Perspectives
Sondheim on Music
This is primarily a transcript of a series of interviews with Stephen Sondheim, focusing on his work as a composer. During the interviews, he and the author look through Sondheim's manuscripts and sketches and discuss the creative process. The discussions focus on six shows: Passion, Assassins, Into the Wood, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures but every Sondheim score comes up in conversation. Among the topics discussed are how Sondheim approaches characters and dramatic moments, how motif s and thematic material are created and used, how harmony, melody and rhythm reflect character, the structuring of a score, the use of pastiche and the practical aspects of collaboration. Wish I'd Written, his reasons behind some of those choices and the messages he received from composers and lyricists whose songs were included on the list. An extensive song listing and a discography follow which attempt to list every commercial recording of a Sondheim song and provide publishing information with vocal ranges.
Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre
(Book). This volume collects, for the first time, 28 biographies of the greatest songwriters and lyricists of Broadway musicals. It goes below the surface to see what made them tick and to uncover the secrets of their success as well as the personal foibles that sometimes led to their downfall. Longtime theatre lover and stage veteran Herbert Keyser takes us on a personal journey through the music that made these great artists so much a part of our history and our lives. Keyser has assembled a reader-friendly collection of stories that will capture your heart, bring a tear to your eye or a smile to your face, and all the while have you singing along. In presenting these life histories, full of drama, humor, and poignancy, The Geniuses of the American Musical Theatre gives us the story of the golden age of Broadway from a well-informed, witty, and warmhearted new perspective. The first book of its type ever assembled, it is a tremendous attraction for all those who love theatre and popular music, with intimate, little-known details of popular songwriters' lives.
The Rodgers and Hammerstein encyclopedia
Still the most influential and popular songwriting team in the history of the American Musical Theatre, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein represent Broadway musicals at their finest. The team revolutionized the musical play with Oklahoma in 1943 and then went on to explore territory never put on the musical stage before in such beloved shows as Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music. The team also worked in film, as with State Fair, and in the new medium of television, with Cinderella. For the first time, the lives, careers, works, songs, and themes of Rodgers and Hammerstein have been gathered together in an encyclopedia that covers the many talents of these men. In addition to their plays and films together, every work that each man did with other collaborators is also discussed. Hundreds of their songs are described, and there are entries on the many actors, directors, and other creative artists who they worked with. A complete list of awards, recordings, and books about the team are included, as well as a chronology of everything either man wrote. But The Rodgers and Hammerstein Encyclopedia is not just about facts.
Unmasked
"You have the luck of Croesus on stilts (as my Auntie Vi would have said) if you've had the sort of career, ups and downs, warts and all that I have in that wondrous little corner of show business called musical theatre." One of the most successful and distinguished artists of our time, Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over the musical theatre world for nearly five decades. The winner of numerous awards, including multiple Tonys and an Oscar, Lloyd Webber has enchanted millions worldwide with his music and numerous hit shows, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera--Broadway's longest running show--and most recently, School of Rock. In Unmasked, written in his own inimitable, quirky voice, the revered, award-winning composer takes stock of his achievements, the twists of fate and circumstance which brought him both success and disappointment, and the passions that inspire and sustain him. The son of a music professor and a piano teacher, Lloyd Webber reveals his artistic influences, from his idols Rodgers and Hammerstein and the perfection of South Pacific's "Some Enchanted Evening," to the pop and rock music of the 1960s and Puccini's Tosca, to P. G. Wodehouse and T. S. Eliot. Lloyd Webber recalls his bohemian London youth, reminiscing about the happiest place of his childhood, his homemade Harrington Pavilion--a make-believe world of musical theatre in which he created his earliest entertainments. A record of several exciting and turbulent decades of British and American musical theatre and the transformation of popular music itself, Unmasked is ultimately a chronicle of artistic creation.
