The Art of Songwriting with Stephen Sondheim and Adam Guettel

[Applause] [Applause] [Music] I'm Adam Dettol I write for the theater I write music and lyrics and today is a great day because I'm in Steve sometimes garden and I get to ask Steve all that his work today and I've got many questions that I've wanted to ask probably my whole life Steve always lived very large for me as a writer by the age of fourteen I was about ready to play in some stuff and I arranged through my mother with whom Steve was a very close friend to play him my first batch of music and expected a shower of compliments was hoping for that from Steve who was my absolute Idol and in many ways still is [Music] and I came away from that experience so the crestfallen cuz I didn't get what I wanted which was unmitigated compliments I think I wrote in the letter which may have been grateful but passive-aggressive and he wrote me a letter in response dear Adam thanks for the letter but I didn't mean to be quote not very encouraging in fact I hoped I was being quite the reverse for me true encouragement consists not so much burbling as a detailed attention in any event be assured I think you're serious literate intelligent and talented and surprisingly the last is the least because it means little without the others just keep writing as we all do or with love and Steve and I wanted to read this because this is a perfect frame for how Steve has treated me my whole life and how I think he really is as a human being which is unfailingly honest and extraordinarily kind he doesn't pull his punches but he doesn't confuse honesty and anger he's a good man as well as being a genius and I I look forward to to talking to him today I hope we all learn something find out um hey there - it's good to see you [Music] behind you - and that's ad I didn't know this is Willie and that's addy they have very topiary tails yes well that yes they they have topiary dog that's what whoodles do for a living okay enough enough okay now that out of camera range give me that he'll give it a look I can't stand it okay my first memory of you I think I was maybe three or four and it was during one of the parties the Christmas parties that my parents used to have my mom Mary Rogers and you knew each other from God the age of 15 or 16 right yeah well I think we should say that it's dick Rogers daughter Mary was was an apprentice at Westport country Playhouse when I was that's when we got to know each other when we were 20 how Prince claims that we met each other he and I because he was Mary's date at the opening of South Pacific which was when we were so when I was 17 how was 19 and your mother was 16 and that is certainly possibly possibly true I don't remember that but I'm certainly probably true and but I got to know your mother when we were apprentices at Westport in 1950 how long have you been here in this house 1960 this is the house that built actually what I've done was I went trying to find a duplex I thought we no such thing as lofts in those days and so you were constantly getting or I was anyway complaints from the neighbors about playing late at night I used to write and I was you know I was a new one and a half room up at 80th Street in a brownstone and the late after 10 o'clock at night pounding on the ceiling so I thought how would he get it duplex and if I could it I start hearing money and I couldn't find one so I got a house instead and went into debt for a while and mortgage in the loss or things when you when you first saw this place its do feel immediately you could immediately our friend Burt shovel of the well-known lyric writer and I wrote for him and he's doing that father he's my brother Scott okay and he said if you're gonna get a place that just go into a place and if it speaks to you then ask the price don't ask the price first because then you say well I could sort of afford it even though it isn't exactly right okay I came to this place right away yeah I was the first person to see it so I got it at a very good price and and the great thing about it is there's a community gardens in the backs the only one left in Manhattan my favorite one of to which your twenty gardens made into one yes you try to I didn't and it's really very pretty have you written anything out there lyric was oh yeah I used to I used to hang out on the terrace and and write chip yep I did I wrote I wrote most of sunday up there Wow the lyrical Sun oh good I've got a fun question about that for later okay um where did you grow up ah in in the middle of Manhattan I have actually I have plotted the northernmost easternmost westernmost and southernmost places I've lived in the city and drawn them on a map and if you cut out Central Park I've lived my entire life in 20 square blocks I want to talk about parochial it's unbelievable it's like smaller than I get the Christie Village it is tiny what I would live did I come from an upper middle class family so it all revolves around between below 82nd Street and to 49th Street it's interesting that it's been so so condensed in the sense of the range of your mind one was also the range of influences I mean for example when you moved to your loft even though it's in Manhattan it's a whole other village as we know no pun intended it's a whole other atmosphere yes I've always been in this one atmosphere uh-huh there was some Bucks County in there oh well what happened was when my parents got divorced my mother got a house in in Doylestown Pennsylvania which is where I met the Hammerstein's and that was just during the summers and not very many of them because I left my mother to live with my father when I was 16 and he had a summer house at Stamford Connecticut so my summers were spent in between Bucks County or doors town and Oscar just happened to be a close neighbor well yeah yeah he was yeah three miles away but there was more to it than that my mother was a celebrity collector and she knew that Hammerstein's briefly and also she was a working woman and she needed to get me off her hands when when they got divorced and so Jimmy Hammerstein Oscar's youngest son who was my age your your difference and so we became friends and that's how that and I think my mother decided to move to Bucks County because of the Hammerstein's and there were all there celebrities in the neighborhood though she what didn't hang around with it and so that's what happened I gradually I supposed into the Hammerstein household over period of five years were they encouraging as your interest in music began to grow about music not particularly um no I I just wanted to imitate Oscar I just wanted to do what he did I I taken I think you know this I'd taken piano lessons for when I was six and seven years old and done my you know the nice Jewish boy in the West Side gives the recitals and you know at the at the piano teachers house and then I wasn't interested in it very much and my interest got renewed when not so much in the piano but in songs or in music when I met Oscar and just wanted to be what he wanted whatever he was I was what I want to be he was a surrogate father I got along fine with my father I liked him a lot but I didn't seem very much pres I he had very restricted visiting privileges as a result so the energy that began to come out of you for the theater and for music was a product as much of Oscars humanity as his talent well no as know it's a result of what he did for a living I didn't really appreciate