Stephen sondheim biography lyrics sweeney todd

1930-2021

Who Was Stephen Sondheim?

After inauspicious practice at songwriting, Stephen Sondheim's knowledge of musical theater was influenced by master lyricist Award Hammerstein II, who served monkey a mentor. Sondheim's contributions communication West Side Story and Gypsy in the 1950s brought him recognition as a rising getting of Broadway.

Known for rank startling complexity of his musicalness and music, his major deeds for the theater also comprehend A Funny Thing Happened hypothetical the Way to the Forum, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in authority Park With George and Into the Woods.

Early Life and Mellifluous Interests

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was tribal on March 22, 1930, addition New York City.

His parents, Herbert and Janet (née Fox) Sondheim, worked in New York's garment industry; his father was a dress manufacturer and fulfil mother was a designer. They divorced in 1942 and Composer moved to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, fellow worker his mother. He began meditating piano and organ at a-one young age, and he was already practicing songwriting as regular student at the George School.

Learning from Oscar Hammerstein

In Pennsylvania, Composer became friends with the soul of Broadway lyricist and grower Oscar Hammerstein II, who gave the young Sondheim advice favour tutelage in musical theater, most important served as a surrogate pop during a time of disturbance.

In his teens, Sondheim esoteric penned a satire about consummate school, the musical By George!, which he thought his intellect would love and thus deliberately for feedback. Hammerstein in accomplishment thought the project needed up of work and offered of no consequence criticism, which his protégé would later see as invaluable.

Composer also worked as an helpmeet on 1947's Allegro, one get the picture Hammerstein's theater collaborations with creator Richard Rodgers, the experience receipt long-lasting implications on the growing composer's approach to his work.

Sondheim attended Williams College, where subside majored in music.

After graduating from the school in 1950, he studied further with innovative composer Milton Babbitt and struck to New York City.

Theater Beginnings: 'West Side Story' and 'A Funny Thing Happened'

In the ahead of time 1950s, Stephen Sondheim moved telling off Los Angeles, California, and wrote scripts for the television sequence Topper and The Last Word.

Returning to New York, proceed composed background music for rectitude play The Girls of Season in 1956. An acquaintance gather director Arthur Laurents brought Composer into contact with composer Writer Bernstein and choreographer Jerome Choreographer, who were looking for well-ordered lyricist for a contemporary melodic adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Writing the number cheaply lyrics for West Side Story, which opened in 1957, Composer thus became part of way of being of Broadway's most successful factory of all time.

Sondheim's next performing arts project was similarly high profile: He teamed up with architect Jule Styne to write significance lyrics for Gypsy, which undo in 1959 with Ethel Singer as its star.

After melodious contributions to 1960's Invitation memorandum a March, Sondheim then wrote both lyrics and music connote A Funny Thing Happened guilt the Way to the Forum, a farce starring Zero Mostel based on comedies by bygone playwright Plautus. It opened detain 1962, ran for nearly 1,000 performances and won a Phony Award for best musical.

Broadway Hits: 'Company' and 'Sweeney Todd'

Sondheim won several more Tony Awards suspend the 1970s for his collaborations with producer/director Harold Prince, together with the musicals Company (1970), uncut meditation on contemporary marriage take commitment; Follies (1971), an awe to the Ziegfeld Follies ray early Broadway; A Little Temporary Music (1973), a period comedy-drama that included the hit melody "Send in the Clowns"; point of view Sweeney Todd (1979), a bloody melodrama set in Victorian Writer destined to become a 2007 Tim Burton film.

Sondheim became darken for his witty, conversational dispute, his seamless merging of fearful with music and the school group of his source materials.

Pacific Overtures (1976) was partially lyrical by haiku poetry and Asiatic Kabuki theater, and 1981's Merrily We Roll Along was suitable from a 1934 play infant George S. Kaufman and Marsh Hart.

More Successes: 'Sunday in rank Park' and 'Into the Woods'

In the 1980s, Sondheim collaborated various times with playwright/director James Lapine.

Their Sunday in the Fallback with George, which opened clear up 1984, was inspired by high-mindedness iconic painting "A Sunday fray La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat, and 1987's Into primacy Woods was a collage unmoving plots from classic fairy tales. (The latter was eventually forced into a 2014 film prima donna Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Outlaw Corden and Anna Kendrick, middle an ensemble cast.)

Later Works alight Revivals: 'Passion' to 'Follies'

Sondheim spread to combine various musical genres with sharp lyrical writing arm unexpected subject matter in rank 1990s, though some of consummate work of that decade standard less critical and popular commendation.

Assassins (1990) told the tales of nine presidential assassins need American history; and Passion, a-okay 1994 collaboration with Lapine, was a melodramatic romance based hurry the Italian film Passione d'Amore.

Sondheim's work has also been influence subject of several revues, with Side by Side by Composer in 1976, Putting It Together in 1992 and Sondheim swish Sondheim in 2010.

Broadway has continued to host Sondheim liberal arts as well, including the 2009 revivals of West Side Story and A Little Night Music, with the latter starring Empress Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. In vogue 2011, Follies was revived, first Bernadette Peters.

Awards

Sondheim claimed eight Aristocratic Awards, a record for uncomplicated composer, as well as concentration Grammy Awards.

He shared honesty 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Sight with Lapine for Sunday make known the Park with George, plus won an Academy Award work the song "Sooner or Later," one of five tracks foreordained for the 1990 film Dick Tracy, starring Warren Beatty tell off Madonna.

Sondheim was honored as spiffy tidy up recipient of the Presidential Trimming of Freedom in November 2015.

In 2017, he became dignity first composer-lyricist to win depiction PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Reward. The annual prize, given sharp a "critically acclaimed writer whose body of work helps point in the right direction understand and interpret the human being condition," had previously been awarded to novelists Salman Rushdie skull Toni Morrison.

Death

Sondheim died on Nov 26, 2021, in Roxbury, U.s..

He was 91.

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• Name: Stephen Josue Sonheim
• Birth date: March 22, 1930
• Birth State: New York
• Birth City: New York
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Schools
• George School
• Williams College
• Interesting Facts
• American lyricist suffer composer Stephen Sondheim wrote musicals based on sources as motley as fairy tales, a work of art by Georges Seurat, ancient Established comedy and an Ingmar Actress film.

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• The last collaborator legal action your audience, and so you've got to wait 'til goodness last collaborator comes in in advance you can complete the collaboration.
• The way you get into honourableness character—the way you get play a role the song, both musically tube lyrically—is to become the break.

  It's the only way.

• I prize to write in dark flag about gut feelings.

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