The Leonard Bernstein Letters
An extraordinary selection of revealing letters to and from one of the titans of 20th-century music Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician--a brilliant conductor who attained international super-star status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals (West Side Story), symphonies (Age of Anxiety), choral works (Chichester Psalms), film scores (On the Waterfront), and much more. Bernstein was also an enthusiastic letter writer, and this book is the first to present a wide-ranging selection of his correspondence. The letters have been selected for the insights they offer into the passions of his life--musical and personal--and the extravagant scope of his musical and extra-musical activities. Bernstein's letters tell much about this complex man, his collaborators, his mentors, and others close to him. His galaxy of correspondents encompassed, among others, Aaron Copland,Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Thornton Wilder, Boris Pasternak, Bette Davis, Adolph Green, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and family members including his wife Felicia and his sister Shirley. The majority of these letters have never been published before. They have been carefully chosen to demonstrate the breadth of Bernstein's musical interests, his constant struggle to find the time to compose, his turbulent and complex sexuality, his political activities, and his endless capacity for hard work. Beyond all this, these writings provide a glimpse of the man behind the legends: his humanity, warmth, volatility, intellectual brilliance, wonderful eye for descriptive detail, and humor.
Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater
From patriotic "God Bless America" to wistful "White Christmas," Irving Berlin's songs have long accompanied Americans as they fall in love, go to war, and come home for the holidays. Irving Berlin's American Musical Theater is the first book to fully consider this songwriter's immeasurableinfluence on the American stage. Award-winning music historian Jeffrey Magee chronicles Berlin's legendary theatrical career, providing a rich background to some of the great composer's most enduring songs, from "There's No Business Like Show Business" to "Puttin' on the Ritz."Magee shows how Berlin's early experience singing for pennies made an impression on the young man, who kept hold of that sensibility throughout his career and transformed it into one of the defining attributes of Broadway shows. Magee also looks at darker aspects of Berlin's life, examining theanti-Semitism that Berlin faced and his struggle with depression. Informative, provocative, and full of colorful details, this book will delight song and theater aficionados alike as well as anyone interested in the story of a man whose life and work expressed so well the American dream.
The Sound of Their Music
The greatest partnership in the history of the musical, captured in print, wonderfully illustrated. For this new edition, the book has been completely rewritten and substantially expanded to include material on Rodgers' early career with Lorenz Hart as well as his later work, and also features recollections from such theatrical titans as Sheldon Harnick, Martin Charnin, Stephen Sondheim and Arthur Laurents. Also, a completely new appendix reveals the details of the continuing worldwide phenomenon of Rodgers and Hammerstein's work up to and including the 2002 centennial year for Rodgers.
American Composer: Sondheim
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Stephen Sondheim wrote lyrics and music for many musicals including: "West Side Story," "Gypsy," "Follies," and more. He explains what attracts him to a particular subject; he likes melodrama and enjoys scaring the audience.
Official Websites
- Official Website of Lin-Manuel MirandaA Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy, Tony Award-winning composer, lyricist, and actor, Lin-Manuel is the creator and original star of Broadway’s Hamilton and In the Heights, and the recipient of the 2015 MacArthur Foundation Award and 2018 Kennedy Center Honors. He has been an active supporter of relief efforts in Puerto Rico post-Hurricane Maria. He lives with his family in NYC.
- Official Website for Rodgers & HammerstienAfter long and highly distinguished careers with other collaborators, Richard Rodgers (composer) and Oscar Hammerstein II (librettist/lyricist) joined forces to create the most consistently fruitful and successful partnership in the American musical theatre.
- Official Website of Allee WillisAllee Willis is a one-woman creative think-tank-a multi-disciplinary artist and visionary thinker whose range of imagination and productivity knows no bounds. Inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 2018, Willis is a Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Webby award-winning and nominated songwriter, performer, visual artist, multimediaist, director, collector, social artist, and party thrower. Her hits-including Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” and “Boogie Wonderland,” The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance,” Pet Shop Boys with Dusty Springfield’s “What Have I Done To Deserve This,” and The Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There For You (Theme From Friends)”-have sold more than 60 million records. Willis also co-authored the Oprah Winfrey-produced Tony and Grammy-winning Broadway musical The Color Purple.
- The Stephen Sondheim SocietyThe Stephen Sondheim Society...is a registered Charity regulated by the Charity Commission (Registered Number 1142092). Our charitable aims are stated as being:
To promote the public knowledge and appreciation of the works of Stephen Sondheim by such means as are charitable.
