Stephen Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist whose most famous work includes A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987). He is also known for writing the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959).
Major works
Year | Title | Role | Music | Lyrics | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1954 | Saturday Night | Music & lyrics | Stephen Sondheim | ||
1957 | West Side Story | Lyrics | Leonard Bernstein | Stephen Sondheim | |
1959 | Gypsy | Lyrics | Jule Styne | ||
1962 | A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum | Music & lyrics | Stephen Sondheim | ||
1964 | Anyone Can Whistle | Music & lyrics | |||
1965 | Do I Hear a Waltz? | Lyrics | Richard Rodgers | Stephen Sondheim | |
1966 | Evening Primrose | Music & lyrics | Stephen Sondheim | ||
1970 | Company | Music & lyrics | |||
1971 | Follies | Music & lyrics | |||
1973 | A Little Night Music | Music & lyrics | |||
1974 | The Frogs | Music & lyrics | [1] | ||
1976 | Pacific Overtures | Music & lyrics | |||
1979 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Music & lyrics | |||
1981 | Merrily We Roll Along | Music & lyrics | |||
1984 | Sunday in the Park with George | Music & lyrics | |||
1987 | Into the Woods | Music & lyrics | |||
1990 | Assassins | Music & lyrics | |||
1994 | Passion | Music & lyrics | |||
2008 | Road Show | Music & lyrics | |||
2023 | Here We Are | Music & lyrics |
Revues and anthologies
Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), Marry Me a Little (1980), Putting It Together (1993), Sondheim on Sondheim (2010), and Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends (2022) are revues of Sondheim's work as composer and lyricist, with songs performed in or cut from productions. Jerome Robbins' Broadway features "You Gotta Have a Gimmick" from Gypsy, "Suite of Dances" from West Side Story and "Comedy Tonight" from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The 2010 revue Classic Moments, Hidden Treasures was conceived and directed by Tim McArthur, first produced at the Jermyn Street Theatre.[2][3] Sondheim's "Pretty Women" and "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid" are featured in The Madwoman of Central Park West.[4]
Film and TV adaptations
Year | Title | Director | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1961 | West Side Story | Robert Wise Jerome Robbins | Film adaptation |
1962 | Gypsy | Mervyn LeRoy | |
1966 | A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum | Richard Lester | |
1966 | Evening Primrose | Paul Bogart | Television musical |
1977 | A Little Night Music | Harold Prince | Film adaptation |
1993 | Gypsy | Emile Ardolino | Television adaptation |
2007 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Tim Burton | Film adaptation |
2014 | Into the Woods | Rob Marshall | |
2021 | West Side Story | Steven Spielberg | |
TBA | Merrily We Roll Along | Richard Linklater |
Other works
Theatre
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1951 | I Know My Love | Christmas carol arrangement | |
1955 | A Mighty Man is He | "Rag Me That Mendelssohn March" | |
1956 | Girls of Summer | Incidental music | |
1957 | Take Five | Revue | |
1960 | Invitation to a March | Incidental music | |
1962 | The World of Jules Feiffer | Incidental music | |
1966 | The Mad Show | "The Boy From…" (lyrics) | |
1967 | Illya Darling | "I Think She Needs Me" (lyrics; unused) | |
1971 | Twigs | "Hollywood and Vine" (music) | |
1973 | The Enclave | Incidental music | |
1974 | Candide | New lyrics | |
1975 | By Bernstein | Additional lyrics | [5] |
1996 | Getting Away with Murder | Co-writer with George Furth | [6] |
2007 | King Lear | Incidental music for Public Theater production | |
Film and television
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
1953 | Topper | Co-writer of eleven episodes |
1973 | The Last of Sheila | Co-writer with Anthony Perkins |
1974 | June Moon | Plays the role of Maxie Schwartz on PBS television version |
Stavisky | Score (Alain Resnais film) | |
1976 | The Seven-Per-Cent Solution | Wrote "The Madam's Song", also known as "I Never Do Anything Twice" |
1981 | Reds | Music for and includes "Goodbye For Now" |
1990 | Dick Tracy | Wrote five songs |
1996 | The Birdcage | Two songs for the film: "It Takes All Kinds" (unused) and "Little Dream" |
2003 | Camp | Cameo as himself |
2007 | The Simpsons | Guest appearance as himself, Episode: "Yokel Chords" |
2013 | Six by Sondheim | HBO documentary by James Lapine[7][8] |
