Is Stephen Sondheim Overrated??? — Page 3

You have the distinct honor of living during the same time as Sondheim and watching his work first hand. That would be like watching Babe Ruth play baseball. Enjoy it. He is the real thing!

Just because a show is a hit (especially in this day and age) doesn't mean it is theatrically solid or good. So, no I wouldn't judge Sondheim based on having a huge hit. Also, when you judge someone that way you deny the importance of experimentation and change. If all anyone worries about is a huge hit, no one will ever evolve in art.

To have a body of work like Sondheim's, you are bound to see some clinkers in terms of songs that didn't quite work etc...but that is true of most composers. Anyone writing or recording today has a trunk full of stuff that never made it or that they wished they'd never written. That is part of the creative process. It is the sum of the parts and the longevity of the talent you have to look at to know whether someone is truly a 'genius' that has had a long and very successful career or whether someone has changed the face of an industry. Sondheim definitely qualifies.

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Updated On: 10/21/05 at 11:23 AM

To the general public who only know bits and pieces of musical theather, he's way underrated. However, on Broadwayworld.com, he's way overrated. You can't criticize him without your head being bit off or being treated as an intellectually inferior nitwit whose opinions don't matter by some.

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I agree, Master---not everything Shakespeare, Williams, and Sondheim wrote is good or brilliant. Everyone has exceptions. :)

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"Rock took over popular music in the mid 1960s, so a comparison of Sondheim's popular hit output to the likes of Rodgers & Hammerstein or Lerner & Loewe is really not a fair assessment."

To me, this sounds exactly like using rock music as an excuse for Sondheim's reception into pop culture. You're saying that it's not fair to compare Sondheim's popularity to previous composers because they didn't have to compete with rock music. Music from Hair, Pippin as well as the shows you've mentioned HAS been on the Billboard charts- while competing with rock music- so I don't understand why you believe Sondheim can't be held to the same standards as past composers, when other contemporary have been able to live up to these standards.

And just so you know, there's a difference between critical and hysterical.

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Vietgrrl...don't generalize. Not everyone on BWW bristles when you criticize Sondheim but you had better have a valid criticism. Otherwise, find me a better composer. His work is not perfect...no one's is...but then Babe Ruth didn't hit a home run every time he got up to the plate either and he's still considered one of the best sluggers.

Sondheim has written a lot of music that is little known but still bespeaks the best of human emotion. Songs like Anyone Can Whistle, No More, Move On, Nothing's Gonna Harm You, I Wish I Could Forget You, In Someone's Eyes, Losing My Mind, to name a few. Criticism is accepted by most knowledgeable people provided the person criticising has done their homework and knows what they are talking about. Comments like "Sondheim sucks" are bound to get a raspberry from the most discerning musical theater fans.

I will also say that if you really want to appreciate Sondheim you have to become a 'student' of his work. It it a process of really listening and getting into what he is doing. I don't find his work to be something that hits me immediately. But rather something that grows on me and where I can find layers of meaning as I listen over and over again. That is the mark of a good composition. Not something that is like fast food...catchy but you forget it the next day.

Many of my industry friends believe that his work will not be fully appreciated until he is gone. And to whom will he pass the torch?

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Updated On: 10/21/05 at 11:37 AM

Sondheim doesn't write rock or pop music like the composers of the shows you mentioned, orangeskittles (plus those shows are already 35-40 years old). His style is much more in the traditional Broadway mold, even if his scores are often unconventional. But the world of popular music has changed considerably, and it has left Broadway behind, even when Broadway has embraced pop or rock. (And rising up the Billboard charts doesn't not equate with radio airplay). If you don't believe that the change in popular music is to blame, I ask you: if Lerner and Loewe were writing today, and My Fair Lady was a new show, would you hear "I Could Have Danced All Night" on the radio?

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Updated On: 10/21/05 at 11:55 AM

" have never enjoyed the financial success of Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Jerry Herman, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Lerner & Lowe, and many others. In that regard, he is probably somewhat underrated."

Why is it when people talk about art or artists things become monetary? Who the hell cares about finances. Art, and/or, the judgement of art is not supposed to be measured by $$$.

"You can make excuses for Sondheim; but the fact remains that he never had a Jerry Herman-sized hit. Never."

Well considering Jerry Herman only had 3 shows that "hit" that really isn't saying much. Sondheim's show collectively blow Herman away. Herman has run with "Dolly", "La Cage" and "Mame" for over 40 years, and only one of those 3 is any good. Kinda sad actually.

"My point was that by the theater community (people who do theater), he is; by the general public, he isn't. They barely know who he is."

I get what you are saying here. I just don't think you're correct. =) If by "general public" you mean "teenies" and "reality show fans" than yes you would be correct in saying "they barely know who he is" (they also have no idea who Herman is). However, most every day people do know who Sondheim is. Thanks to shows like "Forum" and "Gypsy" and Madonna lol. Baby boomers certainly know who he is.

"I almost never listen to a Sondheim song. I don't particularly like his music. Just not a fan; but I was attempting to be objective about him in my original post."

That is unfortunate. Sondheim is the most brilliant lyricist in musical theater history. Nobody can touch him.

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If Gregorian monks chanting can have a hit CD in the 1990s, I don't see why you can argue Sondheim isn't popular because his style is too "traditional" for people's tastes.

If Lerner and Loewe were writing today, no, you wouldn't hear My Fair Lady on the radio. But if Mozart and Beethoven and Bach were writing today, 10 years ago or 50 years ago, you wouldn't hear them on the radio either. People can appreciate the history without viewing everyone that progressed with popular culture as being a sellout.

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Updated On: 10/21/05 at 12:30 PM

*looks at who started the thread*

*isn't surprised*

I'm too tired and not nearly drunk enough for this.

There are always some freak successes that come along, like the Gregorian monks or the soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou?, but they don't point to a trend or the world of popular music at large.

I'm not calling people who write musical theatre in pop or rock music mode a sell out. Nor do I have any feelings against the popular music that is successful today. (Well, except that I personally prefer hard rock of the '60s and '70s). I'm saying that Sondheim doesn't write that way, by his choice, and the world of popular music has not embraced traditional Broadway for a very long time. It's no reason to fault his efforts, or find him lacking. And that even in his desire to write for the specific needs of the show at hand, rather than popular success, he still has had songs that have broken out - moreso than some posters here are giving him credit for.

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Updated On: 10/21/05 at 12:53 PM

Tir Na Nog, I have one objection to your previous post. You equate "educated people" with those that have knowledge of the theater or music history, but that's definitely a narrow-minded opinion. You can be educated- even an expert- in a some fields but not have any knowledge in some others. Would you consider yourself educated? How are you at quantum physics? What about African American rhetoric or paper manufacturing?

And this is where pop music came into the argument:

"Rock took over popular music in the mid 1960s, so a comparison of Sondheim's popular hit output to the likes of Rodgers & Hammerstein or Lerner & Loewe is really not a fair assessment."

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Updated On: 10/21/05 at 01:09 PM

Popular music came into it, because it was my way of saying that what most of the country listens to today is different from what they were listening to in the era of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Loewe, and Jerry Herman's '60s successes. Broadway was the popular music of its day for most of the 20th century until around the mid 1960s, and it's not anymore, so to fault Sondheim for not having Rodgers & Hammerstein style song hits seems ridiculous.

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Yeah, ConvinceMe. Can I direct you to this post, written by yourself?

"His shows (and songs, for which he is sole composer, with the exception of SEND IN THE CLOWNS) have never enjoyed the financial success of Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Jerry Herman, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Lerner & Lowe, and many others."

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