the humanity until I mean he certainly was when I say a surrogate father I was really it was I was closer to the family as a family because I'm an only child and I had no family you know and my mother father being divorced both of them working and so and I spent all my time in boarding schools and in summer camps when even before the divorce so it was a family what I went I went over there to be part of a family is what happened really and and they were comforting I did not get along with my mother and so they were very comforting to me so it was really Oscar and Dorothy his wife and Jimmy my best friend and but Oscar then thought wouldn't it be fun if I and he said would you like to come see a show and he he remember he took he took Jimmy and I went same school George school and he would he took us out for the opening of carousel in New Haven because he was on a spring vacation and I saw Oklahoma not the opening but and I saw the opening of South Pacific I'm but by that time I was in cocaine oh you were in yeah I want to be him so yeah then I asked Ari took piano lessons then when I was in George school which was the Quaker school that I went to a prep school and I took piano lessons there for two years and gave recitals and then I got tired of that and by that by the time you were there you were already starting to write oh yeah yeah we wrote a bit brother song with two classmates I wrote a show with two classmates called by George with a very clever title and so the piano had a purpose at this point it wasn't just these sort of an abstract man oh I started really writing a song as well as about 40 oh and and yes I broke first show was it was at George school and then I wrote a few in college if Oscar were hovering now which I assume occasionally he does yeah I wish I wish you'd seen what I did after he died he'd he never even saw forum he died after gypsy so he never saw a show that I'd written music for and I regret yeah I would I don't know whether he would like but I you know I did something you don't know he was baffled by contemporary music like contemporary I mean Stravinsky I mean you know anybody post-romantic anybody from 1910 on yeah he baffled him so I started to open his mind up to it I started with the Ravel trio you know I love and then because Ravel was a little hard for him she sang with harmony exactly God and tunes and - uh-huh and I gradually worked him up of course with Stravinsky I just came Patricia and fire breakers again tunes yeah but I eventually got him on to the Rite of Spring and Eddie and I got him to like this stuff I opened his ears up to all that sort of stuff did he give you notes on gypsy or West Side yes he did both we had a run-through with a special run-through of West Side just before just before the Gypsy run-through I assume that people listening know what a gypsy run through the run through for for an uninvited audience from the theatre and began invited an invited audience and Oscar was going away so he couldn't do it so we ran it for him and the balcony scene was originally what they sang in the balcony who was one hand one heart believer in a song of limited passion and so he said you know that you'd really need it something that soars there so we did was we took the the quintet had been written you know just before the rumble and you know tonight is in there and we decided to take tonight out of the quintet and make it the base of the balcony and we expanded a little bit and then use it as a reprieve and the quintet which worked very nicely I can remember that specific piece of advice and then he came down to Philadelphia to see gypsy and Arthur and I had a meal with him afterwards and he said I think it's wonderful but there are three things that I would suggest you improve why we usually listen you know thing with him the first thing he said was the door knob on the kitchen set keeps falling off that should be fixed huh yes I thought that what we really need a smartass right but at this point because we knit something something was not happening right with the show we knew that and he said secondly the scene where the Chinese restaurant he said you should end that with you'll never away from me he shouldn't have we had the song in the middle of the scene and there was dialogue afterwards he said generally it's a good idea to end the scene with a song particularly that kind of scene which is comic and romantic right and then he said and he looked at me and he said you're gonna kill me for this but you have to give a hand at Ethel Merman at the end of roses turn I had written a high violin harmonic so that she would end screaming for me for me for me and you'd hear in the arcs for this hmm and dead silence and the wings you hear Louise clapping and he said you can't do that I said he said you have to put a beginning I said but but she's having a nervous breakdown you can't put a big I I said everything you taught me you know I got all worked up he said yeah but the problem is there's there are things that happen in the theatre that you got to take advantage into account one of them is that the audience is waiting to applaud they want to have a chance there and get the tension out he said they are not listening to the last four pages of play and those are the most important four pages in the play that's where Rose becomes the mother and gypsy becomes Russ becomes the daughter and gypsy becomes the mother and if you give her a hand they look and sure enough we gave her a hand which is still as far as I said completely false what's not completely false because now what Arthur which we didn't think of at the time Arthur now is it changed the ending so that she gets a hand but it's in her head and she she's having a fantasy about receiving an ovation so it really works very nicely but the audience was dead silent for the last three pages and they really listened and then well and you also accomplished what you wanted harmonically because you had that lovely flatline grinding away before the yeah yeah yeah Julie was not to that now you said just now you had written so to what extent were you not to that's all oh no I there were that there are there moments in the music of gypsy that you know that I either sketched out or what I used to do with with Julie is I would write out the rhythms and the rise and fall for example I remember writing some people and going some people can't because I'd read that Cole Porter used to do that mm-hmm that he would write it was just one of those things with the with the durations of the notes but no pitches suit even more see exactly report then he would he would then he would pick his - I thought that's really smart and that's why his words as fits set so well on the music and I thought yeah this is a good thing to do so I remember when I wrote I wrote some people dry and I took the first eight and first eight bars the first section and and sketch them out that way and then then Julie picked the pitches yeah and and and shake the melody but I did that a lot with Julie and he liked that you liked that I would have to say that almost all of your work feels as it has been generated using that technique insofar as it hues very closely to speech which makes it member I am contemporary but I believe in you know there are different ways to write songs and that's the I happen to like conversational songs Burchell of who I worked with on Form said you know there are other ways to write