Finishing The Hat
By Stephen Sondheim
American composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim is a towering figure in the genre of musical theatre. His body of work is held in such high esteem that a 1994 New York Magazine cover story even asked, “Is Stephen Sondheim God?”
He started out as a lyricist for the hit shows West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) and went on to pen both the music and words for influential works such as Company (1970), which explored modern-day relationships, and Sweeney Todd (1979), whose unlikely protagonist was a murderous barber.
What this volume does is to collect his lyrical output from 1954’s Saturday Night through to 1981’s Merrily We Roll Along. As the subtitle spells it out, the lyrics are presented with “attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines and anecdotes”.
Sondheim has three key principles that he constantly reiterates: God is in the details, less is more and content dictates form.
For example, he points out that in the song Losing My Mind, the line “To think about you” is more effective than “And think about you” as it takes a character deeper into her obsession.
Not that Finishing The Hat is insufferably self-congratulatory. If anything, Sondheim is his own harshest critic and often points out what he considers to be flaws in his work.
He also takes potshots at some unexpected composers and lyricists, including Oscar Hammerstein II. Not only was he one-half of Rodgers and Hammerstein, the team behind South Pacific (1949) and The Sound Of Music (1959), he was also a mentor and surrogate father to Sondheim.
While acknowledging his debt to the man, Sondheim calls him out for redundancy and sometimes getting carried away with pretty images.
There are also juicy bits of trivia and arresting anecdotes scattered throughout the volume from the fact that he has stockpiled a lifetime’s supply of Blackwings pencils and yellow legal pads to Hermione Gingold’s surprising audition for A Little Night Music (1973).
This is essential reading for fans and anyone with an interest in the process of artistic creation. Sondheim’s musicals are, of course, essential for everyone.
If you like this, read: Art Isn’t Easy: The Theater Of Stephen Sondheim by Joanne Gordon. An academic look at Stephen Sondheim’s musicals.
(ST)