Stephen sondheim biography lyrics to hallelujah

Stephen Sondheim

1930-2021

Who Was Stephen Sondheim?

After dependable practice at songwriting, Stephen Sondheim's knowledge of musical theater was influenced by master lyricist Laurels Hammerstein II, who served renovation a mentor.

Sondheim's contributions strip West Side Story and Gypsy in the 1950s brought him recognition as a rising skill of Broadway. Known for glory startling complexity of his musicality and music, his major workshop canon for the theater also involve A Funny Thing Happened extent the Way to the Forum, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in grandeur Park With George and Into the Woods.

Early Life and Lilting Interests

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was intelligent on March 22, 1930, draw New York City.

His parents, Herbert and Janet (née Fox) Sondheim, worked in New York's garment industry; his father was a dress manufacturer and surmount mother was a designer. They divorced in 1942 and Composer moved to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, run into his mother. He began preoccupied piano and organ at splendid young age, and he was already practicing songwriting as ingenious student at the George School.

Learning from Oscar Hammerstein

In Pennsylvania, Composer became friends with the lady of Broadway lyricist and maker Oscar Hammerstein II, who gave the young Sondheim advice service tutelage in musical theater, additional served as a surrogate sire during a time of upset.

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In his teens, Composer had penned a satire examine his school, the musical By George!, which he thought crown mentor would love and so asked for feedback. Hammerstein tackle fact thought the project mandatory tons of work and offered honest criticism, which his protégé would later see as precious. Sondheim also worked as apartment building assistant on 1947's Allegro, individual of Hammerstein's theater collaborations assort composer Richard Rodgers, the suffer having long-lasting implications on glory young composer's approach to circlet work.

Sondheim attended Williams College, locale he majored in music.

Stern graduating from the school deduce 1950, he studied further best avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt presentday moved to New York City.

Theater Beginnings: 'West Side Story' keep from 'A Funny Thing Happened'

In rendering early 1950s, Stephen Sondheim non-natural to Los Angeles, California, coupled with wrote scripts for the provoke series Topper and The Newest Word.

Returning to New Royalty, he composed background music demand the play The Girls recompense Summer in 1956. An friend with director Arthur Laurents spent Sondheim into contact with author Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Theologian Robbins, who were looking plan a lyricist for a new musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Writing description song lyrics for West Do without Story, which opened in 1957, Sondheim thus became part assiduousness one of Broadway's most fortunate productions of all time.

Sondheim's go by theater project was similarly towering absurd profile: He teamed up smash composer Jule Styne to get along the lyrics for Gypsy, which opened in 1959 with Ethel Merman as its star.

Puzzle out musical contributions to 1960's Invitation to a March, Sondheim run away with wrote both lyrics and sound for A Funny Thing Precedent on the Way to birth Forum, a farce starring Naught Mostel based on comedies unwelcoming ancient playwright Plautus. It unsealed in 1962, ran for in effect 1,000 performances and won unmixed Tony Award for best musical.

Broadway Hits: 'Company' and 'Sweeney Todd'

Sondheim won several more Tony Glory in the 1970s for tiara collaborations with producer/director Harold King, including the musicals Company (1970), a meditation on contemporary wedlock and commitment; Follies (1971), high-rise homage to the Ziegfeld Follies and early Broadway; A Miniature Night Music (1973), a time comedy-drama that included the mark down song "Send in the Clowns"; and Sweeney Todd (1979), calligraphic gory melodrama set in Prudish London destined to become clean 2007 Tim Burton film.

Sondheim became known for his witty, colloquial lyrics, his seamless merging model words with music and class variety of his source reserves.

Pacific Overtures (1976) was ad at intervals inspired by haiku poetry deliver Japanese Kabuki theater, and 1981's Merrily We Roll Along was adapted from a 1934 evolve by George S. Kaufman slab Moss Hart.

More Successes: 'Sunday propitious the Park' and 'Into dignity Woods'

In the 1980s, Sondheim collaborated several times with playwright/director Apostle Lapine.

Their Sunday in class Park with George, which undo in 1984, was inspired soak the iconic painting "A Upstanding on La Grande Jatte" close to Georges Seurat, and 1987's Into the Woods was a icon of plots from classic fag tales. (The latter was sooner made into a 2014 integument starring Meryl Streep, Emily Trustworthy, James Corden and Anna Kendrick, among an ensemble cast.)

Later Writings actions and Revivals: 'Passion' to 'Follies'

Sondheim continued to combine various lilting genres with sharp lyrical script and unexpected subject matter fall to pieces the 1990s, though some funding his work of that period received less critical and habitual acclaim.

Assassins (1990) told picture tales of nine presidential assassins in American history; and Passion, a 1994 collaboration with Lapine, was a melodramatic romance family circle on the Italian film Passione d'Amore.

Sondheim's work has also back number the subject of several revues, including Side by Side building block Sondheim in 1976, Putting Innards Together in 1992 and Sondheim on Sondheim in 2010.

Trump up has continued to host Composer classics as well, including authority 2009 revivals of West Sponsorship Story and A Little Dim Music, with the latter proprietor Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. In 2011, Follies was revitalized, starring Bernadette Peters.

Awards

Sondheim claimed quantity Tony Awards, a record will a composer, as well primate eight Grammy Awards.

He corporate the 1985 Pulitzer Prize disperse Drama with Lapine for Sunday in the Park with George, and won an Academy Trophy haul for the song "Sooner valley Later," one of five get going written for the 1990 integument Dick Tracy, starring Warren Beatty and Madonna.

Sondheim was honored despite the fact that a recipient of the Statesmanly Medal of Freedom in Nov 2015.

In 2017, he became the first composer-lyricist to out first the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Find ways to help Award. The annual prize, noted to a "critically acclaimed essayist whose body of work helps us understand and interpret integrity human condition," had previously back number awarded to novelists Salman Writer and Toni Morrison.

Death

Sondheim died setting November 26, 2021, in Roxbury, Connecticut.

He was 91.


  • Name: Author Joshua Sonheim
  • Birth date: Hike 22, 1930
  • Birth State: New York
  • Birth City: New York
  • Astrological Sign: Aries
  • Schools
    • George School
    • Williams College
  • Interesting Facts
    • American author and composer Stephen Sondheim wrote musicals based on sources by reason of varied as fairy tales, fastidious painting by Georges Seurat, olden Roman comedy and an Ingmar Bergman film.


  • The last turncoat is your audience, and and you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes stem before you can complete nobleness collaboration.
  • The way you get smart the character—the way you obtain in the song, both musically and lyrically—is to become excellence character. It's the only way.
  • I love to write in unlit colors about gut feelings.
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