songs but that's the way I like to write a minute I and it's partly an imitation of Oscar although Oscar did a lot of if not melismatic writing but you know you would draw out word know who stole my heart away so he did you know he didn't always he there was something more traditional about the songwriting kua songwriting that he did was there anything about Oscar Oscar that you knew you didn't want to emulate and his were not until I got older not until I had my oedipal moment it was Oscar himself who said when I first started write lyrics he said you're writing like me you're imitating me you're talking about nature and things like that you don't you don't believe in those things he said write what you believe and then he then he said something very telling he said write what you believe and you'll be 99% ahead of the game hmm and I think he may even have said to 99 percent ahead of everybody else and is he stupid soon as he put it in those compared right from that point on I never use his kind of imagery again and his kind of imagery often embarrassing there's a lot about Oscars lyrics that you know I find wet and embarrassing you know his ornithological obsession you know the fact that there is a burden every single lyric and he's everything if this not a lark it's a it's a willow it's a it's a it's a hummingbird it's a wait just you know that kind of nature imagery makes me it makes me it makes me cringe does it feel gratuitous or unhelpful to the furthering of character and so forth yeah well what it is is I don't believe that people talk that way you know Oscars Oscars lyrics which sit conversationally are so full of his kind of imagery that you think that everybody in all of his shows are nature lovers you know they all sound alike they're always talking about willow trees and birds and and in rivers and and it gives them a sameness and a softness and what was interesting is when he when he tried to avoid that as he did in me and Juliette it's completely unconvincing you know you listen the lyrics of me and Julia and you'd swear to god this swear to god this guy's never in the backstage it's that's just not the way people in shows kids and shows talk kids meeting performers it's like and of course he didn't get to know those people because he was management and he was when I got to know the the performers in shows because when we do West Side Story I was the same age as the performers yeah when do you if you remember a moment like this think that you recognized in yourself that you had your own voice mmm company probably I actually start with for him because form show a shows off the smartass side of me and I was then I was I you know the clever side i I recognized that I was that I was being clever in my own way not in a Cole Porter way not in a Frank Loesser way and so that but but I could feel with company that that was partly because the subject matter you know George picked us up first picked a subject matter that I a world that I understood you know I understand the world of the ladies who lunch because I grew up in it mm-hmm so I was completely caught as opposed to West Side gypsy those were those were atmospheres that I had to get into a song through through the librettist you know well first of all George Firth always based his characters on really and there is a real-life model for everybody in company and I some of them I knew and some I didn't mm-hmm but so so in a way we were writing about people he and and and if I didn't know him then he would tug that's what it feels like he would tell me that has have you had that again ever in the same way no not really we roll along the the the song opening doors I they're really only two consciously autobiographical songs I've ever written one is a good thing going not the song itself but the circumstance of singing in a party and then everybody says oh oh it's out when it was I'll play it again and they will start talking while you're playing and drinking and completely ignoring you having stuck you there at the piano and that that's autobiographical and then the whole sequence of opening doors which is two years takes place over a period of two years in New York for one of these two songwriters and this other ride that the girl who was their best friend is in not in specifics but in um it's an emotionally autumn autobiographical and it's outline of event is how friends and your mother and me hmm it's very very much there because you know your mother was hustling for job just the way I was and how already was a successful producer but we were all a it's showbiz couldn't wait you know it's the whole thing of seeing every show and talking about every show and our lives were and then writing and knocking on producers doors and all that was really fun and really frenetic and that that number is that that's the closest to to to anything I've ever written that really a lot of I raffle professional-level you've had long relationships with and I'm sure there are more but these are the people who come immediately to mind how Prince Paul gimignano we got Jonathan Tunick mm-hmm James Lepine mm-hmm to some extent George for yeah we meet the these are all collaborators yeah and and why why did you keep going back to them oh goodness don't you work with the same people over here you work with Ted Sperling a lot for example yes I mean I I do but it's not because you have a language with him and you know I would say that and I regret this and it could be partly my fault but the there isn't as fertile a community for the theater so you haven't done as many shows that's another thing too that's also really because there was a period they were turning out a show a year you know that show every two years and no it's because a they're they're the best in their professions and B you're working with people to feel comfortable with I mean it was it was a it was a real reg and but a wonderful one my life changed when I started working with Alpine because for the first time I was working with a whole other generation with you know a little older than you and a lot dealing with me and you know and and James represented a whole new way of looking at the theater in the whole way of playwriting that was nowhere near as conservative as what I had come from that's my background but then over periods when I'm of course I got loved working with him and got used to working with him but otherwise it it really has to do with people who have similar tastes I suppose you could make out a case that in a way it's Delta Phi as you I don't think it's Delta fied me but maybe there's a case maybe maybe maybe maybe I would have turned out more interesting or even more work if I'd if I'd worked with different people all well I can't I can't tell either but you know it's just getting in a room with John Weidman over the Lapine right away I want to write you know I I don't have to suss them out I don't have to I don't and certainly never have to censor myself you know I could I don't mind saying stupid things in front of them would you just would you describe the the shift to Lapine and Weidman as in a way a break from a certain linearity that you had learned from oscar that you were yes well certainly with Lapine absolutely because lupines generation of playwrights you know well it actually started in the 60s with the whole that whole group of playwrights of let's say John Guare and and his colleagues I'm Leonard Melfi and Lanford Wilson a lot of