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Stephen Sondheim Suggest updates

Stephen Joshua Sondheim.

Born Manhattan, 22 March 1930.

Died 26 November 2021.

American composer and lyricist.

During a long career as composer and librettist of Broadway musicals, Stephen Sondheim constantly broke boundaries by introducing new ideas of subject matter.  After producing lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy, he began to compose as well with farce in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  He satirised sophisticated New York life (Merrily We Roll Along, Company, Follies).  He produced seriously disturbing melodrama (Sweeney Todd,  Assassins, Passion).  He cast a beady eye over America's attempted colonisation of Japan (Pacific Overtures).  Modern European culture saw him look at folk tales (Into the Woods) and modern art (Sunday in the Park with George).During a long career as composer and librettist of Broadway musicals, Stephen Sondheim constantly broke boundaries by introducing new ideas of subject matter.  After producing lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy, he began to compose as well with farce in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  He satirised sophisticated New York life (Merrily We Roll Along, Company, Follies).  He produced seriously disturbing melodrama (Sweeney Todd,  Assassins, Passion).  He cast a beady eye over America's attempted colonisation of Japan (Pacific Overtures).  Modern European culture saw him look at folk tales (Into the Woods) and modern art (Sunday in the Park with George).

If there is one work that seems to have been widely loved right from the start it must surely be A Little Night Music.  Adapted, perhaps surprisingly, from a film by the normally solemn Ingmar Bergman, it is a delightful blend of sophisticated comedy and human drama.  And most of the music is composed in waltz time, which sounds tedious, but is never remotely dull.