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The Mozart of Musicals
Jun. 6th, 2013 11:52 pmDec 2012
Look, I made a Hat - Stephen Sondheim - Virgin Books, 2011
* * * *
The problem with artists - good ones anyway - is that they never do precisely what you would like them to. At the end of my review of Finishing the Hat, I expressed the hope that the second volume would have something to say about how Sondheim's words and music fit together. No such luck. He says that he can't write about the musical side without "jargon". But at least he could have explained whether the music or the words come first. I think it's like a crossword, where the music forms the grid and the words must be fitted in, but it's odd that the facsimiles of his lyric development notes never seem to have musical ideas associated with them. Despite this lack, it's good to have a book that covers the latter part of Sondheim's career, for it features what I consider to be his best work and has an interesting example of the evolutions that a musical can go through to reach its final form.
( Read more... )
Look, I made a Hat - Stephen Sondheim - Virgin Books, 2011
* * * *
The problem with artists - good ones anyway - is that they never do precisely what you would like them to. At the end of my review of Finishing the Hat, I expressed the hope that the second volume would have something to say about how Sondheim's words and music fit together. No such luck. He says that he can't write about the musical side without "jargon". But at least he could have explained whether the music or the words come first. I think it's like a crossword, where the music forms the grid and the words must be fitted in, but it's odd that the facsimiles of his lyric development notes never seem to have musical ideas associated with them. Despite this lack, it's good to have a book that covers the latter part of Sondheim's career, for it features what I consider to be his best work and has an interesting example of the evolutions that a musical can go through to reach its final form.
( Read more... )
