Who are Stephen Sondheim's favorite composers?

Despite people comparing him to sondheim, He's made it clear he REALLY doesn't like Jason Robert Brown.

I hear he likes Guettel. Not sure about older influences.

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I read that he considered Boy George's score for "Taboo" to have been very underrated.

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I dout he said anything negative about Jason Robert Brown - he is very careful not to crticize other living composers.

He claims to admire all the greats of Broadway's formative years: Arlen, Porter, Berlin, Rodgers, Gershwin. His classical influences are mainly late 19th century and early 20th century: (Ravel, Stravinsky) I can hear echoes of Faure and Debussy in SUNDAY. And Sondheim credits Bernard Hermann as his inspiration for SWEENEY.

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Samuel Barber.

Yes, he even recorded the "phone message" for the original New York production of TICK... TICK... BOOM!

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I'm also interested to hear what he would say about JRB. I thought he would be a fan of him, if anything.

I imagine that he would like Frankel/Korie a good deal.

"Apparently he gave "Adding Machine" a standing ovation. But that could just be hearsay..."

Everyone gives shows standing ovations these days.


I know he's been influenced by Steve Reich, and he liked "Spring Awakening." That's just what I've heard.

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he liked "Spring Awakening."

- You sure that was Sondheim? I know Arthur Laurents publicly stated that he liked SA a lot.

Where did you get that from Dramarama? He was sat behind me at Parade at the Donmar in London in December 2007. He really seemed to be enjoying himself too.

Several years ago, in an interview with the New York Times magazine, Sondheim listed "50 Songs I Wish I'd Written." If anyone can find the link, that might give us an idea of the answer to this question.

The other day here, there was a thread in which the shows he likes were discussed, including a quotation from him:

https://forum.broadwayworld.com/readmessage.cfm?page=2&thread=987388&boardid=0

Btw, in a recent conversation with Frank Rich at Oberln, he did cite The Wiz as one of his favorite shows.

Here's the Times article:

https://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000312mag-sondheim.html?scp=1&sq=sondheim%20songs%20i%20wish%20i'd%20written&st=cse

He himself cited Britten as a major influence on Sunday in the Park With George. He's not that big a fan of Debussy, but he loves Ravel. The Ravel piano concerto for the left hand was the subject of his college thesis, and he once gave Oscar Hammerstein a recording of the piano trio for his birthday. He hears more Ravel than Debussy in his own music.

Apart from the Broadway composers whose work he loves (and his favorites are probably Gershwin, Arlen, and Kern, in that order), he has mentioned (in addition to Ravel) Brahms, Stravinsky, and particularly Rachmaninoff, who may be his second favorite composer.

He has twice been on the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs. The second time, in 2000, he named the Brahms second piano concerto as his favorite piece of classical music.

If I get the chance, I'll write a bit more later.

Updated On: 1/10/09 at 10:31 AM

Here's a link to Sondheim's 2000 Desert Island Discs choices:

http://www.sondheim.org/php/news.php?id=64

I know that somewhere his choices from the first time he was on were published, but I can't remember where. I know that on that list he included a recording of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (and Sondheim's record collection was so old at the time that the recording he cited was Fritz Reiner's first recording, with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, long out of print at the time since it was supplanted by Reiner's later Chicago recording) and a recording of Ravel's Valses Nobles et Sentimentales (I think the orchestral version rather than the piano version).