Transcript Broadway Musical Stephen Sondheim Week 9 段馨君 Iris Hsin

Broadway Musical
Stephen Sondheim
Week 9
段馨君 Iris Hsin-chun Tuan
Associate Professor
Department of Humanities and Social
Sciences
NCTU
• To survive, the Broadway musical would either
destroy the past and construct itself in an
entirely new image, or retain to the tradition
in a revitalized from suitable to new sense of
modern life.
• Stephen Sondheim committed himself to the
latter course that accounts for a first-rate body
of work.
Influence
• Oscar Hammerstein II,
neighbor, friend, fatherimage, model, and mentor,
passed on to Stephen
Sondheim that Richard
Roaders inherited
impersonally from Jerome
Kern.
Oscar Hammerstein
• Hammerstein outlined a
course of study that
became the basis for
Sondheim’s serious
preparation for
professional career.
Stephen Sondheim’s production.
• First, take an admired play and turn it into a
musical.
Second, take a bad play or one.
Third, take a nondramatic work.
Fourth, create an entirely original musical.
• From Bert Shevelove, coauthor of A funny
Thing Happened on the way to the Forum, he
learned never to “sacrifice smoothness for
cleverness.”
Philosophy and principles
• Stephen Sondheim writes
songs for the theater,
virtuosic songs.
• Before him, a Broadway
musical evolved from
stories audience wanted
to hear.
Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum Lyrics by Stephen Sondheum.
• A lesson learned from Oscar Hammerstein II:
Write only what you believe.
• The book determines the musical, its style,
tone, mood, and nature and placement of the
songs- everything.
• The book is the show.
Comedy Tonight
The opening number to Sondheim's A Funny Thing Happened
on the Way to the Forum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-hZhr2k2hk
• Oklahoma! Opened with the
uncommon scene because
the text generated that kind
of an opening.
• Sondheim conceived a score
where songs interrupt the
action and that could be
removed from the show
without destroying the
development of the plot.
Oklahoma ! Oh What a Beautiful Morning and More
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C6J9gij5SQ&feature=
related
Lyrics
• First, all lyrics exist in
time.
• Second, lyrics live on
the sound of their
music and must be
underwritten.
• A good song in a musical
must generate a type of
theatrical moment that
cannot be duplicated in the
nonlyric theater.
• The good dramatic
songwriter must build
subtext into the lyric. Give
the actor something to act!
Give the director something
to play!
Kiss Me, Kate (Original 1948)
• A good lyric reveals to the audience the character
who could not have the omniscience to know or
explain themselves with total accuracy.
• Good song lyrics find humor in character. People
make us laugh through the lines they speak.
• The humor of character demands an appropriate
dramatic situation; it fails out of context.
"Wunderbar" - Kiss Me, Kate (1958) - Drake, Morison
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=205BqSO6lwk
"Wunderbar" from Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate - performed by original
leads Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison from a 1958 television
production.
• Good lyrics use rhyme to
focus attention on the
rhymed word and make
it the most outstanding
word in the pattern.
Do I Hear a Waltz? - Carol Burnett and George Hearn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRJ012WnZI0
Carol Burnett and George Hearn sing "Do I Hear a Waltz?",
originally from Stephen Sondheim's musical of the same name.
Music
• It shows in his shows- in
their complexity, their
uncompromising artistry,
their unwillingness to cater
to public sentiment.
• It shows in his music as well.
• As theater composer, Sondheim writes music
to sound the specific drama at hand.
• It might reflect period, atmosphere, character
or tone, embody concept, or reveal motive,
but aim it must for a perfect fit with dramatic
and theatrical function.
"Opening Doors" - Merrily We Roll Along
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qukaC5ri-QQ
From the ECU workshop production of Merrily We Roll Along by
Stephen Sondheim, featuring Erinn Nelson, Andrew Britt, Ashley Burke,
Jonathan Coarsey, Daniela Hart, Lauren Wenick and Kate Blain.
• Predictable, Stephen
Sondheim composes
highly personal music
to match the character
and tone of his lyrics.
• Music and lyrics
develop in the same
way and climax at the
same time.
'Merrily We Roll Along'
• The individual song to become the specific
content of a dramatic moment on stage.
• The entire score to reflect the concept of the
show.
• To capture the delicate, romantic old world
flavor of A Little Night Music.
• Sondheim commits totally to creative freedom
and its corollary incentive to experiment.
• Those detractors who
grant him intellect, skill,
and craft, find fault in their
product.
• Sondheim and his
collaborators continue to
experiment from a solid
base within the
established tradition they
know and love.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim
• Stephen Joshua
Sondheim (born March 22,
1930)is an American
composer and lyricist for
stage and film.
• He is the winner of an
Academy Award,
multiple Tony Awards
including the Special Tony
Award for Lifetime
Achievement in the theatre,
multiple Grammy Awards, and
a Pulitzer Prize.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim
• Described by Frank Rich of the New York
Times as "the greatest, and perhaps bestknown artist working in musical theatre", his
most famous scores include A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the
Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night
Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with
George, Into the Woods, and Assassins. He
also wrote the lyrics for West Side
Story and Gypsy.
• In addition to theatre, he has
contributed to movies as well,
including the 1981 Warren
Beatty film Reds, contributing
the song "Goodbye For Now".
• He also wrote five songs for
the 1990 movie Dick Tracy,
including Sooner or Later (I
Always Get My Man), which
won the Academy
Award for Best Song.