Sondheim's Broadway Musicals

by Stephen Banfield

With thirteen Broadway musicals to his credit, Stephen Sondheim's career in the musical theater has outdistanced those of most of his contemporaries. Each of his shows has presented new challenges to audiences, and each has cast fresh perspectives on the nature and potential of the American musical, as well as probing deeply, often painfully, into the nature of our culture.


Sondheim's Broadway Musicals is the first book to take an in-depth look at Sondheim's work. Stephen Banfield examines each of Sondheim's musicals for Broadway, from West Side Story and Gypsy to the 1987 musical Into the Woods , and includes A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum , Company , Follies , Anyone Can Whistle , A Little Night Music , Pacific Overtures , Merrily We Roll Along , Sweeney Todd , and Sunday in the Park with George . Banfield also discusses Sondheim's other work, such as the 1991 show Assassins and his music for the 1990 film Dick Tracy --for which "Sooner or Later" won him an Academy Award for Best Song.


"Banfield seems almost to hear Sondheim's music with Sondheim's ears. This extremely valuable work discusses Sondheim's early training and subsequent career, his general compositional concerns, and his style. The meat of the book is a musical-dramatic analysis of his musicals . . . . For each musical, Banfield places the work and its components in a historical and typological text. He also treats in welcome detail the musical profile or universe of each show: Sondheim's use of generative intervals or interval complexes as source material, motifs that reappear in various guises in various songs, the sound world that defines the musical's emotional mind. The book will be as useful to those who are cool to Sondheim's work as to his fans." --Choice

Genres: Theatre, Music, Nonfiction, Musicals

472 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 1994

Reviews

[Sammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more complex books on the Master, "Sondheim's Broadway Musicals" is a fitting title, but may still be a bit misleading. This isn't a look at the history and creation of his shows as a whole - there are several books for that, all of them patchy but all enjoyable. Instead, this is a more technical analysis of Sondheim's music, including his inspirations and his lyrical and musical structures. If you don't know anything about music theory, this will be a tough slog (it's a tough slog for me, and I've at least got an amateur understanding), but - as with the great Sondheim on Music: Minor Details and Major Decisions - it's fascinating anyway, just to see the level of creation and tinkering that goes on beyond the immediate emotional and intellectual stimulation one gets from viewing, or listening to, one of Sondheim's shows.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book because it's very comprehensive and analytical. I would emphatically recommend it to people who are already familiar with Sondheim's work, and more importantly, who have a good understanding of music theory, as there is a lot of analysis of the musical devices he uses to convey emotion, push the story forward, etc. If anyone out there is writing a paper on Sondheim from the technical end, this will be your main source!