hell. They’re just no fun to write.” “Sondheim at Telluride.” 7. Sondheim’s remark (found in Steven Robert Swayne, “Hearing Sondheim’s Voices,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1999, 347) comes from Stephen Leacock, “Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen ,” in Nonsense Novels (New York: Dover, 1971), 30. In the story, Lord Knotacent (pronounced “Nosh”), father of Lord Ronald, commands Ronald to marry a woman neither one of them has seen. “Listen, Ronald, I give one month. From that time you remain here. If at the end of it you refuse me, I cut you off with a shilling.” Lord Ronald said nothing; he ›ung himself from the room, ›ung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions. 8. Joseph Straus, Remaking the Past: Musical Modernism and the In›uence of the Tonal Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 9–14. Chapter 1: Sondheim the Classicist 1. Sondheim, personal communication with the author, December 20, 2003. 2. Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 17–25. 3. Hugh Fordin, Getting to Know Him: A Biography of Oscar Hammerstein II, introduction by Stephen Sondheim (New York: Da Capo, 1995), xii–xiii. 4. Tony Sloman, ed., “The Sondheim Guardian Lecture,” reprinted in Biased: Newsletter of the Sondheim British Information and Appreciation Society, spring–summer 1988, 56. 5. Personal communication with Mark Eden Horowitz, January 3, 2004. 6. His compact disc collection is cataloged in a computer database. There as well, the emphasis is on classical music, and the same proclivities toward composers and eras appear. Given that the advent of compact disc technology came well after Sondheim’s musicodramatic language was established, I will refrain from making extensive mention of that collection. 7. “Interview with Stephen Sondheim,” in David Savran, In Their Own Words: Contemporary American Playwrights (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1988), 229. 8. Craig Zadan, Sondheim & Co., 2d ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 384. 9. Sondheim, personal communication with the author, December 20, 2003. 10. Sondheim: “I was never one for collecting different performances of the same piece. Whatever I heard the ‹rst time around was the performance that would remain the standard for me, and I have very little interest—and still do—in getting different performances of given pieces that I like. . . . I certainly listen to everything I’ve bought at least twice.” Sondheim, personal communication with the author, November 15, 2001. See also nn. 13 and 30. 11. “The Sondheim Guardian Lecture,” 56. Sondheim: “I like seventh chords—I live on seventh chords. (Ravel gave us that gift.)” Horowitz, Sondheim on Music, 43. 12. Swayne, “Hearing Sondheim’s Voices,” 340–41. 13. Stephen Sondheim, Desert Island Discs, BBC Radio 4, December 31, 2000. The “thesis” was in fact a paper written for a class during Sondheim’s senior year. 14. Swayne, “Hearing Sondheim’s Voices,” 338. 15. Stephen Ban‹eld, Sondheim’s Broadway Musicals (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 400. Presumably Ban‹eld wrote Sondheim about the waltzes in A Little Night Music, as the notion of “dark” and “romantic ” is broached there (219). 16. Roland-Manuel, “Une esquisse autobiographique de Maurice Ravel,” La Revue musicale, December 1938, as translated in A Ravel Reader: Correspondence , Articles, Interviews, ed. Arbie Orenstein (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 31–32. Notes to Pages 5–14 — — — — — 262 17. Ravel to Jean Marnold, February 7, 1906, as quoted in Orenstein, A Ravel Reader, 80. 18...