Word: sondheims
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Lyricist Stephen Sondheim says clever rhyming is easy. Would he rhyme "silver...
...music that Sondheim writes is uniquely theatre music. It is music that evokes and depends upon the mood and textural qualities which are operating on stage at the time it is being performed. In this way it differs totally from the music of a composer such as Burt Bacharach ( Promises, Promises ), who wrote pop songs that sometimes end up getting sung on Broadway instead of in night clubs. It is a problem to record theatre music successfully, because the music and lyrics are only part of what comprises the stage moment; whatever the other parts are, they are absent from...
...cutting seems to have been done in two ways, either by eliminating the middles of numbers or by cutting out the first verses and beginning in the middle. With some composers this might be a reasonably unnoticeable technique, but Sondheim's middles are usually entirely different from his beginnings, and they're in the middle for a reason. The songs build toward a climax and the middle section is part of that building structure. To begin midway is to throw the entire song out of balance; to eliminate sections is equally unsatisfactory...
...perhaps the best orchestrated song in the history of musicals. Jonathan Tunick has done a spectacular job of orchestration throughout, but "The Girlds Upstairs" tops everything. This song and "Too Many Mornings," a love duct sung by John McMartin and Dorothy Collins, are the best things on the record. Sondheim's lyrics are really magnificent, tender and clever at the same time, and the songs always belong to the characters who sing them. Time called him "Broadway's supreme lyricist" and it is beginning to seem like an obvious statement. But Sondheim is also Broadway's master composer, which fewer...
...despite the great songs, fine voices and truly ingenious orchestrations, the recorded version of Follies is an unsettling and unsatisfying experience. No care has been taken by producer Jones to allow the richness, which Sondheim reveals at his own speed, to surface. Too much time was spent attempting to cut corners and none was allocated to producing a coherent artwork, which onstage the score obviously is. The album is a commercial venture in the worst sense of the phrase and to use Sondheim's own words...