Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical PDF Download

Author: Robert L. McLaughlin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496808568
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Sondheim's brilliant array of work, including such musicals as Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, has established him as the preeminent composer/lyricist of his, if not all, time. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim's work in two contexts: the exhaustion of the musical play and the postmodernism that, by the 1960s, deeply influenced all the American arts. Sondheim's musicals are central to the transition from the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical. This new style reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge and the fragmentation of identity. In his most recent work, Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim's musicals and finds in them critiques of the operation of power, questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and explorations of contemporary identity.

Author: Steve Swayne
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472032297
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
“Steve Swayne’s How Sondheim Found His Sound is a fascinating treatment and remarkable analysis of America’s greatest playwright in song. His marvelous text goes a long way toward placing Stephen Sondheim among the towering artists of the late twentieth century!” —Cornel West, Princeton University “Sondheim’s career and music have never been so skillfully dissected, examined, and put in context. With its focus on his work as composer, this book is surprising and welcome.” —Theodore S. Chapin, President and Executive Director, The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization “. . . an intriguing ‘biography’ of the songwriter’s style. . . . Swayne is to be congratulated for taking the study of this unique composer/lyricist into hitherto unnavigated waters.” —Stage Directions “The research is voluminous, as are the artistry and perceptiveness. Swayne has lived richly within the world of Sondheim’s music.” —Richard Crawford, author of America’s Musical Life: A History “Amid the ever-more-crowded bookshelf of writings on Sondheim, Swayne’s analysis of Sondheim’s development as a composer stands up as a unique and worthy study. . . . For the Sondheim aficionados, there are new ideas and new information, and for others, Swayne’s How Sondheim Found His Sound will provide an intriguing introduction into the mind of arguably the greatest and most influential living Broadway composer.” —talkinbroadway.com “What a fascinating book, full of insights large and small. An impressive analysis and summary of Sondheim’s many sources of inspiration. All fans of the composer and lovers of Broadway in general will treasure and frequently refer to Swayne’s work.” —Tom Riis, Joseph Negler Professor of Musicology and Director of the American Music Research Center, University of Colorado Stephen Sondheim has made it clear that he considers himself a “playwright in song.” How he arrived at this unique appellation is the subject of How Sondheim Found His Sound—an absorbing study of the multitudinous influences on Sondheim’s work. Taking Sondheim’s own comments and music as a starting point, author Steve Swayne offers a biography of the artist’s style, pulling aside the curtain on Sondheim’s creative universe to reveal the many influences—from classical music to theater to film—that have established Sondheim as one of the greatest dramatic composers of the twentieth century.

Author: Robert Gordon
Publisher: Oxford Handbooks
ISBN: 0195391373
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 517

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Book Description
This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to all aspects of composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim's oeuvre. Chapters come from a remarkably wide range of disciplines as they offer new insights into Sondheim's work not only for the stage, but also for film and television, describing in full how Sondheim has re-shaped American musical theater.

Author: Robert L. McLaughlin
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813181011
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The American theater was not ignorant of the developments brought on by World War II, and actively addressed and debated timely, controversial topics for the duration of the war, including neutrality and isolationism, racism and genocide, and heroism and battle fatigue. Productions such as Watch on the Rhine (1941), The Moon is Down (1942), Tomorrow the World (1943), and A Bell for Adano (1944) encouraged public discussion of the war's impact on daily life and raised critical questions about the conflict well before other forms of popular media. American drama of the 1940s is frequently overlooked, but the plays performed during this eventful decade provide a picture of the rich and complex experience of living in the United States during the war years. McLaughlin and Parry's work fills a significant gap in the history of theater and popular culture, showing that American society was more divided and less idealistic than the received histories of the WWII home front and the entertainment industry recognize.

Author: William Anthony Sheppard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019760319X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
Sondheim in Our Time and His offers a wide-ranging historical investigation of the landmark works and extraordinary career of Stephen Sondheim, a career which has spanned much of the history of American musical theater. Each author uncovers those aspects of biography, collaborative process, and contemporary context that impacted the creation and reception of Sondheim's musicals. In addition, several authors explore in detail how Sondheim's shows have been dramatically revised and adapted over time. Multiple chapters invite the reader to rethink Sondheim's works from a distinctly contemporary critical perspective and to consider how these musicals are being reenvisioned today. Through chapters focused on individual musicals, and others that explore a specific topic as manifested throughout his entire career, plus an afterword by Kristen Anderson-Lopez; by digging deep into the archives and focusing intently on his scores; from interviews with performers, directors, and bookwriters, and close study of live and recorded productions--volume editor W. Anthony Sheppard brings together Sondheim's past with the present, thriving existence of his musicals.

