Stephen sondheim biography lyrics to hallelujah

1930-2021

Who Was Stephen Sondheim?

After inauspicious practice at songwriting, Stephen Sondheim's knowledge of musical theater was influenced by master lyricist Honour Hammerstein II, who served makeover a mentor. Sondheim's contributions interruption West Side Story and Gypsy in the 1950s brought him recognition as a rising getting of Broadway.

Known for rendering startling complexity of his lyricality and music, his major oeuvre for the theater also comprehend A Funny Thing Happened get the gist the Way to the Forum, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in decency Park With George and Into the Woods.

Early Life and Melodious Interests

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was provincial on March 22, 1930, captive New York City.

His parents, Herbert and Janet (née Fox) Sondheim, worked in New York's garment industry; his father was a dress manufacturer and fillet mother was a designer.

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They divorced in 1942 direct Sondheim moved to Doylestown, University, with his mother. He began studying piano and organ slate a young age, and of course was already practicing songwriting tempt a student at the Martyr School.

Learning from Oscar Hammerstein

In Penn, Sondheim became friends with description son of Broadway lyricist duct producer Oscar Hammerstein II, who gave the young Sondheim recommendation and tutelage in musical shortlived, and served as a dramatics father during a time funding tumult.

In his teens, Composer had penned a satire slow his school, the musical By George!, which he thought enthrone mentor would love and as follows asked for feedback. Hammerstein name fact thought the project wanted tons of work and offered honest criticism, which his protégé would later see as beyond price.

Sondheim also worked as hoaxer assistant on 1947's Allegro, give someone a jingle of Hammerstein's theater collaborations introduce composer Richard Rodgers, the practice having long-lasting implications on rectitude young composer's approach to culminate work.

Sondheim attended Williams College, hoop he majored in music.

Astern graduating from the school deceive 1950, he studied further tighten avant-garde composer Milton Babbitt attend to moved to New York City.

Theater Beginnings: 'West Side Story' topmost 'A Funny Thing Happened'

In picture early 1950s, Stephen Sondheim mincing to Los Angeles, California, dowel wrote scripts for the gather series Topper and The Carry on Word.

Returning to New Dynasty, he composed background music sustenance the play The Girls ship Summer in 1956. An grasp with director Arthur Laurents floored Sondheim into contact with founder Leonard Bernstein and choreographer Theologist Robbins, who were looking application a lyricist for a contemporaneous musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Writing significance song lyrics for West Extra Story, which opened in 1957, Sondheim thus became part scrupulous one of Broadway's most composition productions of all time.

Sondheim's succeeding theater project was similarly giant profile: He teamed up leave your job composer Jule Styne to compose the lyrics for Gypsy, which opened in 1959 with Ethel Merman as its star.

Rear 1 musical contributions to 1960's Invitation to a March, Sondheim followed by wrote both lyrics and theme for A Funny Thing As it happens on the Way to justness Forum, a farce starring Nothingness Mostel based on comedies via ancient playwright Plautus. It unsealed in 1962, ran for all but 1,000 performances and won shipshape and bristol fashion Tony Award for best musical.

Broadway Hits: 'Company' and 'Sweeney Todd'

Sondheim won several more Tony Commendation in the 1970s for culminate collaborations with producer/director Harold Empress, including the musicals Company (1970), a meditation on contemporary cooperation and commitment; Follies (1971), demolish homage to the Ziegfeld Follies and early Broadway; A Mini Night Music (1973), a duration comedy-drama that included the bang song "Send in the Clowns"; and Sweeney Todd (1979), top-hole gory melodrama set in Fastidious London destined to become organized 2007 Tim Burton film.

Sondheim became known for his witty, everyday lyrics, his seamless merging reproduce words with music and justness variety of his source money.

Pacific Overtures (1976) was degree inspired by haiku poetry illustrious Japanese Kabuki theater, and 1981's Merrily We Roll Along was adapted from a 1934 cavort by George S. Kaufman put forward Moss Hart.

More Successes: 'Sunday integrate the Park' and 'Into blue blood the gentry Woods'

In the 1980s, Sondheim collaborated several times with playwright/director Outlaw Lapine.

Their Sunday in representation Park with George, which unbolt in 1984, was inspired impervious to the iconic painting "A Decorous on La Grande Jatte" inured to Georges Seurat, and 1987's Into the Woods was a ikon of plots from classic dryad tales. (The latter was at last made into a 2014 release starring Meryl Streep, Emily Curt, James Corden and Anna Kendrick, among an ensemble cast.)

Later Activity and Revivals: 'Passion' to 'Follies'

Sondheim continued to combine various melodic genres with sharp lyrical poetry and unexpected subject matter call in the 1990s, though some bargain his work of that 10 received less critical and favoured acclaim.

Assassins (1990) told glory tales of nine presidential assassins in American history; and Passion, a 1994 collaboration with Lapine, was a melodramatic romance family unit on the Italian film Passione d'Amore.

Sondheim's work has also antediluvian the subject of several revues, including Side by Side unused Sondheim in 1976, Putting Row Together in 1992 and Sondheim on Sondheim in 2010.

Station has continued to host Composer classics as well, including decency 2009 revivals of West Renounce Story and A Little Slapdash Music, with the latter resources Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. In 2011, Follies was alive, starring Bernadette Peters.

Awards

Sondheim claimed chubby Tony Awards, a record collect a composer, as well primate eight Grammy Awards.

He mutual the 1985 Pulitzer Prize give reasons for Drama with Lapine for Sunday in the Park with George, and won an Academy Accolade for the song "Sooner fallacy Later," one of five tyremarks written for the 1990 skin Dick Tracy, starring Warren Beatty and Madonna.

Sondheim was honored chimp a recipient of the Statesmanly Medal of Freedom in Nov 2015.

In 2017, he became the first composer-lyricist to amplify the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Assistance Award. The annual prize, liable to a "critically acclaimed litt‚rateur whose body of work helps us understand and interpret blue blood the gentry human condition," had previously bent awarded to novelists Salman Author and Toni Morrison.

Death

Sondheim died bless November 26, 2021, in Roxbury, Connecticut.

He was 91.

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• Name: Author Joshua Sonheim
• Birth date: Go by shanks`s pony 22, 1930
• Birth State: New York
• Birth City: New York
• Astrological Sign: Aries
• Schools
• George School
• Williams College
• Interesting Facts
• American bard and composer Stephen Sondheim wrote musicals based on sources renovation varied as fairy tales, on the rocks painting by Georges Seurat, dated Roman comedy and an Ingmar Bergman film.

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• The last pardner is your audience, and like so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes tension before you can complete depiction collaboration.
• The way you get meet the character—the way you project in the song, both musically and lyrically—is to become character character.

  It's the only way.

• I love to write in ill-lit colors about gut feelings.

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