In the English speaking world, Stephen Sondheim is considered a master of musical theater.
What is so special about his body of work? Discover the "Magic of Sondheim" in five steps.
The Magic of Sondheim
Introduction: a different kind of musical
In the Netherlands in particular, musical theater is considered light entertainment for a broad audience, more accessible than theater or opera. Many popular musicals feature memorable, catchy songs, clear storylines, recognizable characters, and family-friendly themes.
Think, for example, of classic musicals like The Sound of Music or modern hits like The Lion King and Wicked. In recent years, we’ve also seen many so-called “jukebox” musicals, which incorporate popular songs into a story, such as Mamma Mia! and TINA.
Stephen Sondheim had a different style; he introduced a new form of musical. His musicals feature profound themes, complex characters, and surprising music that challenge and move audiences.
His influence on other musicals is substantial and can be seen in successful works like Hamilton by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rent by Jonathan Larson and The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown.
Translating Sondheim’s work, both literally and culturally, into Dutch is challenging. Yet it’s a shame that Sondheim remains an unfamiliar name to most people in the Netherlands. For, like Shakespeare, Sondheim has much to offer. His musicals captivate large audiences in London and New York. So why not in the Netherlands?
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The Fusion of Music, Lyrics, Character, and Theme
One of the most significant innovations Sondheim brought to the world of musicals is the seamless integration of music, lyrics, character, and theme. While songs in the classic musical tradition can often be lifted easily out of context, Sondheim’s songs are closely tied to character development and storyline. In other words, each song has its own specific purpose. Each song is a journey, leaving the character in a different place—whether physically, mentally, or emotionally—by the end. The songs often reveal nuances of the characters’ emotions and personalities, helping to drive the plot forward. In some cases, they even function as complete scenes, such as the nearly 15-minute opening number of Into the Woods.
Sondheim’s songs provide deep insights into the characters, their motivations, fears, and desires. To enhance this, the language and music are crafted to reflect the characters’ backgrounds and personalities. Musical phrasing and lyrics are seamlessly intertwined, allowing rhythm and melody to amplify the meaning and emotional impact of the words. In this way, the songs often resemble conversations set to music.
“Send in the clowns” and “Weekend in the country”, both from A Little Night Music, are examples of a conversational style, advancing both the plot and the emotional development of the characters.
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The Exploration of the
Human Condition
Self-discovery in Company and Sunday in the Park with George:
Sondheim’s work explores complex emotions and psychological themes. His characters are multifaceted, and his themes are rich and thought-provoking. Instead of a battle between good and evil, Sondheim’s shows present moral dilemmas and conflicting emotions. As an audience, we aren’t given an evening of “escape” but are instead confronted with our own questions, emotions, and dilemmas within our lives and relationships.
Recurring themes include self-discovery and the development of one’s talents, combined with connection to others in relationships or community. These themes are explicitly present in Company, Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, and even on a cultural scale in Pacific Overtures. Sondheim doesn’t shy away from difficult emotions and themes either. Obsession, disillusionment, loneliness, existential fear, the search for meaning, loss, revenge, cultural identity, and colonialism—all of these make an appearance in his work.
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Intricate Lyrics Filled with Wit and Insight
Sondheim’s lyrics are deeply nuanced and relatable, yet clear and true to each character’s way of speaking. This allows audiences to appreciate the layers of meaning and implication in his lyrics while still understanding the core message on a first listen. The intricacy of his lyrics means that audiences often discover new insights and emotions each time they hear them. These shifts can arise from an actor’s or director’s interpretation, but they’re often tied to the listener’s own life experiences over time. It’s no surprise, then, that Sondheim fans frequently say they “hear something new every time.”
Sondheim himself identified three guiding principles, which he detailed in his books: (1) Content Dictates Form, (2) Less is More, and (3) God is in the Details.
Below are a few examples of Sondheim’s writing techniques.
- Sondheim often repeats lines with subtle changes to reflect a character’s development or shifting emotions. This repetition reinforces themes or emotions, while small variations keep the lyrics dynamic and engaging.
- Sondheim frequently uses internal and multi-syllabic rhymes, along with alliteration and assonance. Internal rhymes—found within a single line or across lines—add a rhythmic and melodic quality, emphasizing certain words or themes. Alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds, and assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds, further enhance the musicality and can bring specific words or emotions into focus.
