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How Sondheim Found His Sound, by Steve Swayne
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"The research is voluminous, as is the artistry and perceptiveness. Swayne has lived richly within the world of Sondheim's music."
---Richard Crawford, author of America's Musical Life: A History
"Sondheim's career and music have never been so skillfully dissected, examined, and put in context. With its focus on his work as composer, this book is surprising and welcome."
---Theodore S. Chapin, President and Executive Director, The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization
"What a fascinating book, full of insights large and small. An impressive analysis and summary of Sondheim's many sources of inspiration. All fans of the composer and lovers of Broadway in general will treasure and frequently refer to Swayne's work."
---Tom Riis, Joseph Negler Professor of Musicology and Director of the American Music Research Center, University of Colorado
Stephen Sondheim has made it clear that he considers himself a "playwright in song." How he arrived at this unique appellation is the subject of How Sondheim Found His Sound---an absorbing study of the multitudinous influences on Sondheim's work.
Taking Sondheim's own comments and music as a starting point, author Steve Swayne offers a biography of the artist's style, pulling aside the curtain on Sondheim's creative universe to reveal the many influences---from classical music to theater to film---that have established Sondheim as one of the greatest dramatic composers of the twentieth century.
Sondheim has spoken often and freely about the music, theater, and films he likes, and on occasion has made explicit references to how past works crop up in his own work. He has also freely acknowledged his eclecticism, seeing in it neither a curse nor a blessing but a fact of his creative life.
Among the many forces influencing his work, Sondheim has readily pointed to a wide field: classical music from 1850 to 1950; the songs of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood; the theatrical innovations of Oscar Hammerstein II and his collaborators; the cinematic elements found in certain film schools; and the melodramatic style of particular plays and films. Ultimately, Sondheim found his sound by amalgamating these seemingly disparate components into his unique patois.
How Sondheim Found His Sound is the first book to provide an overview of his style and one of only a few to account for these various components, how they appear in Sondheim's work, and how they affect his musical and dramatic choices.
- Sales Rank: #2637031 in Books
- Published on: 2005-08-08
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.20" w x 6.13" l, 1.65 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
From Publishers Weekly
There have been so many books written about Stephen Sondheim and his revolutionary scores that it's hard to believe anything's left to analyze. But Swayne has found a new angle, and in this scholarly tome, he examines the impact other artists and mediums have had on Sondheim's work. The Dartmouth music professor offers some fascinating and fresh insights into possible inspirations behind characters and musical moments in shows including Follies, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park with George and Passion, citing classical and Broadway composers Ravel, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin and Arlen, as well as dramatists like Sondheim mentor Oscar Hammerstein and, most intriguingly, French new wave filmmaker Alain Resnais. The author probes Sondheim's past and excavates his classical record collection, student papers and musical compositions, early musicals written at Williams College and even all the college plays he took part in. Amid the trove of details, Swayne doesn't always successfully connect the presumed influence to something in Sondheim's oeuvre. That he owned a lot of records by certain classical composers, for example, doesn't necessarily mean that every composer greatly shaped his work. Additionally, the author offers lengthy dissections of the songs "What Can You Lose?" from the movie Dick Tracy and "Putting It Together" from Sunday that will best be appreciated by music scholars. Sondheim enthusiasts who are not musically inclined will most enjoy the chapters on his film and theater influences.
Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"The research is voluminous; but so is the artistry and perceptiveness. Swayne has lived richly within the world of Sondheim's music." - Richard Crawford, author of America's Musical Life: A History"
About the Author
Steve Swayne is Assistant Professor of Music at Dartmouth College.
Most helpful customer reviews
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful.
Good but not Great
By W. White
This book got off to a good start, analyzing Sondheim's favorite classical composers and how they show up in his own musical language. The next chapter is devoted to Sondheim's broadway influences, and gives a good examination of these as well.
The second half of the book is devoted to Sondheim's theatrical and cinematic influences. It is here that Swayne goes off track. Though he makes some interesting connections between film technique and musical composition, it seems to me that this is where his thesis falls short, and could have been developed much more cogently. Also, one would think that Swayne would devote more attention to actual film scores.
My main complaint is that in a book called "How Sondheim Found His Sound", one would expect to find at least a mention of the orchestration in Sondheim's shows. Perhaps this is just my own personal bent, as I have always wondered just how Sondheim works with his orchestrators and to what extent he thinks in orchestral terms.
In terms of the writing, this book (especially in the later chapters) all too often reads like an undergraduate music paper. All this being said, there's enough in here to warrant purchase by real Sondheim junkies.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating Look at the Creative Process
By John Matlock
Sir Isaac Newton once said: 'If I have accomplished anything, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.' Stephen Sondheim would probably say something similar.
He has acknowledged being influenced by classical music, Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, Hollywood and many more. In the end though, Sondheim's work has taken these together and produced something uniquely his own. The results speak for themselves: West Side Story, Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Do I Hear a Waltz and the list goes on and on. In 2004 alone there was the first Broadway production of Assassins, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (London), The Frogs (Lincoln Center), Passion, Pacific Overtures.
This book though, is not a description of what he has done, it's an in depth analysis of the way his music came about. The author teaches music at Dartmouth. His analysis, aided by Sondheim himself talks not only about the origins of music, but the way Sondheim goes about developing a song. It's a fascinating look at the creative process.
5 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Great primer on Sondheim
By Erica Ford
This is a great book on how Sondheim "found his sound." I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Sondheim's card system and it gave me greater insight into a person who knew Leonard Bernstein.
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