people and certainly all be they were they were bending the rules so to speak it was a whole new way of thinking although I've always been as you know attracted to experimental storytelling ever since I was seventeen and Oscar made me a gofer on Allegro because Allegro was a real attempt to do exactly what happened many who it's quite prophetic what happened in the sixties you know which is find a way of utilizing you know minimal scenery and letting the audience's imagination work and the epic ideas way our town takes place over a period of years and shows growing up and so that's what do you feel that I wasn't as as as effective yeah Oh first of all yeah I think anything that engages the audience's imagination is certainly that's the way I feel as a theater goer I mean I love I love naturalistic theater but I in musicals I really want I want things to be completely surprising Peter Shaffer I remember I went to a play once with him and there were two rapes a fire a murder I think some incest I can't remember no and at the end of the first and that's all my kind of stuff and at the end of the first act I said why am I so bored I said this is the rowdy he said no he said there's no surprise hmm and I oh I get it I get it and surprise is the element of the theater that I like the best and of movies too but it's it's the theater is more full of surprises because you can do so much with just as I say turning on the light and suddenly there's a person over there what's the most satisfying surprise you've ever had a hand in how to hand it in your work oh the change in the follies at the at the climax of Follies when when you've been sitting there in an hour and a half of gloomy borås tyrants and rubble and suddenly in a in a most magical 45 seconds the stage is transformed jaw-dropping into the most beautiful elaborate wedding cake extravaganza with I to this day I think of that movie mm-hmm that's what the theater is about that's worth the price of admission let's just circle back for one second for one more thing - to the early part of your growth um what did you listen to 1 million times when you were at 14 oh gosh uh it wasn't so I you know I listened to concert music if I listened to songs know what I did was I would buy the sheet music of the new shows and play play the motor I don't think I listened to any song over and over again there were certain composers I was I was drawn to mm-hmm but I think the pieces of music I listened to were the you know that the the posttraumatic that Ravel particularly you know virtually everything he wrote and a lot of Stravinsky and when I got to know him Benjamin Britten the the instrumental pieces not the operas cuz I'm not an opera fan Rachmaninoff mm-hmm Rockman over and over again the most romantic you'll have you ever been invited to Desert Island Discs you probably haven't been in England long enough it's fun you know what you get eight you get eight records allowed to take the desert island and and it's very interesting you if you were asked to do that and you now you have to commit yourself not gonna be any kind of music yeah it can be a score of a show it can be a single piano piece give me anything but you got to pick the eight pitches done that oh yeah I've done it twice what were you what was your lap what were your last day gosh it's about 15 years ago it's always Porgy and Bess is always there and it's always the Brahms Second Piano Concerto and there's always a rock amount of pieces always a Ravel piece oh the rap Ceylon tea with Paganini and probably the Ravel left hampi aleca chair that's because I I'm a big piano concerto fan and I wrote my junior thesis on the Ravel left hand what about you just off the top of your head if you had to pick some does you don't have to pick a well a Stevie Wonder's inner vision my god it's a wonderful record there would be a number of Ravel things like I think Stravinsky's also on the list least wat so da would be on the list far bird certainly because it's so extraordinary beautiful which brings me to something about phrasing but I know I'm supposed to answer the rest of this I mean I don't I don't wait to be demure but I have to say Sweeney Todd to be there and company well good there was something I heard on a subway once when I was in Paris when I was 16 this guy came onto the subway playing a clarinet and not on the way that you kind of went Oh God oh it was just in chambers about 3:00 in the morning and he came on the subway and started playing something that had something of you in it actually but it was but avianna boo doo doo doo and then it did d-daddy but it'll do Yaba really it did that I made my lady I may have conflated it in my mind but I remember him jumping from seat to seat we may have been a delivery he might have been yeah maybe not who knows when you when you're when you know what a song where a song is meant to be and what it's meant to do does that mean that you already have a purchase on how to approach it does it does it coalesce slowly almost always almost always oh but that in a dialogue with the book writer which is where all these things come up if I get an idea it's because I have a real idea I can get to that thing I'm sure you get it to where you you you actually see the whole thing but you don't you don't see how you don't sales just you know it's gonna be you know it's gonna feel like you sort of know where it's gonna begin an end it doesn't always happen sometimes you just start with a thread you have to work it out I don't know how much you talk with your book writer before you write I talk extensively I mean really extensively and and and you know first of all wanted to get to know what the characters are like and secondly how songs can help the show is supposed to hinder it because that's that's the hard part is you really have to I it's always elusive should this be a musical or not or should it be a play you know well I often do I guess a rubbing you know when people put paper over a - yep I sort of do a rubbing over the story and see where the yeah where the heat is where I feel like they should release yes I know yes you can do that you can do that but then don't you don't you discuss the particular you say listen I have a feeling that this scene when she when she sees him the first time that there should be a song I don't know whether it's his or hers but there should be it's a duet I mean and then by talking them to the book writer say well yeah the book writer will say well you know the impulse in the scene you see I think he should discover about her but not till later yeah blah blah you know do you have a feeling in your gut just an emotional signature about a song about a situation in the character in a situation that happens first no usually well my instinct to answer that is know that what what comes first is the tone of the song and that has to do with everything from comic tone to whether it's gonna be terse or whether it's gonna be very Bose or whether it's gonna be hysterical or whether it's gonna be fast or slow as a poet and I think it's because I don't have to think long about what the emotions gonna be once you spot it it's as you say if you take the rubbing and it comes and something comes out at you it's because what would come out at me is the emotional core of it now how do you treat that emotional core you know so does that lead to sitting the piano improvising in concert or in in the context of that emotional