- He also often incorporates wordplay and double meanings to add wit, depth, or layers of interpretation to his lyrics.
- Sondheim meticulously aligns syllabic stresses with the musical meter, making the songs feel like a natural extension of the characters’ spoken words. This precision enhances both the clarity and emotional impact of each song.
- Sondheim uses complex rhyme schemes and structures to create a cohesive and captivating lyrical flow that often mirrors the characters’ psychological states or the musical’s thematic elements. In several songs, he even disrupts a rhyme scheme to reflect a character’s loss of control.
"Being Alive" from Company showcases the repetition of lines with a slight alteration to fundamentally change their meaning:
Someone to hold you too close.
Someone to hurt you too deep.
[...]
Somebody, hold me too close.
Somebody, hurt me too deep.
This song from Sweeney Todd features a complex rhyme scheme, breaking the pattern at certain points to reflect Sweeney Todd’s growing obsession and loss of control:
“Chrysanthemum Tea” from Pacific Overtures is filled with examples of internal rhymes and alliteration:
It's the tea, my Lord,
the chrysanthemum tea.
It's an herb that's superb for disturbances at sea.
“The miller’s son” from A Little Night Music is rich in wordplay and double meanings, allowing the character to express her pragmatic outlook on life.
It’s a very short road from the pinch and the punch
To the paunch and the pouch and the pension.
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Inventive and Richly Layered Music
The opening song from Sweeney Todd features dissonant chords and unexpected key changes to create a sense of menace and unease:
In this song from Company fast, syncopated rhythms and irregular time signatures are used to express Amy’s panic and chaotic thoughts:
This song from Sunday avoids traditional melodic patterns, instead following the character’s emotional arc. This keeps the music expressive and closely tied to Georges’s inner struggle and artistic process:
Stephen Sondheim’s music is renowned for its harmonic depth, melodic elegance, rhythmic creativity, emotional complexity, and its seamless blend with the lyrics. His compositions are often marked by intricate harmonies, unexpected chord progressions, and a powerful emotional charge.
Sondheim employs a variety of musical techniques to build emotional connections with the characters, story, and lyrics. Here are some defining elements of his style:
- Sondheim’s compositions are celebrated for their sense of dramatic timing and structure. He skillfully builds tension within the music, releasing it at precisely the right moment to create striking emotional climaxes.
- His work often features dissonance and surprising key changes, adding intensity and emphasizing the characters’ emotional states.
- Rather than relying on traditional melodic patterns, Sondheim’s melodies are unpredictable and expressive, giving his music a fresh, dynamic quality that’s closely tied to the story. These melodies are crafted to be subtle and refined, enhancing the action on stage without overshadowing it.
- He makes frequent use of complex rhythms, including syncopation and unusual time signatures, bringing energy and immediacy to his music. These rhythms often mirror the natural cadence of spoken language, making the songs feel grounded and direct.
- To create cohesion within each musical, Sondheim uses recurring motifs and leitmotifs—musical themes associated with specific characters, ideas, or emotions. This technique reinforces thematic elements and deepens emotional connections within the story.
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Innovative and Versatile
A hallmark of Sondheim’s musicals is that nearly all of them broke new ground. Together with his collaborators, he continually introduced fresh forms, themes, structures, and worlds. This avant-garde approach often led to initial productions of his shows receiving mixed or even outright negative reactions from critics and audiences.
Examples of his groundbreaking innovations include introducing the concept musical —where plot takes a backseat—in Company, exploring abstract themes like the nature of art in Sunday in the Park with George, reversing chronological order in Merrily We Roll Along, staging Pacific Overtures in the traditional Japanese Kabuki style, and connecting musical themes throughout A Little Night Music.
These innovations also contribute to remarkable versatility. Each Sondheim show has its own distinctive and memorable musical landscape. His work ranges from classical influences in A Little Night Music and jazz elements in Company to the dark, operatic style of Sweeney Todd , and the incorporation of a variety of older musical styles in Follies and Assassins.
The autobiographical song “Opening Doors” at the end of Merrily We Roll Along includes much of the criticism Sondheim himself received. In this video excerpt, Sondheim even plays the role of the producer voicing that criticism:
This is an example of Sondheim’s pastiche of mid-19th-century musical style in Assassins.
