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Stephen Sondheim

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Stephen Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist. He was born in New York in 1930, into a wealthy Jewish family, and died in 2021. As a teenager he became friends with James Hammerstein, the son of Oscar Hammerstein II. Hammerstein became a kind of foster father to him and awakened his love of musical theatre. Sondheim began as a lyricist for West Side Story in 1957 and Gypsy in 1959. After that he also wrote the music himself.

Music and breakthrough

His best-known musicals are A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins and Passion. Company, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd and Passion won a Tony Award for best musical, and Sunday in the Park with George won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. For the song Sooner or Later from Dick Tracy he received an Oscar. Much of his work was adapted for the screen, such as Sweeney Todd in 2007 and Into the Woods in 2014. He often worked with the director Harold Prince and later with James Lapine.

Influence

Sondheim's music and lyrics are complex, ambivalent and refined. His musicals deal with the darker sides of life, far beyond the usual subjects of the genre. For that reason he is seen as someone who reinvented the American musical. He received eight Tony Awards, eight Grammys, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Kennedy Center Honor. Theatres in New York and London bear his name.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to a song from West Side Story, for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics. Notice how exactly the words fall into the rhythm of Bernstein's music and how the song tells a story.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

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Categories: Artists