A Sondheim rhyme that bothers me — Page 5

"Well, pity a lyricist alone, with limited syllables, and the best rhymes in songdom."

Score one for you.

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^ Thanks for the clarification! Didn't mean to shortchange Wodehouse.

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Updated On: 10/30/11 at 04:52 PM

Oh, good God. Don't you have a Follies thread to start?

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^ When I first heard that line, I had no idea what she was singing. I had to read it on the jacket sleeve (yes, records).

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I think that's fair enough. Sondheim always says that the most important thing is clarity--the audience should understand the lyric with one listen, and that's an example where I bet a number of them don't (I suppose some could argue that that pastiche song makes its point clear before that part, so to use clever wordplay they might not pick up on but still get the gist of is fair game, but...)

The one time I sometimes get frustrated with Sondheim is when he's not content to just have a rhyming couplet but streteches it out to have three or four rhymes, almost just because he can't resist. (I can't think of an example right now, but...) It does sometimes pull me out of the show because I think "Wow think of all the clever rhymes"

"Isn't it nice to know a lot/and a little bit not..."

You said it, Eric!!!!

yes, Gaveston, and I think we'd all have to agree that tempo is very forgiving. No way he would have dared put those words together to a slower beat.

Certainly it takes genius, but genius calling attention to itself is something Sondheim himself decries. And rightly. Although I'm with you on the withers, that's not ostentation, that's pure joy!

More to the point though, Fraulein, I can see how it would be wonderfully fun to sing coercin' a bull!

Bottom line, again, any one as prolific as the great man is, deserves to be indulged. Especially when his sins are as delicious as these are.

The problem I had with the withers line was that I had no freaking clue what "withers" were until I looked them up. The third "with her" is a bit of a stretch, admittedly, but since the idea of three words like that working in that way appeals to the puzzler/gamer in me, I'm willing to give him a pass on that.

For me, overindulgence came in Pacific Overtures. The multiple rhymes in Chrysanthemum Tea are almost irritating to my ear - like they're there just to be there:

"But they sit there all day
In contemptuous array
With a letter to convey
And they haven't gone away
And there's every indication
That they still plan to stay."

In contemptuous array?

I don't know, that song always annoyed me.

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It makes sense - the lyric just screams "this is a writer writing" to me.
That doesn't always bother me, it just feels a bit forced.

And yes, the character IS meant to be annoying. That could be why I skip that song a lot on the cast album. :)

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I always give "coercin' a bull" a pass because the song is written with a sort of Andrews-sisters vibe and it really sounds like a lot of songs from that era, which often came with similarly convoluted, playful lyrics. I've never thought it was particularly unintelligible but I can see it turning to mush in an untrained mouth.

Also, I know it's from the first page so it's probably been resolved, but Ms. Lovett's "limited wind" line makes perfect sense to me - it's a character song and that's exactly thing kind of thing she'd do, batter Sweeney with rapid-fire patter and then get to the end and say something like that.

The only Sondheim lyric that bugs me, off the top of my head, is a really arbitrary change he made to "Now You Know". In '81 Mary sang "bricks can fall outta clear blue skies", but he revised it in '85 to "bricks can tumble from clear blue skies". I really want to know what his reason was for this because it seems so random. If anything, "tumble" is the more awkward phrase. The only thing I can think is that the rhythm of "bricks can fall outta" somehow clashes with the rest of the song, but I can't imagine how. It might just be Sondheim tinkering unnecessarily with a show that shouldn't have been changed anyways, I dunno.

Not to thread jack, but does anyone else agree with me that the Shogun's Mother on the OBC sounds like Bea Arthur?