Sondheim influenced generations of theater songwriters, notably with such landmark musicals as “Firm,” “Follies” and “Sweeney Todd.”
NEW YORK — Stephen Sondheim, the songwriter who reshaped the American musical theater within the second half of the twentieth century together with his clever, intricately rhymed lyrics, his use of evocative melodies and his willingness to sort out uncommon topics, has died. He was 91.
Sondheim’s dying was introduced by his Texas-based legal professional, Rick Pappas, who advised The New York Occasions the composer died Friday at his residence in Roxbury, Connecticut. Pappas didn’t return calls and messages to The Related Press.
Sondheim influenced a number of generations of theater songwriters, notably with such landmark musicals as “Firm,” “Follies” and “Sweeney Todd,” that are thought of amongst his greatest work. His most well-known ballad, “Ship within the Clowns,” has been recorded tons of of instances, together with by Frank Sinatra and Judy Collins.
The artist refused to repeat himself, discovering inspiration for his reveals in such various topics as an Ingmar Bergman film (“A Little Night time Music”), the opening of Japan to the West (“Pacific Overtures”), French painter Georges Seurat (“Sunday within the Park With George”), Grimm’s fairy tales (“Into the Woods”) and even the killers of American presidents (“Assassins”), amongst others.
“The theater has misplaced considered one of its biggest geniuses and the world has misplaced considered one of its biggest and most authentic writers. Sadly, there’s now a large within the sky. However the brilliance of Stephen Sondheim will nonetheless be right here as his legendary songs and reveals shall be carried out for evermore,” producer Cameron Waterproof coat wrote in tribute.
Six of Sondheim’s musicals gained Tony Awards for greatest rating, and he additionally obtained a Pulitzer Prize (“Sunday within the Park”), an Academy Award (for the music “Sooner or Later” from the movie “Dick Tracy”), 5 Olivier Awards and the Presidential Medal of Honor. In 2008, he obtained a Tony Award for lifetime achievement.
Sondheim’s music and lyrics gave his reveals a darkish, dramatic edge, whereas earlier than him, the dominant tone of musicals was frothy and comedian. He was generally criticized as a composer of unhummable songs, a badge that didn’t trouble Sondheim. Frank Sinatra, who had successful with Sondheim’s “Ship within the Clowns,” as soon as complained: “He may make me so much happier if he’d write extra songs for saloon singers like me.”
To theater followers, Sondheim’s sophistication and brilliance made him an icon. A Broadway theater was named after him. A New York journal cowl requested “Is Sondheim God?” The Guardian newspaper as soon as provided this query: “Is Stephen Sondheim the Shakespeare of musical theatre?”
A supreme wordsmith — and an avid participant of phrase video games — Sondheim’s pleasure of language shone by way of. “The alternative of left is true/The alternative of proper is flawed/So anybody who’s left is flawed, proper?” he wrote in “Anybody Can Whistle.” In “Firm,” he penned the strains: “Good issues get higher/Dangerous will get worse/Wait — I believe I meant that in reverse.”
He provided the three ideas mandatory for a songwriter in his first quantity of collected lyrics — Content material Dictates Kind, Much less Is Extra, and God Is within the Particulars. All these truisms, he wrote, had been “within the service of Readability, with out which nothing else issues.” Collectively they led to gorgeous strains like: “It’s a really quick street from the pinch and the punch to the paunch and the pouch and the pension.”
Taught by no much less a genius than Oscar Hammerstein, Sondheim pushed the musical right into a darker, richer and extra mental place. “When you consider a theater lyric as a brief story, as I do, then each line has the burden of a paragraph,” he wrote in his 2010 ebook, “Ending the Hat,” the primary quantity of his assortment of lyrics and feedback.