sensitive yes quite often what will happen is I will let the ask the book writer to write into the scene or maybe even the whole scene first or if I know for example the first song and started about with George we knew that we wanted to introduce the relationship between dot and George and since the scene was that heat she was posing for him it became clear that either he was gonna sing an internal monologue boy that she was gonna sing an internal monologue and it seemed to be her moment because he should be concentrating entirely he should be having thoughts about oh this is what I think about her you know he's trying to say that line you know that and so knowing that's gonna be her then what what determines the song is the fact that it's that it's July or hot it's a hot day and she's in a heavy dress and right away you got half your song written because the situation is so specific then knowing that she's in a hot dress and a heavy dress in a hot day you know she's gonna be able tempered and if you know she's go to the old temperate right ome so it all channels right away and since we wanted since we didn't want her to be just a fetch she's got to have a sense of humor about it so knowing all this I said to James can you write a monologue about this and that's what he did and then I took the monologue and change it into a song but it came back but that's exactly the way I would approach this on the house if you're eighty percent ahead of the game as you know if you have a situation that is juicy enough to sing about as opposed to just two people meeting you know and and so generally I I go for those moments and often ask them since they are specific moments the librettist can write that moment because it's very specific and it's part of the scene anyway so I always I always try to get the brass to do the hard work there's something that I've often used when I teach that I think is attributed to Johnny Mercer he was asked what's the most important thing about a song Johnny Mercer happens to be one of my favorite people of all time and he said the title and the interviewer said you has to have a catchy title and says well yes but the title is often the bicycle of the song and the guy said what's that and said it's the inciting idea it's the idea that generates the rest of the song I can think of and I mean so many examples from your work where it feels as if a song has been generated that way I suppose I feel that it's slightly different which is that the title is the summation of what you want to say and it is often useful to start with a pithy with with with with the essence of the song in a phrase or even a word but that doesn't always happen sometimes particularly the more discursive songs you find yourself writing and then you'll hit on a line say ah and that will be you know what you decide as a refrain line I'm trying to think of examples from my own stuff I'm walking down the street with Arthur we try to think of of what Ethel Merman the character of Rose should sing for her first song when she's in the kitchen with her father and she's yelling at him and trying to get money from him and I was having a lot of trouble I remember walking down between 57th 56th Street on Park Avenue having left Julie Stein's apartment and I was talking I say oh you know he said well you know what she's saying is that some people chemical I'll talk to you like yeah he did not finish this AHA just said some people can I thought some people sorry grateful might be an example of a bicycle that comes from a conversation with your mother since I'd never been married and I never lived with anybody I got your mother down here who was about just at having embarked on her second marriage and I took out a yellow pad and I said tell me everything you know about marriage and we sat in this room and two hours later I had most of the score of company written I mean in the sense that she told me everything and I remember some somehow in that remember writing the phrase sorry grateful I don't think came out of her mouth but she was describing you know that the obvious thing to difficulties in the end and the combination of loneliness and mom alone and [Music] so is that was a distillation of her distillation of her experience having just gotten married myself I should probably have that conversation willing oh it's too little too soon yeah don't get she was on earth she was on her second marriage that's if that was very important yeah she had a she had a way of contrasting you know she knew two different guys two different tones two different everything's you mostly right at the piano ah I try not to I I do right at the piano but as the years have gone by I've tried to stay away from the piano more because you get limited by your own technique muscle memory and what I will do I wonder if you do the same thing is I'll deliberately plan a key and I haven't written in in a long time taking the sharp Keys is what we all know for some reason are so much harder than the flat keys I always write in sharpie oh you do oh god what bud it's cuz it's easier for my fingers I mean I and I get ninth is that's very interesting because it's my flat key so much easier my I've I have a little ping hands so that make may have to do with Asajj your hands I I can't I can't do walking tents I'm I just can't do it well hello at least I exceed you in someone look a little bit look but I know I've trouble the piano I work on incidentally was result of knowing Lenny Lenny Bernstein from West Side Story he had given them children's concerts on this piano I think seven times and then he decided he needed a larger piano this is not a nine-foot sanguine but know it so it's all involved above him he was a Baldwin it was signed the ball you know and and he said because I couldn't afford a grand piano so I'll get you one gives you one at cost and he said you can pay pay for it in installments and camera C jar Jonah so this is this is the famous yeah this instruments yeah there's the piano that Lenny Lenny got for me after you after he had used it seven times for her children's what concerts great Baldwin is great well what's great is it's mellow well I got a huge prize of money about 20 years ago and I thought I'll get a Steinway and I went down to the Steinway place and I'm not picky about pianos but there was one piano that I thought sounded better and the other one said Oh mr. Sondheim your taste is so terrific this is the only Hamburg Steinway nice about it up so got to the country put in the room and I start a play where tennis started screaming me yeah right nobody had told me here and I had to send it back who's with me yeah well a bald ones are darker and but this is a very beautiful ball well it's just nice and mellow and I can pound on it yeah a real composers action too when you almost have to I didn't know you played that many different kinds of things okay there's some funny thing that is real is drawn by Larry Gelbart who just died last week and that's me at the piano I wish I think it's just really and that is odd that is something he drew it prophesied Zero Mostel curtain call hmm in the forum he sat on a bench just that way but Larry Drew that two years before and then these are these are from Lenny these the music manuscripts Lenny used to just send vignettes I guess you would call it that's a Navin on photograph there that with the jigsaw puzzle was done for it for a magazine so what's on your what's on