Word: sondheimer
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...Sondheim is a spent youth. The son of a wealthy New York dress manufacturer, he literally learned his first lessons in the craft of songwriting at the feet of an old family friend, Oscar Hammerstein II. Stephen was then eleven; Oscar thought his first pubescent musical "terrible?although not without talent." Sondheim proved to be a good learner. He has written the lyrics (and often the music as well) for seven shows, five of which were hits. Only his 1966 musical, Anyone Can Whistle, a precious fable about a smalltown miracle, and 1965's Do I Hear a Waltz? (with...
...decided that Broadway was ready for him. Broadway decided otherwise. Through no fault of the author, his first effort (Saturday Night) expired along with its producer. For a time, Stephen knocked out scripts for the television sitcom Topper and honed his skills as an amateur gamesman. Sondheim is one of the world's fastest cutthroat anagram players, and the walls of his Manhattan town house are covered with antique game boards. (Between shows, he used to concoct the tantalizing puzzles on the back pages of New York magazine.) Thanks to the theatrical interests of his mother, an interior decorator known...
...Sondheim became co-author of West Side Story and an established Broadway lyricist. "Steve always wanted to be an American Noel Coward," Foxy recalls fondly. The lyrics for Sondheim's next show, Gypsy, with music by Jule Styne, revealed a Lorenz Hartfulness. He rhymed Mazeppa and schlepper, and the progression "he goes, she goes, egos, amigos" could have come from the master himself. Despite his growing reputation as a lyricist, Sondheim yearned to be recognized as a composer, although his credentials as a musician were skimpy. In 1962, though, he wrote the music as well as the words...
...last year's musical hit Company, Composer Sondheim seemed cloned from Lyricist Sondheim. Indeed, the score packed so many syllables and notes into each bar that it gave the sensation of a double-crostic for the ear. As Pianist Artur Rubinstein observed: "A most brilliant score. I couldn't hear all the words, but then I don't hear all the words at the opera, either...
Rubinstein's observation has been echoed by many audiences, who find that the record of the score yields new rewards at each exposure. Far more than George Furth's book, Sondheim's lyrics express the hip, urbane tone of a play about an uncommitted bachelor who watches the games married people play. The songs are an ambush of witty skepticisms...