Sondheim Studies

[scenicdesign71]

I'm starting this thread to post and discuss miscellaneous books and articles about Sondheim's work that don't fit into existing threads: for instance, stuff that's not focused on a specific show (there are separate threads for those), and isn't primarily interview- or video-oriented.

So, probably mostly written texts of one kind or another.  That, more than any particular academic slant, might be what I mean to connote by the "Studies" in the thread title.  Non-academic writing could certainly have a place on this thread, and perhaps even non-written material -- categories are always loose on this forum, and my real reason for starting it is, as usual, just because I came across something I wanted to post here, and couldn't find an existing thread to drop it into.

Namely, this article from The Atlantic about an English professor's recent experience teaching Sondheim to undergraduates at Portland State University:

Atlantic:  What Gen Z Knows About Stephen Sondheim
                     How the late composer's preoccupation with outsiders has endeared him to a new generation

[scenicdesign71]

This might or might not be strictly the right thread for this -- the article doesn't offer any wildly original insights -- but it'll do, and it's a free share:

NYT:   Stephen Sondheim Belongs in the Pantheon of American Composers
              Sondheim was a titan of musical theater. But four recent shows onstage in New York argue for his place among classical music luminaries, too.


Also cited by the League of American Orchestras on their Symphony.org website, with a capsule summary.

[scenicdesign71]

From The Sondheim Review, Spring 2000:

The Case for Sondheim as Existentialist  by Alfie Kohn

A quarter century later — and just over a decade since Oxford published their Companion to Sondheim Studies — Kohn's thesis is hardly news.  But at the time, it might well have struck many readers as a rather bold and original claim.  It's a brisk but insightful read, and if one were new to SJS's works and just beginning to grok how deep their themes run, Kohn's compact and elegant essay would provide ample encouragement to keep exploring.

[scenicdesign71]

The Sondheim Hub (Substack):   Gen Z Takes On Sondheim
                                                                        11 essays by students at SUNY Fredonia


...for a course that kicked off with the Atlantic article that began this very thread.

[scenicdesign71]

Perhaps not too surprising (one always assumed there'd be a huge trove of papers that would go to some quasi-public research collection or other, or get split up among several), but very exciting nevertheless:

NYT:   5,000 Sondheim Sketches and More Head to Library of Congress
               The musical theater titan left behind material from beloved shows like Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park With George.

(Link is free for non-NYT-subscribers).

"There's no question he was brilliant, a genius," said Mark Horowitz, a senior music specialist in the library's music division. "But here, you're really seeing the perspiration behind it all. The amount he put behind each song is staggering."...

"I've never seen a composer who has so many music sketches, trying out different melodic lines, different harmonies, rhythms, chord progressions," Horowitz said. "Even with classical collections, I've never seen this."

Horowitz, of course, is the author of Sondheim on Music, the authoritative deep-dive into SJS's composing process, built around many hours of interviews he recorded for the LoC.