your music rack right now there there are things that I promised I would prove that other people have written that are variations on stuff I've I've written and then I got the Leonard Bernstein's 13 anniversaries of which I am one which I didn't have a copy of so I just got that uh-huh and then there's a sketch of something I was writing about six months ago and abandoned but it's still there to remind me to keep writing when you write you write when you write things down you write by hand oh yeah and you don't get no I don't know I haven't learned the pro but I have a copyist you know so I I'm an der that I handed that the handwritten manuscripts and then she translated is it simply a matter of not wanting to learn the software or is it yeah is it a bad process it's both I actually sometimes write at the computer a little bit but I said mostly I write by hand and why would you write at the computer as opposed to this what would be the event I'm not sorry about them I'm not over the museum in lyrics Liz I sometimes write I say no no I'd never write anything oh no I don't want to learn it's a long process to learn something like finale and I think this is in a certain way quicker mm-hmm and yes if you know if I don't have a copyist then right I also think in the same way that we talked about muscle memory and sort of going where your hands want to go instead of where your your theatrical mind wants to go a computer can be the same way can sort of lead you into the same grooves well that's the same sorts of things if you write out the finale they write it now I write mostly the piano or the guitar it is but I mean you you notate with you or your hand I don't do that either I actually notate into the computer but I'm not until I've got something that's worth noting huh-huh and why is that easier or more I can't I have the worst sort of musical penmanship but you said you could afford a copyist particular if you're doing a show to produce it but I never did it for long enough computers came along early enough for I never got that quick I mean I used to look at my mother's manuscripts or my grandfathers and see that they had this wonderful way of making notes that were just a slash understand the slashes on I don't do that I must say I actually write the notes yeah you kind of you've got a nice round thing going sometimes that it's not as neat as it could be but it's but it's like I've already you know it's that's my German ancestry uh-huh do you keep do you keep awards around or do they I don't those you know that yes I those are the pretty Awards I've got the reason they're there is I think they're all nice-looking objects the others are in closets impressment want to sit down yeah that's it we've got marks and yes I just at this stage of your career with all the success you've had does that make you impregnable to the kind of fear that would keep you standing still oh you know you get less confident as you get older I'm sure you've heard this before it's just the more you know the more you're frightened and and also when you build up a reputation then people are expecting things from you yes expecto well you know that yourself the expectations make you very hesitant about doing anything else and it gets and also my age the energy level is going and I mean it's all what the balloon is it's collapsing but that's the only thing that concerns me however if you get into something to really interested in then right that does disappear that's the feel that way but you have really have to and and it is it is not it's not that hard to get into it once you have found something you can get into you know but you have to find the thing right and before that it's it's pretty scary yeah it really is and makes you not want to ride like my grandfather used to call it the first olive out of the jar that's the hardest well if that's why it's very good to have a collaborator you know I don't understand playwrights I don't understand how Jonathan sits down all by himself and forgive the vulgarity gets it up and enough so over a period of time he actually ends up with apply we have people to nudge us well you know with when you do a song cycle that's different but when you're doing a show you know you've either got Craig Lucas to argue with or whoever it is and I do not understand how playwright to do it when you have a playwright who really knows the people he's created that's all you need it that's that constant stimulus I could never write anything by myself would you ever keep a list of things that you used to know that you used to observe that you may have forgotten that you might refer back oh gosh of course there's that no I think I think I think you do file it in your memory but I do you actually John I don't have a list but I often realize that my biggest problem is that I got something I used to know and I'm gonna when I remember it I could fix the example you mean uh well something basic like we have to know what this person wants oh and and I'll be writing away associatively thinking it's really terrific and ornate and delicious harmonically and then it has nowhere to go and doesn't go anywhere and dies and then you realize oh well we don't know what that person wants what's in secrecy I never attack us on without asking those questions first and that's what I mean by talking to the librettist yeah I want to know exactly what he'd seen it about and I said with I think some truth that by the time a show goes in rehearsal I know the script better then the librettist does because I've literally examined every single word and why that character says that word and if I don't know why I call him I say why does she say cat when she owns dogs no and he will either have an explanation or not and is that because without that you can't compress it into song that I create well for it you know if you're an actor it's exactly come on when when you write a lyric you're acting you're becoming an actor and a good actor wants to know every reason for every author's intention and then do what he or she wants to do with it but you got to know why is that line there why do we skip that line why can't we go from there to there and the playwright will say because she needs this transition in thought or babbling or whatever it is or maybe maybe he won't in which case you don't do want the same thing is true with creating characters with interpreting the characters that the that the libretto says created you got to know what each moment is and once you do then it right the easier it becomes possible to write this long but you you're describing a situation where you didn't discuss it thoroughly enough and you've put all that effort into this song yes and like I did with crinoline and find out it's entirely wrong there's nothing wrong or right about writing a bad song there's something wrong about writing on wrong song you mustn't waste your time writing a wrong song it's okay to work right wait your time writing a better zone I don't know that for isms go catch on seems like but it's okay it's okay to write a bad song yeah right but it's not okay to write a wrong side up by okay I mean you've wasted your time yeah and sometimes you write a really good wrong so huh these basic fundamental things are did they constitute most of what you end up teaching when you teach yeah yeah you know I I haven't I have a mantra which you know that consists of three principles which is content dictates form and style