About the Composer

This past Sunday was a date I’d been anticipating for months. As part of the City Arts and Lectures series here in San Francisco, Stephen Sondheim sat down with Frank Rich for a thoroughly spontaneous and entertaining hour-and-a-half discussion.

Now, I’ve read and heard so many interviews and similar Sondheim talks over the years, so there was very little new information for me, but this is my first opportunity to sit through one in person. Sondheim was upbeat, forthcoming and very funny; a true mensh.

Here are some tidbits of information offered by Mr. Sondheim that was indeed new to me, in stream-of-consciousness order:

• The accompaniment in the song “The Little Things You Do Together” from Company is as jumpy as it is, because Sondheim wrote the song while on a cruise ship that was listing drastically as he worked out the accompaniment.
• As he worked in an unoccupied lounge on the ship, passengers would come in and sit down, enjoying what they thought was a performance, despite what must have been a lot of stopping and starting and noodling, etc.
• Sondheim has very recently abandoned the idea of adapting the film Ground Hog Day into a musical, to the disappointment of many
• Elaine Stritch in a bar at 2am: “Bartender, just give me a bottle of vodka and a floorplan.”
• Sondheim thinks the film Vertigo is overrated. This was before a San Francisco audience, mind you. I don’t quite agree with that, but I would say that the film is entirely carried by the score.
• Vertigo is one of Frank Rich’s favorite films. (There you go: conflict=drama)

I’m kicking myself violently for not springing for a bigger ticket that would have included a private dinner with Mr. Sondheim at Absinthe afterwards. There were two left when I bought my ticket. Why? I don’t know. The San Francisco Chronicle apparently didn’t see this as a worthwhile event to cover, which baffles me, but then my big complaint when I first moved here in 1994 was that no one knows who Stephen Sondheim is.

Incidentally, I’m also a big fan of Frank Rich, who, if you’re not familiar, was a New York Times theater critic in the 1980’s — the so-called “Butcher of Broadway”. His memoir Ghost Light was a must-read for me as a fellow Washingtonian and theater fan.

It is well known among Sondheim kooks such as myself that Stephen Sondheim’s favorite among his own songs is “Someone in a Tree” from the 1976 musical Pacific Overtures. I love this song too, but it’s never been clear to me exactly why it stands out in particular for Sondheim.

Briefly, the song attempts to deal with a particular event that’s important to the piece, but not particularly dramatic. Sondheim even calls it a “song about nothing” (which is very interesting in these post-Seinfeld times). What’s interesting about the song is the reciter’s setup line: “No one knows what happened in the treaty house.” The solution is to tell the story from three points of view: 1) An old man who remembers watching from the top of a tree when he was a boy; 2) That same old man as a 10-year-old boy; and 3) A soldier hiding under the floorboards of the treaty house.

The old man and the boy report what they’ve seen. The soldier reports what he’s heard. It’s a brilliant use of time and space in a theatrical moment.

The first video below is a very young Frank Rich interviewing Sondheim and his collaborator John Weidman in Sondheim’s house, presumably during the (extremely brief) run of the original Broadway production. In this video discusses in depth how the song came about and why he loves it so much. He also talks about the repetitive accompaniment figure, and how it came about.

The second video is a continuation of the first, where Sondheim accompanies the four cast members involved in a reading of the song.

Now, here’s the song as it looked in it’s full production.

Just a personal note about all this. I’m literally kvelling that YouTube has made it possible to see all of this. I had once before seen the second video, with the actors in Sondheim’s house, at a Sondheim-kook event here in San Francisco many years ago, but I did not know of the existence of the first part. I used to think I’d seen every Sondheim interview that exists on video. I also have to say that it’s really fun to see what the inside of his house looks like (or at least what it looked like in 1976).

Throughout the year I’ve been occasionally posting recordings of songs from my earlier musical The Ghost of Wu. Today’s installment is the song “You Must Learn”, in which an ambitious mother lectures her naïve daughter, a concubine, in the ways of the Emperor’s court.

This song is probably the most Sondheim-derivative thing I’ve ever written. When I was a student, all of my music was completely derivative, and over the years I learned how to avoid that to some degree. This is a rare case where I was not only being openly derivative, but I actually knew what I was doing. If you know your Sondheim, you will surely recognize the influence.

(download)
4′12″

The lyrics are mine too, by the way. You can follow them and the score if you’d like on this dedicated page.

By the way, there’s a running index of all the songs I’ve posted so far on this page.

About a year and a half ago, I posted a little something about my son’s taste in orchestral music. He was about to turn three then, and now he’s four and a half. Since that time, my ability to play music for him has been limited for various boring technical and life reasons.

A few weeks ago, I got a new mobile phone that functions as a music player (not an iPhone, but I love it anyway). I’m still in the wide-eyed amusement phase over the fact that I can copy music files to it from my computer via Bluetooth, so just for the heck of it I copied a few favorite pieces over to see how that worked.

