The Appeal of Stephen Sondheim

Gareth Hemmings evaluates the work of composer and lyricist, Stephen Sondheim, who died on Friday, 26th November. 

PGS production of 'Into the Woods', 2017

“Write for yourself and you'll always be 90% ahead of everyone else”  

This is a mantra that Stephen Sondheim resolutely lived by, and is arguably what made him such a “marmite” figure in the musical theatre world. Yet love him or loathe him there is no denying that Sondheim was responsible for a dramatic change in the course of musical theatre.  From his earliest collaboration as lyricist for West Side Story, where the simple directness of his words resonate with the instantly memorable melodies and rhythms of Bernstein’s music, it is clear that for Sondheim the drama, words and music were of equal importance.  This marked a departure from the traditional Broadway song and dance musicals of the 1920s-1940s and it is what marks out a Sondheim musical. In the hands of another composer Into the Woods, with its fairy tale heritage, might have inspired music of saccharine sentimentality.  Yet what we have is a gritty, direct, challenging and ultimately human drama drawing strongly on the darkness of the Grimm brothers’ original stories. 

So what is it that attracts such devotion to Stephen Sondheim’s musicals? After all, most Sondheim shows do not have the obvious stand alone solos, duets or ensemble pieces of works such as Wicked or Phantom of the Opera (Send in the Clowns is possibly the one exception in his output). What seems to connect with audiences is the simple directness and honesty of the lyrics together with sophisticated internal rhyming schemes. And this is reflected in the musical style; melodies based on the natural rhythm of the text, following the inflections of natural speech, moving swiftly between characters in recitative-like dialogue. In a Sondheim song there is very little repetition of lyrics resulting in a continuously moving, developing and unfolding story. Early in his career Sondheim worked as a scriptwriter for film and it is no accident that the immediacy and realism required for film are apparent in his musicals. This is why both Sweeney Todd and Into the Woods have transferred so successfully to film. The importance of creating strong characterisation in song and the power that a single word can have were impressed on Sondheim from an early age by his surrogate father and mentor Oscar Hammerstein.  Language used with directness to express simple truths and create strong characters is at the heart of a Sondheim show and the music is hung on this framework. Into the Woods is the perfect example of this; the essence of the whole show is embodied in just three lines sung by one character (the witch) in the second act.  Careful the wish you make… wishes come true… not free. What’s important is the blame.  I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. 

The words and melodies are tied together by orchestral accompaniments that, despite the repetition of motifs and themes, are constantly changing in timbre and colour. The shifting orchestration, acerbic, complex harmonic language, asymmetric rhythms, continuous modulation and metrical changes add to the mercurial restlessness of this music, maintaining momentum, building tension and sustaining the drama as the plot unfolds. 

Sondheim’s stories are told with no mawkish sentimentality, and it could be argued that there is a certain clinicalness apparent in Sondheim's music. “Art is craft, not inspiration”, said Sondheim, hinting, perhaps, at a mathematical approach to composition.  The relationship between the two disciplines of maths and music Sondheim felt, is clear;  ''Music is the organization of a certain finite number of variables.  Language has an infinite number of possibilities; diatonic music does not. You're juggling a group of known forces. And what makes up the diatonic scale has a clear mathematical basis. The relationships of notes to each other, the needs of dissonances to resolve into consonance, have a mathematical principle… It's almost subconscious, but if you study music, you must be aware of these things. It's a language. It's almost computerese.''  It is no surprise, therefore, that Sondheim had considered studying mathematics at college. However, it was music that won through.  His music teacher at Williams College, Robert Barrow, was viewed by many as a dry theorist, but it was this approach that captured the young composer’s imagination; “he took all the mystery out of Music and taught craft.”  Sondheim later went on to study with avantgarde composer, Milton Babbitt; a composer who was also interested in mathematics and as a composer followed the mathematical organisation of music through the twelve tone serialist techniques developed by Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. Whilst Sondheim never wrote in this atonal style, Babbitt’s aesthetic approach, that “a piece of music be as literally as much as possible”, was certainly in tune with Sondheim sentiments. 

This anti-Romantic approach to composition, those carefully crafted lyrics and the harnessing of all these elements to a common dramatic purpose results in music theatre that speaks with direct honesty.  Sondheim used this armoury to expose the darkness in his characters, and, particularly with Into the Woods, to express those deeply human yearnings for love and for acceptance of who you are.  This is “warts and all” realism and it is gritty, challenging and it resonates with audiences. Is it this, then, that makes Sondheim so revered by his devotees, and is it also this very same thing that makes his work so challenging for others?  The skill and craft of this storyteller are apparent in every bar and rhyming couplet, though, as with any art, the beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder.  Does Into the Woods speak to you? Once you have travelled the path of the whole show ask yourself that question; but just like Little Red Riding Hood, you have to take the journey.