To advance the public education in music, particularly but not exclusively, to young people by holding an annual music competition.
Composers
- ANDREW LLOYD WEBBERAndrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber of Sydmonton, also called Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, is an English composer and theatrical producer, whose eclectic rock-based works helped revitalize British and American musical theatre beginning in the late 20th century...
- Berlin, Irving orig. Israel Baline(born May 11, 1888, Mogilyov, Russia—died Sept. 22, 1989, New York, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. songwriter. The son of a Russian Jewish cantor, he and his family immigrated to New York City in 1893. He worked as a street singer and singing waiter, then began writing songs. His first published song, “Marie from Sunny Italy,” appeared in 1907; a printer’s error named him Irving Berlin. In 1911 he wrote the great hit of Tin Pan Alley’s ragtime vogue, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.”
- Bernstein, Leonard(bûrn'stīn, –stēn), 1918–90, American composer, conductor, and pianist, b. Lawrence, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1939, and Curtis Institute of Music, 1941. A highly versatile musician, he was the composer of symphonic works (the Jeremiah Symphony, 1944; Age of Anxiety, 1949; Kaddish Symphony, 1963), song cycles, chamber music, ballets (Fancy Free, 1944), musicals (On the Town, 1944; Wonderful Town, 1953; Candide, 1956; West Side Story, 1957), opera (Trouble in Tahiti, 1952), and choral music (Chichester Psalms, 1965)...
- Gershwin, GeorgeGershwin began his career as a piano player on Tin Pan Alley (the center of early-twentieth-century American popular music publishers in New York City), helping to pitch other people's songs to publishers. Gershwin's first important hit was “Swanee” (1918), the song that established him as a songwriter on Tin Pan Alley. Al Jolson recorded “Swanee” in 1919 and helped popularize it; that same year Gershwin composed his first Broadway musical, La, La, Lucille. Gershwin became intrigued with African American folk music and jazz and used its rhythms and harmonies in his compositions...
- Hammerstein, Oscar, IIAlong with most other songwriters, Hammerstein worked in Hollywood during the Great Depression, but his commitment to dramatic integration ran afoul of Hollywood's insistence that most songs be presented as “performances” by characters portraying singers and dancers putting on a theatrical show.
- Jeanine TesoriJeanine Tesori has written four Tony-nominated scores for Broadway: Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, Thoroughly Modern Millie (lyrics, Dick Scanlan), Caroline, or Change (lyrics, Tony Kushner), and Shrek the Musical (lyrics, David Lindsay-Abaire). The production of Caroline, or Change at the National Theater in London received the Olivier Award for Best New Musical. Her first off-Broadway musical, Violet, written with Brian Crawley, received the New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1997...
- John, Sir Elton HerculesHe was born in Pinner, Middlesex. One of the most successful pop-rock stars of the 1970s, he began his career as pianist with the group Bluesology, which he left after their 1967 hit "Let the Heartaches Begin"....He has worked with lyricist Tim Rice on several musical scores, including the Disney film The Lion King (1994). ...
- Rodgers, Richard Charles1902–79, American composer, b. New York City. Rodgers studied at Columbia and the Institute of Musical Art, New York City. He met both of his future collaborators, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein 2d, while at Columbia. Rodgers wrote his first song at 14 and had his first Broadway show, a flop, produced when he was 18. Rodgers and Hart began collaborating in 1919 and had their first hit play with The Garrick Gaieties (1925) and their first hit song with “Manhattan.”
- Sondheim, Stephen JoshuaBorn in New York City, he saw little of his wealthy parents but was taken under the wing of Oscar Hammerstein II, who taught him to write lyrics. He wrote incidental music for Girls of Summer (1956) before providing the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957). The first show for which he (somewhat unusually) wrote both the music and the lyrics was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962).
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Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
George Gershwin
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowWhen Gershwin went to Paris, he took with him some special talents and wide acceptance for "Rhapsody in Blue," a blend of jazz and classical music. An excerpt from Gershwin’s "An American in Paris" is included. Leonard Bernstein conducts.