The first thing I had copied to my phone was a recording of Kodály’s brilliant little choral gem Esti Dal (”Evening Song”, pronounced ESHtee dawl), which I’ve been intimate with for over 20 years. In fact, it’s known to Philo too, as I’ve been singing it to him at bedtime for a long time now. So, one night I thought it would be interesting for Philo to hear the song in its true choral form. He was absolutely captivated, and I was encouraged to load some more choral music onto my phone for him.

Esti Dal is a very short and simple piece that offers its lovely melody three times. The first and third statements are given by the sopranos, accompanied by sustained humming from the lower parts. The middle statement blossoms with majestic counterpoint, and during this part Philo moves his hands expressively, much as a conductor does, and visibly moved by the slight ritard at the end of the verse. I, of course, am thrilled.

Here’s what that middle section sounds like:

Other choral music on my phone for Philo includes “Trois Beaux Oiseaux du Paradis” from Ravel’s Trois Chansons, which has to be some of the most beautiful music on the planet. Philo doesn’t say much about this one, but he listens to it very quietly and I can tell he is fascinated. I was lucky enough to learn this piece in my choral singing days, and it’s been a favorite ever since. In case you don’t know it, have a listen. You’ll plotz.

Another piece I’m lucky enough to have performed is Hindemith’s luminous Six Chansons, which is disappointingly not as well known as it should be. These songs offer lyricism and beauty not typically associated with old Paul, whom I feel is widely misunderstood. I gravitated to his music when I discovered it as a college freshman transitioning from Sondheim wannabe to, well, whatever I am now, and I’m still very fond particularly of his vocal music. Here’s a bit of the first of the Six Chansons.

Finally, and inevitably, there’s Bartók. Philo has been treated to several excerpts from Bartók’s Twenty-seven Choruses for women’s or children’s voices. I blogged about this piece around two years ago. It almost hurts to have to choose one of the 27 pieces, but here’s Ne Menj El (Don’t Go Away).

This is asking for trouble; I’m sure of it. In recent days a large number of people have found this site by way of a Google search on the words “sondheim like that”, mostly from the Washington, D.C. area.

Someone please tell me what this means. Should I also be Googling this phrase?

Two items:

1. Am I the only one who didn’t know that Stephen Sondheim composed incidental music for the Public Theater’s current production of King Lear with Kevin Kline. (Thanks for the tip, Mom!)
2. Set your Tivo! Sondheim has a cameo in this Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons. It’s possible there’s something wrong with a world in which Stephen Sondheim and Andy Dick are on the same list of credits.

I get into such trouble with this stuff: I’m a classical composer who wants to write musicals; I’m a theater composer with Uptown training whose music is weird, unpredictable and unnecessarily difficult.

In classical circles, it’s OK, actually. As far as I know, I haven’t been judged negatively because there are musicals in my bio, but in my head at least, there’s the danger of that. (You’re judging me right now, aren’t you!)

But dealing with theater people has been a tricky dance. Actors tend to like my stuff, but they look at it kind of sidewise and treat it as an oddity. They don’t complain about how difficult it is, but they do make a topic of it. In one case I was turned down by a playwright because my music wasn’t “tuneful” enough. He knew what he wanted and had a valid point, although I was baffled at the time. I think my music is very lyrical and reasonably easy. But what do I know? I can take 4-part dictation, so my idea of easy has nothing to do with it. I’m still learning on that front.

Here’s the problem: Most people equate “musical theater” with “Broadway”. I do not. Broadway has turned into something that I’m not particularly interested in being a part of. There’s still a place for Sondheim there, because he’s Sondheim. Put someone else’s name on Passion or Sunday in the Park With George, and they’ll show you the door pretty quickly.

So where do I fit in? No really, I’m asking.

Given the nomenclature available to us now, I have two choices: it’s a “musical” or an “opera”. Eros At Breakfast doesn’t quite fit the average person’s idea of either of these. It’s clearly not an opera, because, for one thing, it’s not all sung. It’s written with actors in mind, not singers. Singing actors, yes, but actors. That’s why I call it a musical.

But the music is conceived much in the way of an opera. It’s not lead-sheet tunes to be scored for reeds, bass and drums. The accompaniment helps tell the story; the composition is often driven by counterpoint, and not by chord progressions. Some songs don’t end, because the character is interrupted, so there’s a contiguous feel similar to most contemporary operas.

So, no, this isn’t intended for Broadway, although of course I would be delighted. Maybe someday Broadway will go back to being about theater more than it’s about money. For now, I can think of numerous regional and local theater companies around the country that have done very well with this sort of thing.

(But they’ll still think it’s weird.)

Well, I just did a search, and in over a year of blogging, the name “Sondheim” has only been mentioned in passing in 7 posts. I’m not sure why this is, considering that Stephen Sondheim is by far the most influential composer upon my aesthetic and even my choice of a career.