less is more and God is in the details and I think if you if you pay attention to three you can't write bad that's all you have to so simple I've often said you know you can teach lyric writing in five minutes just stick to those four they're just hard to stick to that's all mmm that's the one you need to know that's all you need and economy is you know clarity is above all clarity is what it's about as you know it's clarity of diction clarity of their mother the words have got two signals music in such a way that's right in clarity of thought make very clear to the audience can have mystery to it make very clear the oils what you mean and be sure that the character that the the performer can particularly when when when straitjacketed up my music can get the words out so that only the one listening you can get exactly what they who they are and what that's very hard to do but if you do it you can't write bad now on a musical level do you would you have the equivalent three three tenets yes absolutely absolutely first of all I believe in utilizing I got it I got it from studying with Milton valve what we did was he was a songwriter monk a is I should say and so for the first hour of our four-hour sessions once a week we would just we would discuss and analyze to silver Brown and Henderson who were his favorites and your Grandpop and you're particularly Jerome Kern mm-hm I can still give the lecture on all the things you are and what and how that is a unique musical composition and what makes it weird circle offensive just circle wet but also the tritone sorry he breaks it and to go to a new key but it's also the tritone that defines the old king also it never hits the tonic chord until the end I mean on and on it's just great but he we I analyzed a Bach fugue and I think it was his term I I would like to think I made it up but I think he made up he said you see he takes these foreign notes referring to Bach and he builds a Cathedral out of them ah and I had always appreciated Bach intellectually but until we started analyzing what bothered doing it didn't get to my heart mm-hmm and now I you know I cry Bach yes and but it goes from here to here but certain kinds of scores where you want to hold a score together so it isn't just a group of disparate songs what you do is you utilize as little material as possible and build on it variate you know Sweeney Todd is built out of out of about three or four themes not all the songs but most of them it's not an opera it's not completely through composed but a lot of it is and merrily is merrily rolling it so show that exists on just that on taking a theme and then making it the accompaniment and taking the accompany making that a theme and making the release the main thing and converting and everything it's all about what you manipulating things musically and it isn't just an intellectual exercise it gives a leanness you have feeling that those songs belong in that score and not in this score yeah you're not breaking any such a style it's it's the actual musical material just like clay just like marble and I think I think on a certain level and audience sort of subcutaneously knows that absolutely absolutely I still always said they will always always get it constantly always Sunday would be another good think it's very tightly Sunday is built on that opening arpeggios yeah the oh no Pedro implies to two major chords one and a four and everything after that not everything but most things are building in it then there's a little is a painting theme that things are built out of that and then you know move on is a culmination of all the things playing together at once yeah and of course the audience doesn't get that but I do know that one of the reasons that moment is moving is you feel the entire evening has been building to this moment and when the themes come together so do the hero and heroine mhm and that's that's the way you some do you have some very stark examples of the fruit that can be born of really prolonging tension and release you have I mean just in the song Sunday is that delicious harmony on the word Park that's just what a shoulder chord now what's a shoulder cloud oh that's a nice that's a nice term that's a nice term yeah no it's no harmonica live of course sunday is you know is much is my Britain influence you know Muslim mostly shows I write on my rock one autumn Ravel influences but Sunday's my Britain inference and boy you know it wasn't a son Britain music I'm gonna cry now I just hate kills me mmm-hmm have you had anything that you would consider to be a bonafide flop well a bonafide flop on an artistic and commercial level only one which was Pachi your grandfather do I hear walls and for a very simple reason it was a show that didn't need to be written mm-hmm it was when Oscar was dying he said you know dick is gonna be very lonely when oh and I've been I wish I know you want to write your own music but I wish he would consider writing I said sure of course and so your Grandpop sent me a few a couple of pieces a year and finally he he you know he and Oscar work with contemplating doing as you may know time Arthur Lauren said who wrote the play had asked me to introduce them to it he asked me to introduce him to them and did and he and he proposed it to them in Oscar said it's a good idea but because the recent release of the movie summertime which was Katharine Hepburn's movie up version of time he said I'd like to wait five years and I said fine well within those five years Oscar died and so that was a thing that dick came to me with and because with Arthur and I liked riding with Arthur so much I thought it would kill two birds with one stone which is not the reason to run the show and I've often it's an ugly metaphor but I've often compared the show to ad and a baby it looks like a baby and it's beautiful and it just isn't alive now a better image would be and you know it's a plane that doesn't take off and Dwyer walls is not a bad show it's a dead show that's because there's no reason to ride it there's no passion and that was sort of the cancer that I mean that was all that was yeah well you know everything that was really bad stuff on all breath because Arthur himself didn't realize that his Arthur's motive was to make money and you know they're Dick Rogers the most successful composer producer in the theatre and a show a play that had worked very well and was a good play and easy to musical eyes quote/unquote no it was exactly why not to write a show and also I think something else may have died in that five years which was my grandfather's sense of who he was as a composer that was that was the discouraging and shocking thing to me was that he felt the well had run dry yeah I could not get him to rewrite you can hear that and I could not get him to be right he would write something and I say look could we just work on the release a little bit he couldn't do it he had to write a whole new release if any but he resisted rewriting anything at all and I realized it wasn't me it was himself he really was afraid that he would wake up the next morning and have no ideas and maybe that was true or maybe not but he had convinced himself of that yeah and it made the collaboration apart from his the personality problems he had or I had with him that's what made it in pawn but that's the only show I've written that I think because the the big the flops like anyone could whistle which you know is a