Sondheim's weaker lyrics/rhymes — Page 8

I (probably) is simply because I am so used to the original lyrics, but re the Now You Know change (and I won't even get into dropping the lumpy cream of wheat reference which I always liked)... For me the lyric doesn't sit as well on the music. "Bricks can tumble from clear blue skies" is a different emphasis when sung than the staccato "Bricks can fall outa clear blue skies" which sits on all the notes. I guess he wanted the change... It does put more emphasis on the word tumble than fall outa had, I guess...

But frankly, I rarely don't like the changes made to a piece once it's been initially frozen. Merrily is a special case--I miss many original elements and it was a flop, but I certainly wouldn't have bothered changing the lyrics to Now You Know. But, as I've mentioned, I also tend to dislike the revisions Tennessee Williams always made to his plays with each new published edition (or full on re-writes--there's a great Blythe Danner performance in the PBS filmed version of The Eccentricities of A Nightingale, but Summer and Smoke is a more powerful play even if ITS film de-emphasized parts I really prefer in the script.)

I suppose if I knew more about the different folios of SHakespeare's plays I would know if I thought later published versions seemed more complete, though of course that's a different situation where it seems that the various versions came out of changes actors and made (or whoever was writing it down) and not him.

"“Some people can get a thrill
Knitting sweaters and sitting still
That's okay for some people
Who don't know they're alive

Some people can thrive and bloom
Living life in a living room
That's perfect for some people
Content just to survive”

Anyone, and I mean anyone, who thinks the substituted line is better than the original is, well, is just an amateur. "Content just to survive"??? Really? Colorless, boring and certainly not Rose. Most of the lyrics quoted in this thread could not be bettered by anyone, let alone a bunch of people on a message board. Really. I don't love everything Mr. Sondheim has written, I don't love everything anyone has written, but I would not come on a message board and post what I've read here. But, that's just me. "Content just to survive." Horrifying. Steve, if you're reading this thread, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

When it comes to Sondheim's work I think lyric writing is he medium. He is a very strong lyricist where he falls short allot of the time, for me, is in his music. He has a stye that he uses ,just like every other composer, and his is just not one that I can get into 75% of the time.

He does have a musical style it's just not an ascetic that I care for. I wouldn't by any means make him only second to RR though. To me that speaks of one that that feels he can do no wrong. I'd be more likely to put Jerry Herman and Frederick Loewe more in that category. You never really hear much of a ton of orchestras and symphonies doing a Sondheim even sans lyrics for a reason.

"You never really hear much of a ton of orchestras and symphonies doing a Sondheim even sans lyrics for a reason. "

I get your point, but I'm gonna argue this line. The main reason, IMHO, is because symphonies tend to have to base some of their repertoire on well known audience favourites. When an orchestra does a "Pops" style concert--be it favorite 40s and 50s standards, or familiar John Williams pieces--Hell even the recent phenomenon of that tour of popular video game music--it's almost always largely to help sustain them financially. That sounds cynical, but especially when orchestras find their audiences dwindling, they can rely on their older audience who can afford and want subscriptions on being happy to hear a program made up of at least 2/3rds 19th century romantic favorites, throw in a Rodgers and Hammerstein tribute, etc, and then maybe try to appeal to a youngr audience who don't have the orchestra on their radar with a concert of recent movie or, like I said, video game favorites.

Andrew Lloyd Webber gets thrown in there too, but otherwise I'd wager next to no post 1970s Broadway stuff does. That said, you ARE starting to see more Sondheim songs pop up in those types of programs, as you are starting to see more jazz versions of his music.

"I think Sondheim is every bit as great a composer as he is a lyricist,"

Or as lousy.


"It took a number of shows for everyone (except you-know-who) to get used to Sondheim"

Except no one has. Other than eliist snobs here, there, and everywhere who foist such hogwash upon us.

Updated On: 1/4/14 at 10:13 PM

I don't hate Sondheim's work, or even his adulators. I find them both simply tiresome and mildly irritating.

What I don't like is when people try to pass off hogwash as the truth.

I've offered countless examples of "objective" support for my assertions, as evidenced in this very thread. Don't blame me if you, and others like you, refuse to hear what you don't want to hear.

Skill with the English language does not equate to being a great lyricist.

"When I was teaching, my students produced three different productions of ASSASSINS and several of WOODS. This they did on their own, not because some elite snob forced them to do so"

Decades of relentless indoctrination by elitist snobs certainly gets results, doesn't it?

Updated On: 1/4/14 at 10:54 PM

"the fact that in my experience Sondheim fans are more educated"

I'm afraid then that your experience is extremely limited.

AfterEight, your snobbery confuses me. You blame any love of Sondheim on someone being an elitist snob, yet in many of the same discussions you have criticized the same people for enjoying something which nobody would classify as elitist. (Like when you claimed, because I initially didn't recognize a Proust line you paraphrased, and then said I should stick to things like The Hunger Games--a series I've never been a big fan of, but I wouldn't think less of someone who was.) You claim proof of Sondheim being poor stuff by saying he's not popular except with his snobby fans, and yet nearly everything you see as a superior alternative has not been popular for years, and often has had no afterlife post their initial productions.

It must be a plot.

'Cause they're scared that I got

Such a gift!

Well, I'm miffed...

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After Eight, saying Sondheim is awful and everything written before 1969 was "wonderful" is not supporting your argument, it's merely repeating it.

Updated On: 1/5/14 at 06:39 PM

One that has always annoyed me is from Merrily. "These are the movers / These are the shapers / These are the people / That fill the papers."

I always felt the use of the word "shapers" was off. The classic term is "movers and shakers" I always wonder if Sondheim changed it to "shapers" in order to get the rhyme with "papers". Movers and shapers works technically and makes sense, technically. But its closeness to such a classic, well known phrase makes it feel wonky to me. Maybe Sondheim intended it as having no relation to "movers and shakers" or maybe he made a weak alternative version of the phrase to fit a rhyme. Either way, it takes me out of the song every time. So in my estimation, it fails.

I'm a staunch admirer of SJS and feel, for the most part he exceeds perfection. But there are some very occasional moments when I'm not buying what he's selling. This is one.

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Not to mention that the reversals in the lyric to "Sorry Grateful" ("Regretful/happy"; "You hold her thinking 'I'm not alone'; / You're still alone") have their roots in classical rhetoric. Reversals of meaning have been used by everyone from Greek philosophers, who called it "chiasmus" and "antimetabole," to Dickens ("It was the best of times; it was the worst of times") to Shakespeare ("To be or not to be, that is the question") to Mae West ("It's not the men in my life that count; it's the life in my men") to Dr. Seuss ("I meant what I said and I said what I meant") to JFK "("Ask not what your country can do for you; ask, rather, what you can do for your country.")

So to say that the reversal of "You're always sorry; you're always grateful" is banal--when it clearly expresses an ambivalence very common in long-term relationships--is as silly as this old New Yorker cartoon, berating Charles Dickens, like Poor Jenny," for "not being able to make up his mind":

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Updated On: 1/12/14 at 10:27 AM