To catch up on that, rather than create a huge mega-post that no one will read, I’ve decided to do several normal-sized posts that no one will read. This one is just a little bit of background for starters.

When I was in my teens, I was interested in music and musical theater, but not in any focused way. Hearing the score of Sweeney Todd for the first time in the early Eighties changed all that forever. That was the first score that motivated me to learn how to read music properly, because I’d never heard anything like it, and I wanted to understand what made it tick. (After over 20 years, I’m getting closer to that goal ;))

Having quickly moved on to get familiar with other Sondheim scores, in particular Company, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures and Merrily We Roll Along, I began to explore some of the composers who were reported to have influenced Sondheim, but whom I hadn’t heard of. Starting with Stravinsky, I checked out an album at the public library, almost at random. Turns out it was the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto along with a bunch of what I now know to be fairly obscure works.

So, skipping ahead, by the time college-pickin’ time came around I already knew I wanted to be a composer. Of course, in college I was exposed to all sorts of other things, but I never stopped wanting to be Sondheim when I grew up. All of my music is influenced by him in one way or another, however remotely in some cases.

In recent years I’ve gone in and out of periods of oversaturation with Sondheim, and I’m just coming out of one of these now. During these periods I avoid listening to his music, because I’m just so familiar with everything already, and it just becomes sort of noise. But, at the moment, I’m in the middle of reading the new book How Sondheim Found His Sound, which has gotten me interested in listening with fresh ears. More on that coming up.

So here’s StudyScores.com.

The idea is that, while Amazon.com and SheetMusicPlus may each have a pretty good selection, it’s pretty hard to find anything at either site unless you already know what you want. You have to sift through all the easy piano stuff and ColdPlay anthologies, etc.

StudyScores.com is organized around finding scores by composer, genre or time period. It’s basically Amazon’s catalog, so it’s somewhat limited, and there’s crazy stuff like putting the Mozart Requiem in the “Opera” bucket, and Sondheim’s Into the Woods under “Orchestra“, but it’s the cleanest I’ve seen so far as far as browsing scores online.

There are also sections for other books on music as well as accessories, like metronomes, etc. Pretty handy, actually. On Amazon, if I wanted, say, books on the Kodály Method, I’d have to sift through a lot of CDs and other search results. Here, you just search Kodály under “Books on Music” et voilà.

Lots of dirt-cheap Dover scores. Check it out.

How’s this for a sentence:

From Floyd Collins, where Southern string band music, contemporary folk song, and Feldman-esque introspection seamlessly blend with a dramatic sensibility totally informed by the tradition of the musical, to the quasi-operatic and completely infectious The Light in the Piazza, Guettel has shown himself to be a musical omnivore for whom the whole world is a stage.

Ahem.

Anyway, now on NewMusicBox.org there’s an interesting interview with theater composer Adam Guettel, whose latest musical The Light in the Piazza was recently televised on PBS, and is now making the rounds in a national tour.

I’ve been Guettel-curious for many years, but didn’t really start paying attention until a few months ago when I saw Piazza on television. Years ago I bought the cast album of Floyd Collins and listened to it exactly once. It wasn’t that it was bad, just that the style it was in (sort of a country, bluegrass thing) made it hard for me to appreciate. Also, it’s a total downer. I intend to listen to it again with fresh ears.

Piazza on the other hand is captivating from the opening harp glisses in the Overture to the final double bar. To me it sounds a lot like Sondheim, so I’m immediately attracted to it, for sentimental reasons alone.

Much has been made of how this piece resembles opera, and a variety of reasons have been offered for making this assertion, including the style of singing and the difficulty of the score. For me, it all comes down to one key component: a lot of the storytelling is coming out of the orchestra pit, which I’d say is the most important difference between what we call “musicals” and what we call “operas”. The accompaniments are contrapuntal, and by that I don’t mean they’re necessarily “busy”, but that the composer is thinking horizontally instead of vertically. In other words, the harmonic language is driven by inner and outer voices moving independently, whereas in a typical pop-oriented musical, it’s just a lot of block chords, really, and some filigree; a limited toolkit for storytelling.

As a disillusioned theater composer myself, I’m encouraged by some of the things Guettel has to say about this era, which I can only think of as “post-Broadway”. For starters, I hadn’t known this, but it’s mentioned that Guettel has relocated from New York to Seattle, which may signal a loosening of New York’s grip on the field.

Guettel:

I want to have an opportunity to develop things that are safer both in terms of the critics and economically, where the risks aren’t as high, which will allow me to stay fluid and take risks. There’s a guerilla spontaneity that you get from that. And theatre used to be produced like that.

So, now the future for “non-commercial” musicals seems to be in regional theaters, which is all right with me, and Guettel’s remarks seem to help legitimize that notion. This is good news for those of us composers for whom Broadway is no longer a “thing”.

Read the interview conducted by the American Music Center’s always-astute Frank Oteri.