chicagotribune.com: At the top of "Look, I Made a Hat," the second half of his exhaustively detailed two-volume set of collected lyrics to such incomparable musicals as "Gypsy" and "Follies," Stephen Sondheim addresses some of the complaints about the first book, "Finishing the Hat." "The most common of them," he writes, "is that I didn't speak enough about my personal life, 'personal' being the euphemism for 'intimate,' which is the euphemism for 'sexual.'"After saying that he had been as personal as he could be about his creative life — a creative life that, among many other highlights, included early tutoring from surrogate father Oscar Hammerstein II and collaborations with such giants as Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Ethel Merman, James Lapine, Bernadette Peters, et cetera — Sondheim writes that these volumes are collections of lyrics, plus interpolations, not a memoir. "Look, I Made a Hat" deals principally with his work after 1981 and will be published by Knopf on Nov. 22. "If I'd wanted to write a memoir," he writes, "I would have, but I don't, and I didn't."
Monday, October 31, 2011
Stephen Sondheim Chicago Tribune interview with Chris Jones
chicagotribune.com: At the top of "Look, I Made a Hat," the second half of his exhaustively detailed two-volume set of collected lyrics to such incomparable musicals as "Gypsy" and "Follies," Stephen Sondheim addresses some of the complaints about the first book, "Finishing the Hat." "The most common of them," he writes, "is that I didn't speak enough about my personal life, 'personal' being the euphemism for 'intimate,' which is the euphemism for 'sexual.'"After saying that he had been as personal as he could be about his creative life — a creative life that, among many other highlights, included early tutoring from surrogate father Oscar Hammerstein II and collaborations with such giants as Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Ethel Merman, James Lapine, Bernadette Peters, et cetera — Sondheim writes that these volumes are collections of lyrics, plus interpolations, not a memoir. "Look, I Made a Hat" deals principally with his work after 1981 and will be published by Knopf on Nov. 22. "If I'd wanted to write a memoir," he writes, "I would have, but I don't, and I didn't."
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4 comments:
Stephen Sondheim has a unique and shockingly accurate view of people. This is apparent in his work, but also stood out to me from this humorous line in the article: "The most common of them," he writes, "is that I didn't speak enough about my personal life, 'personal' being the euphemism for 'intimate,' which is the euphemism for 'sexual.'"
I would love to read about his musical-writing process, and what he goes through to create such wonderful art.
I usually lose interest in a person after reading an interview, but he maintained his eloquence and composure, was interesting, and made me respect/admire him even more.
This was a marvelous article. As a particular fan of Stephen Sondheim's work, I found the article interesting as well as humorous. Sondheim commenting about his personal life was interesting, but I would have liked to see more about his particular creative process. Of course, I suppose that would have been more of a memoir, which Sondheim didn't want to write.
So much of this article is completely accurate towards what Sondheim means to me. I will admit that I am one of those people who still get chills every time she listens to "Somewhere" and cries during recordings of Into the Woods. In my opinion, he truly is a Musical theatre genius like none the genre has every seen, or will see again. Before reading this article I had no idea such book as this existed. Now that I do I can't wait to look in to it!!!
I am putting both of Sondheim's books on my Christmas list. Sondheim is brilliant and I adore his work.
Reading this article was interesting (and would be for any Sondheim fan). I can make definite connections between what he said in this interview and his work. (Specifically what he said about the most important things in life being children and art. To me, that fits in perfectly with Into the Woods Sunday in the Park With George.)
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