show written by the two smartest kids in the class from the back row you know it's it's just so condescending and smartass and smart at the same time that's still I'm glad I wrote it no regrets having written at all only do I hear a waltz I think was a waste of my life mmm and it was because I like Arthur and dick wrote it for the wrong reasons yeah I did it to pay Oscars debt back and because I wanted to work with Arthur again and also I thought that we could make money the way are they did and did blah blah well yeah it sounds it sounds like a a medium to bad imitation of my grandfather's music and and nobody was it felt it felt sort of yeah it just it wasn't but you know many of the scores he did with with Oscar after King and I are just not very good they're not up to anything like as best that includes sound of music there's there's a kind of plotting exactly at that and and I gotta get to work tomorrow morning I gotta turn out a tune you know and do you think that writers and even the best writers have a period of organic the ability to be organically themselves where they really are in their signature and almost everyone seems to leave that period at some point that window seems to shut well I think that that because of the nature of theater music meeting popular theater music commercial theater music as opposed to opera that we all become super superannuated I think you know because music changes every 25 years I think every generation everybody becomes old fashioned I think dick became old fashioned was aware of it I feel old fashioned you know I have no relationship to rock or pop which are which is the coin of the realm I think I don't know any I really don't know any composer for the theater I think who's written really good stuff after the age of 50 mmm which a very young age but that's a generation they start when they're in their 20s and a generation later or 15 and suddenly you feeling i I've been able to avoid that somewhat but that's because I don't have really a style of my own I'm my style is so geared to different people but that's what happened when I worked with Lapine Lapine infused me with something it's possible that if your grandfather instead of writing with a little old conservative like me I'd really allied himself with John where it's conceivable he would have because he changed his style so much from a heart to Hammerstein he might very well have found a worse time yeah yeah cuz God knows the talent was there but how do you do that how do you do that it takes a lot of courage it really does it really does when you hit something that you just can't solve in a room on a show that you're feeling is going well what do you what do you do call the collaborator at this I'm sorry there's no more interesting answer than that if when you're writing you sort of lay something down and think well you know I really want to get to dinner I really want to leave town that's gotta be I think that's good enough but there's that little inner voice that's sort of like that's not that's not good enough do you think that that exists in everyone well it doesn't exist in me because I get I get dogged I get dogged but it's exactly like again solving a puzzle I know I've got a does not occur to me to break the concert unless unless it's an obligation if it's something I've got to go to then I resent it and also I have that thing that I'm sure a lot of people have which is if you know you have to leave the house at 6 o'clock you get a great idea at 5 minutes at 6 that's perverse and that happens to every writer right but but if it's not necessary no I stay with it until I get exhausted or until I think I don't know what to do and then I go to sleep and I am a firm believer in all problems getting solved in dreams I really believe that you wake up in the morning and it's solved or it's on the way to solution of all the after all the success that you've had and and it's probably embarrassing for you to hear it but you so revered and so admired not just for what you've made but also for how you've been to people that you've been generous about teaching that you've been honest and that you have tried to be as helpful as you can be and you've also had a lot of success on a sort of more superficial level has that been an evil as well as good I mean when you try to approach your work as all that you've done and all that people expect from you overwhelming well that the expectations come from the work not from the teaching teaching to me is the sacred profession and I cry when I talk about I'll probably cry now but my life was saved by teachers my first to Latin teacher in high school and then then Oscar Hammerstein who was a teacher and who just before he died gave me a portrait of himself and I asked him to inscribe it which is weird when you think that no it's like asking your father to inscribe and he wrote I'm gonna cry you wrote for Stevie my friend and teacher and that describes Oscar better than any other way I can describe he understood that he as you know in King and I he said by your pupils you are taught and then Milton davon and then my collaborators like Arthur Lawrence taught me a lot and Burt Sheva love and Hal Prince so teaching to me is it's a necessity I couldn't live without it well when I played you my music for the first time when I was fourteen oh you know I came in all puffed up thinking I'd be reined with compliments of things and I think was right here and I played you my things and you had some very direct things to say and I and I left a crestfallen of course and and you wrote me a letter that said I didn't mean to be not very encouraging I mean to be constructive and that's the best form of encouragement there was a very direct and a very kind letter and very much in the spirit of teaching and that's that's who you are to me oh well that's nice but you know that's a direct reflection of that afternoon I've told the story 5,000 times about going over to Oscars having written this school show and and I gave it to him because I thought he would want to produce it on Broadway and and I waited overnight and I just knew that when I was just like you're the one over there he'd say Steve you're going to be the first fifteen year old to have a dick and I are so proud to present this and he said you know you treat me as if you didn't know me he said Oh in that case it's the worst thing and then and but he said exactly to me what I said to you would you said I didn't say I didn't say wasn't Talmud I says no good and here if you want to know why it's no good I'll tell you and he told me yeah no I just think teaching is it and you know it isn't that I get so stimulated by it but but by the students it's that I just love passing on what Oscar passed on to me [Music]

Channel: Dramatists Guild Foundation

Views: 52,187

Rating: 4.9665651 out of 5

Keywords: Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel, Into the Woods, Company, musical theatre, musical theater, broadway, Dramatists Guild Foundation, composer, song writing, sweeney todd, assassins musical, passion musical

Id: TofC3KD-h8M

Length: 64min 47sec (3887 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Vitam1nD]

He really let's slip how much he contributed to the songwriting in Gypsy

[u/TheMentalist10]

This is by some margin the best Sondheim interview I've seen. He's unusually open--a product of age, perhaps, as well as familiarity with Guettel?

So good, thanks for sharing!