american songwriterslibrary.wcsu.edu/people/reitz/eng107sond/eng107sond-4.pdf · 2013-01-30 ·...

AMERICAN SONGWRITERSby

DAVID EWEN

371 SONDHEIM

Simon told the Times, "has been to sit with a gui-tar and write a song, finish it, go into the studio,book the musicians, lay out the song and thechords, and then try to make a track. With these[South African] musicans, I was doing it the oth-er way around. The tracks preceded the songs.We worked improvisationally. While a groupwas playing in the studio I would sing melodiesand words, [most of them made up on the spurof the moment]—anything that fit the scale theywere playing in." The album's principal cuts are"The Boy in the Bubble," about the "mysticalconnections between primitive magic and mod-ern technology," and "Graceland," which Hold-en described as the transformation of "ElvisPresley's [hometown] shrine [into] a metaphor ofsalvation for 'poor boys and pilgrims with fami-lies,' as well as a personal symbol of healing forthe songwriter's romantic wounds. Two hymn-like songs about the search for spiritual fulfill-ment are "Homeless" and "Under African Skies,"whereas "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes"takes a sardonic look at the neuroses of contem-porary, urban life.

ABOUT: Cohen, M. S. Simon and Garfunkel: A Biogra-phy In Words and Pictures, 1977; Denisoff, R. S. Singa Song of Social Significance, 1972; Humphries, P.Bookends: The Simon and Garfunkel Story, 1982;Leigh, S. Paul Simon: Now and Then, 1973; Marsh D.Paul Simon, 1978; Mathews-Walker, R. Simon andGarfunkel, 1982. Periodicals— High Fidelity May1982; New Yorker May 4, 1968; New York Times Jan-uary 21, 1968, February 27, 1972, February 28, 1982,August 24, 1986; New York Times Magazine October13,1968; Rolling Stone October 23, 1986; Saturday Re-view June 12, 1976.

SISSLE, NOBLE. See BLAKE, EUBIE andSISSLE, NOBLE

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STEPHEN^?and HarmRoofers

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one has advanced the musical play or altereditsdestiny more than the composer-lyricist StephenSondheirn. He has brought to Broadway a re-markable~talent as a lyricist, a field in which hismastery is virtually unrivalled. A consummatemusician, he has met the demands of the mostcomplex texts, as he did in Sunday in rAe Parkwith George, which broke with the whole historyof the Broadway musical and won the PulitzerPrize for drama Beyond his contributions toBroadway, as the artistic partner to unorthodox,formula-shattering texts, Sondheim is one of theleading innovators in contemporary Americanmusic.

STEPHEN SONDHEIM

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born into up-per-middle-class comfort in New York City. Hisfather, Herbert Sondheim, was a dress manufac-turer, and his mother, Janet (Fox) Sondheim, adress designer and, later, an interior .decorator.Precocious, Sondheim took an interest in the pi-ano when he was four and, at five, began twoyears of piano study with a local teacher. Hisearly education was at the Ethical CultureSchool, where he started reading The New YorkTimes in the first grade^

When he was ten his parents divorced, and hismother enrolled him in the New York MilitaryAcademy, which he loved for its "rules andorder" and because "the school had a large organwith lots of buttons." Two years later, motherand son settled on a farm in Pennsylvania, a few-miles from the Doylestown summer residence ofOscar Hammerstein II, whose intimate friend-ship with the family brought young Sondheiminto personal contact with the celebrated libret-tist-lyricist. When Sondheim composed wordsand music for By George, a production mountedat the George School in Newton, Pennsylvania,the 15-year-old brought his work to Hammer-stein for objective criticism. "It's the worst thingI ever read," Hammerstein told him, then pro-ceeded to deliver a point-by-point explanationof what was wrong. "We went on for a whole af-ternoon about it," Sondheim recalled. "I guess Ilearned most of the things about writing lyricsin that afternoon: 25 years of experiencecrammed into three hours. I gobbled it up."Sondheim continued to consult Hammerstein,who was to bequeath his legacy to the youngerman. As Sondheim has said, "He got me into the