Was Sondheim a better composer or lyricist - Page 2

[joevitus]

Posted: 11/14/23 at 12:26am

kdogg36 said: "ColorTheHours048 said: "I’m going to assume you’re just joking around, but for argument’s sake, I’ll take this at face value. He clearly means “eye” in the context of something like “an eye for fashion.” "

For what it's worth, I've always taken it the way Jay does, and have never thought of your interpretation. The full phrase is "his skin was pale and his eye was odd," which seems to be in the realm of physical description.

I think it's been discussed here and elsewhere about the observations contained in "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd" not being entirely in keeping with what we've seen in the show. Although many of those who sing the song are ostensibly characters from the show, it seems like they're telling the story as a received legend rather than as witness accounts."

Oh, I love that interpretation!

To me "his eye was odd" doesn't refer to either a deformity or his outlook on life, but the gaze on his face. Either the thoughts in his head are playing on his face in certain ways, or due to his traumas, he has a look on his face isolates him from most normal people. And I do think at least the original stage production bore this out. 

Edit: Ugh, and now I see other people have said this more succinctly than I did.

Updated On: 11/14/23 at 12:26 AM

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 11/15/23 at 5:13pm

What an impossible question to answer. I think he was a legitimate genius at both arts, primarily in his obsessive skill for crafting songs that could only be sung by the characters they're sung by, in the shows that they're in. I always think of the anecdote about Sondheim's work habits in the weeks leading up to opening night, where someone (I think Ted Chapin) went to deliver him something during previews for A Little Night Music and Sondhiem opened the door looking like he was about to die. It seems like he had an all-consuming, almost crazed devotion to the shows he worked on, and that's incredibly apparent in how the scores are impeccably tailored (it also bit him in the butt when he went back to add songs later, which usually just sounded like they were cut from whatever he had been working on most recently).

It's interesting how he seemed to shy away from pure sentiment in his melodies, in favor of double-meanings or barbed irony. One of his first "hits", "How Do I Know" from Phinney's Rainbow, was intended to be a parody of love ballads, and he was shocked when the audience, instead of laughing at the silly lyrics, listened raptly, and the melody went on to be played at school dances. But it's no surprise, because the melody is just a gorgeous, simple thing (accompanied by his typically brilliant accompaniment - the textures and moods Sondheim wrote into his vamps are unbeatable).

I also don't often feel whipped-up by his music in the same way I do by other composers. Bernstein, for example, wrote pure lightning - I think I can count on one hand the songs he wrote for Broadway that I don't really care for, and almost every other song seems to hit my nervous system before it hits my brain. And yet Sondheim's music is consistently nearly perfect, and typically more cumulatively impactful, even if my instinct to do an ecstatic backflip out of my chair only strikes in a handful of numbers in each show, and often rarely at first viewing (still, that's better than most composers).

But I have no qualms with his lyrics, and I'm convinced he had a mind on the level of someone like Einstein or Da Vinci, or was at least an unbelievably creative toiler. I could say that means I think his lyrics are better than his music, but they're inextricable.

[darquegk]

Posted: 11/15/23 at 5:23pm

I'm always the most fascinated by two related what-ifs: what would Rupert Holmes's life and creative legacy have been like if (like Sondheim) he buttoned down his dilettante tendencies and just focused on crafting theatre; and what would Stephen Sondheim's life and creative legacy have been like if (like Holmes) he had been less disciplined, fully exploring his varied creative passions and obsessions instead of just being a composer/lyricist from middle age onward.

[Charley Kringas Inc]

Posted: 11/15/23 at 5:39pm

I'd like to think he would've carved a legacy as the greatest cruciverbalist of all time (the demon setter of Eighth Avenue?).

[darquegk]

Posted: 11/15/23 at 7:07pm

We are a lesser world for not having Sondheim’s video game and/or Sondheim’s escape room.

[BeingAlive44Ever]

Posted: 1/1/24 at 2:01pm

darquegk said: "We are a lesser world for not having Sondheim’s video game and/or Sondheim’s escape room."

I like to think that the contributions he's made to the world of the arts are so great and so timeless and eternal that it doesn't matter what we didn't get

I remember Julie James saying on the radio once that if Sondheim wrote just one of any of his incredible shows--

West Side Story, Gypsy, Forum, Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Merrily, Passion, Follies, Sunday, Assassins, Company, Into the Woods--

he would be a legend. I mean, Bernstein is a legend largely off of the strength of just Candide and West Side Story even though he has a whole lot of equally exceptional more obscure work

Sondheim has written at least a dozen iconic, incredible musicals and I don't think anybody else can even begin to claim to have that kind of legacy 

Now, that being said, his compositions aren't always amazing 

They serve the lyrics and the characters and they almost always do exactly what they need to, occasionally achieving incredible brilliance 

Like I can list a bunch of songs from all his shows that I thought were only decent or even somewhat not great

How I Saved Roosevelt and Unworthy of Your Love from Assassins, Poor Baby from Company (admittedly every other song in that show is unthinkably brilliant), Agony in Into the Woods, It's Hot Up Here from Sunday, etc 

When I think of the songs he's written which are completely brilliant musically, there are quite a few, of course

Like songs that stand out specifically because of the music, the first few that come to mind are Another National Anthem, Side by Side by Side, Kiss Me Quartet, Last Midnight, Color and Light...

But then Sondheim songs where the lyrics stick out as unbelievable 

I mean there's so many 

Every ballad from Assassins, the patter songs in Company, every soliloquy in Into the Woods, literally every song in Sunday, even the ones I don't like as much musically 

Okay so I have an obvious bias towards those four shows 

But I just think that, in general, Sondheim was the best lyricist on Broadway ever and probably in the top five composers 

Was he as good as Bernstein? 

Well, no

Go give Candide another listen 

Every single tune in that whole show is a winner 

It's so well put together and thoroughly composed and the music is just flawless 

Even the best Sondheim shows have songs that stick out as not the best ones

In something like Candide or West Side Story, even the least remarkable songs have such strong melodies that it doesn't even matter that they're not as good as the other songs 

And what's amazing is that I could hum any song from those shows, but I could just as easily pick apart every nuance and every incredible detail

Sondheim music is hard to hum 

Like, it's so ambitious and complex

And it almost always gets what it's going for

But not always 

So yeah basically he's a way better lyricist than composer

What was I trying to say with this again? 

Oh yeah Sondheim has contributed to the world in so many ways

Buuuuuuutttt I also really wish he'd made a game or an escape room