2016 | Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened | Documentary about original Merrily We Roll Along production[9] |
2021 | Tick, Tick... Boom! | Vocal cameo as himself[10] |
2022 | Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery | Cameo as himself (Posthumous release) |
Books
Sondheim's 2010 Finishing the Hat annotates his lyrics "from productions dating 1954–1981. In addition to published and unpublished lyrics from West Side Story, Follies and Company, the tome finds Sondheim discussing his relationship with Oscar Hammerstein II and his collaborations with composers, actors and directors throughout his lengthy career".[11][12] The book, first of a two-part series, is named after a song from Sunday in the Park With George. Sondheim said, "It's going to be long. I'm not, by nature, a prose writer, but I'm literate, and I have a couple of people who are vetting it for me, whom I trust, who are excellent prose writers".[13][14] Finishing the Hat was published in October 2010. According to a New York Times review, "The lyrics under consideration here, written during a 27-year period, aren't presented as fixed and sacred paradigms, carefully removed from tissue paper for our reverent inspection. They're living, evolving, flawed organisms, still being shaped and poked and talked to by the man who created them".[15] The book was 11th on the New York Times' Hardcover Nonfiction list for November 5, 2010.[16]
Its sequel, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics (1981–2011) with Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes and Miscellany, was published on November 22, 2011. The book, continuing from Sunday in the Park With George (where Finishing the Hat ended), includes sections on Sondheim's work in film and television.[17]
After conducting a series of in-depth interviews with Sondheim focusing on his music, musicologist and Library of Congress curator Mark Eden Horowitz compiled them into a book entitled Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions, which was published in 2003.
References
- ↑ "'The Frogs', 1974 Yale University Production". Sondheimguide.com. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ↑ Gans, Andrew. "London's Jermyn Street Theatre to Offer Secret Sondheim with Cutko, Armstrong and McArthur" Playbill May 27, 2010.
- ↑ "Review: Classic Moments – Hidden Treasures, Jermyn Street Theatre". There Ought To Be Clowns. 2010-07-13. Retrieved 2023-01-24.
- ↑ "'The Madwoman Of Central Park West' cast album list". Castalbumcollector.com. Archived from the original on June 5, 2010. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ↑ "By Bernstein". Sondheimguide.com. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ↑ "'Getting Away With Murder' Listing". Sondheimguide.com. Archived from the original on August 28, 2013. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ↑ Champion, Lindsay. "HBO to Air Six By Sondheim Documentary, Featuring Jeremy Jordan, Audra McDonald, Darren Criss & More" Archived December 13, 2013, at the Wayback Machine broadway.com, July 26, 2013
- ↑ McNulty, Charles. Review: HBO's 'Six by Sondheim' is a stylish salute to a Broadway legend" Archived December 22, 2013, at the Wayback Machine LA Times, December 6, 2013
- ↑ "::: A t l a s m e d i a . T v". Archived from the original on September 11, 2018. Retrieved September 11, 2018.
- ↑ Filsinger, Jack (November 30, 2021). "Tick, Tick…Boom! Where To Spot Stephen Sondheim's Secret Cameo". Screenrant. Retrieved January 11, 2022.
- ↑ Hetrick, Adam."Stephen Sondheim and James Earl Jones Set for TimesTalks This Fall" Archived October 18, 2012, at the Wayback Machine playbill.com, August 16, 2010
- ↑ "Table of Contents". Randomhouse.com. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ↑ Haun, Harry."Exclusive! Sondheim Explains Evolution from Bounce to Road Show" Archived December 29, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. Playbill.com, August 12, 2008
- ↑ Gardner, Elysa. "Sondheim sounds off about writing songs" Archived March 5, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. USA Today, October 9, 2008
- ↑ Brantley, Ben. (21 October 2010). "Sondheim's Rhymes and Reasons". The New York Times. Archived from the original on September 29, 2015. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ↑ "Hardcover Nonfiction list". The New York Times. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
- ↑ Jones, Kenneth."Stephen Sondheim's "Look, I Made a Hat", Part Two of His Career in Lyrics, in Stores Nov. 22" Archived August 26, 2013, at the Wayback Machine playbill.com, November 22, 2011