Liberal Arts Blog —Stephen Sondheim: “Children Will listen. Children Will See.”

Liberal Arts Blog — Thursday is the Joy of Music Day

Today’s Topic: Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021): “Children Will listen. Children Will See.”

Three things I learned today about Stephen Sondheim’s life: 1.) He hated his mother. She was psychologically abusive. She once wrote him a letter in which she told him that the one thing she regretted in life was giving birth to him. 2.) As a child he had a friend named James Hammerstein whose father was Oscar Hammerstein II, who became Sondheim’s mentor and “surrogate father.” Chance works both ways. 3.) “You think it’s a talent, you think you’re born with this thing. What I’ve found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It’s just that some people get it developed and some don’t.” Today, a few more quotes from this much honored, much bally-hooed composer and lyricist not one of whose pieces ever stuck with me. But given all the hoopla, I thought I should learn something about the guy. I am glad I did. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.

10 Stephen Sondheim songs we’ll never stop listening to

IF YOU CAN’T FLY, NEUROTIC PEOPLE, CHAOS

1. “If I can not fly, let me sing.”

2. “I prefer neurotic people, I like to hear the rumblings beneath the surface.”

3. “Art in itself is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.”

NB: “Bit by bit, putting it together…Piece by piece, only way to make a work of art. Every moment makes a contribution, every detail plays a part. Having just the vision’s no solution, everything depends on execution, putting it together, that’s what counts.”

THE BIG BLACK PIT, THE PENCIL, ART VERSUS WORK

1. “There is a hole in the world like a big black pit who is filled with people who are full of shit.”

2. “The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you’ll do yourself a service.”

3. “Work is what you do for others, liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself.”

POETRY VERSUS LYRICS, LIKING AND DOING, CHILDREN ARE LISTENING

1. “Music straightjackets a poem and prevents it from breathing on its own, whereas it liberates a lyric. Poetry doesn’t need music; lyrics do.”

2. “It’s not so much do what you like as it is that you like what you do.”

3. “Careful the things you say, Children will listen. Careful the things you do, Children will see. And learn. Children may not obey. But children will listen.
Children will look to you for which way to turn, To learn what to be.
Careful before you say, Listen to me. Children will listen.”

FOOTNOTES — Lyricist and composer (rare), critics love, public less, my opinion

1. “In the history of the theater, only a handful could call Mr. Sondheim peer. The list of major theater composers who wrote words to accompany their own scores (and vice versa) is a short one — it includes Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Frank Loesser, Jerry Herman and Noël Coward.” (NYT, third link below)

2. “Mr. Sondheim’s shows, though mostly received with critical accolades, were almost never popular hits.”

3. My opinion: too fast, too much. Too hard. In my heart, I’m an average guy with average taste and average ability. Give me a song I can sing.

NB: “Mr. Sondheim rarely gave audiences the fizzy, feel-good musical experience or the happily resolved narrative that the shows of his predecessors conditioned them to expect. He also didn’t give them the opulent spectacle, the anthemic score or the melodramatic storytelling that became the dominant musical theater style of the 1980s and ’90s with the arrival from Britain of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s megahits “Cats” and “Phantom of the Opera,” and Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s “Les Misérables” and “Miss Saigon,” followed by the corporate productions of Disney.”

POST SCRIPT — Sondheim’s best (in my opinion, obviously) “Children will listen. Children will see.” So, what’s your pick?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim Quotes (Author of Sweeney Todd)

Stephen Sondheim, Titan of the American Musical, Is Dead at 91

Josh Groban Sings “Children Will Listen”/”Not While I’m Around” for Sondheim’s 90th Birthday

Last four years of posts organized thematically:

PDF with headlines — Google Drive

YOUR TURN

Time to share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to music. Or the coolest thing you learned in your life related to music. Say your favorite song or songs. Or your favorite tips for breathing, posture, or relaxation. Or some insight into the history of music….Or just something random about music… like a joke about drummers.jazz, rock….or share an episode or chapter in your musical autobiography.

This is your chance to make some one else’s day. And perhaps to cement in your memory something important you would otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than you otherwise would about something that matters to you.