Author: Bob Avian
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496826981
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
Tony and Olivier Award–winning Bob Avian’s dazzling life story, Dancing Man: A Broadway Choreographer’s Journey, is a memoir in three acts. Act I reveals the origins of one of Broadway’s legendary choreographers who appeared onstage with stars like Barbra Streisand and Mary Martin all before he was thirty. Act II includes teaching Katharine Hepburn how to sing and dance in Coco and working with Stephen Sondheim and Michael Bennett while helping to choreograph the original productions of Company and Follies. During this time, Avian won a Tony Award as the cochoreographer of A Chorus Line and produced the spectacular Tony Award–winning Dreamgirls. For a triumphant third act, Avian choreographed Julie Andrews’s return to the New York stage, devised all of the musical staging for Miss Saigon and Sunset Boulevard, and directed A Chorus Line on Broadway. He worked with the biggest names on Broadway, including Andrew Lloyd Webber, Carol Burnett, Jennifer Holliday, Patti LuPone, Elaine Stritch, and Glenn Close. Candid, witty, sometimes shocking, and always entertaining, here at last is the ultimate up-close and personal insider’s view from a front row seat at the creation of the biggest, brightest, and best Broadway musicals of the past fifty years.

Author: Nigel Simeone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351560387
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
One of the Broadway musicals that can genuinely claim to have transformed the genre, West Side Story has been featured in many books on Broadway, but it has yet to be the focus of a scholarly monograph. Nigel Simeone begins by exploring the long process of creating West Side Story, including a discussion of Bernstein's sketches, early drafts of the score and script, as well as cut songs. The core of the book is a commentary on the music itself. West Side Story is one of the very few Broadway musicals for which there is a complete published orchestral score, as well as two different editions of the piano-vocal score. The survival of the original copied orchestral score, and the reminiscences of Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, reveal details of the orchestration process, and the extent to which Bernstein was involved in this. Simeone's commentary considers: musical characteristics and compositional techniques used to mirror the drama (for example, the various uses of the tritone), motivic development, the use and reinvention of Broadway and other conventions, the creation of dramatic continuity in the score through the use of motifs and other devices, the unusual degree of dissonance and rhythmic complexity (at least for the time), and the integration of Latin-American dance forms (Mambo, Huapango and so on). Simeone also considers the reception of West Side Story in the contemporary press. The stir the show caused included the response that it was the angular, edgy score that made it a remarkable achievement. Not all reviews were uncritical. Finally, the book looks in detail at the making of the original Broadway cast recording, made in just one day, included on the accompanying downloadable resources.

Author: Charles J. Shields
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
ISBN: 1250205522
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
The moving story of the life of the woman behind A Raisin in the Sun, the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage, by the New York Times bestselling author of Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry’s landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works of the twentieth century. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and the first Black and youngest American playwright to win a New York Critics’ Circle Award. Charles J. Shields’s authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century’s most admired playwrights examines the parts of Lorraine Hansberry’s life that have escaped public knowledge: the influence of her upper-class background, her fight for peace and nuclear disarmament, the reason why she embraced Communism during the Cold War, and her dependence on her white husband—her best friend, critic, and promoter. Many of the identity issues about class, sexuality, and race that she struggled with are relevant and urgent today. This dramatic telling of a passionate life—a very American life through self-reinvention—uses previously unpublished interviews with close friends in politics and theater, privately held correspondence, and deep research to reconcile old mysteries and raise new questions about a life not fully described until now.

Author: James Lapine
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720223
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A behind-the-scenes look at the making of the iconic musical Sunday in the Park with George Putting It Together chronicles the two-year odyssey of creating the iconic Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George. In 1982, James Lapine, at the beginning of his career as a playwright and director, met Stephen Sondheim, nineteen years his senior and already a legendary Broadway composer and lyricist. Shortly thereafter, the two decided to write a musical inspired by Georges Seurat’s nineteenth-century painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Through conversations between Lapine and Sondheim, as well as most of the production team, and with a treasure trove of personal photographs, sketches, script notes, and sheet music, the two Broadway icons lift the curtain on their beloved musical. Putting It Together is a deeply personal remembrance of their collaboration and friend - ship and the highs and lows of that journey, one that resulted in the beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning classic.

Author: Joanne Gordon
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0786748249
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
The musical theatre of Stephen Sondheim probes deeply into the most disturbing issues of contemporary life. By challenging his audience with intricate music, biting wit, and profound themes, he flouts the traditional wisdom of the musical theatre. Tracing Sondheim's career from his initial success as lyricist for "West Side Story" and "Gypsy" to his most recent work - "Into the Woods" and "Assassins" - Joanne Gordon emphasizes not only the disturbing content of Sondheim's work, but his innovative use of form. In shows such as "A Little Night Music", "Sweeney Todd", and "Sunday in the Park with George", Sondheim's music and lyrics are inextricably woven into the fabric of the entire work.