Toward the end of his life, Stephen Sondheim—who died on November 26, 2021, of cardiovascular disease, at the age of ninety-one—sat for a number of interviews with me. The idea was that I would publish a Profile of him timed to the première of a new musical that he was writing with David Ives based on Luis Buñuel’s films “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel.”
The composer began our journey with zeal, but soon, like a Sondheim character, he became archly ambivalent. He expressed worry that the presence of an outside observer would affect the creative process. What’s more, he wrote to me, “I’ve been, to use a phrase I’ve never used except in mockery, the cynosure of all eyes. And to use another phrase I’ve never used because I feel too old to do so, it’s bummed me out. I’d forgotten how much I hate being in the spotlight, which is one reason I became a writer instead of, as I was urged to be at age fifteen, a concert pianist. (I wasn’t good enough, anyway.)” Nevertheless, we continued to correspond—and to meet for other pieces—until his death.
At the beginning of our pas de deux, five years ago, Sondheim would receive me in his East Forties town house. He held court in his living room as staff and friends came and went—some to put a word in his ear, others to groom his dogs or serve rosé, still others just passing through. Sondheim played the lead: humorous, sardonic, and appealing, beloved but not lovable, in the Shavian way. Around his singular presence, the household cohered; without him, it would disintegrate.
When we met, Sondheim wasn’t yet ready to talk about individual songs from the Buñuel musical. But he also spoke of another collaboration with Ives—an idea he’d been quietly nursing for decades. Our conversations, which have been edited and condensed, touched on his philosophy of art, the relationship between book writer and lyricist, and the subtle compositional flourishes in his songs that “nobody has ever noticed.”
How’s the work on the show going?
It’s very slow. The older I get, the slower I get at everything I do. That’s not unusual. But the energy level, unlike some people—there are people who carry their energy. George Bernard Shaw kept writing plays until he was ninety-four. Of course, the last fifteen years they were terrible plays, but he did write them! And then I was stunned, although I suppose not surprised, when I went to the Guggenheim and saw its exhibition of late Picasso. There was a drawing, and it said, you know, “May 16, 1934, 4:30.” Then you went to the next drawing: “May 16, 1934, 9:15.” Then you went to the next one: “May 17, 7 A.M.” He just could not stop. And I thought, That’s what I want in terms of energy. And it was the last couple years of his life.
That’s amazing. I remember you saying on our car ride that you knew where the songs had to go.
That’s right. I routine things—I think most writers do—with a book writer. We say, “Where are songs helpful? Where are they possible but unnecessary?” I try to write songs that are necessary. It seems to be important to keep the pace going, because I think an audience senses when songs are merely reiterating what you already know, or when they’re ahead of you. So I routine them, and then I try to do it chronologically, because often you want to write something, then pick up the musical theme, or even the lyrical theme, and use it later on. I like to make the collection of songs have some kind of unity—not just in tone but in musical and lyrical ideas—because I think it makes for a tighter, more absorbing evening. “Sweeney Todd” is a very good example of that: the utilization of themes over and over again, but developed, not repeating. Very few people writing do this kind of thing. I learned all of these compositional principles from [Milton] Babbitt. What it amounts to is, music exists in time, so how do you make it cohere? And that’s just as true with a three-minute song as it is with an hour-and-a-half opera, you know? I remember, we analyzed Mozart’s Thirty-ninth to see how he held it together. Why is this one symphony? We’re talking about different movements, so it isn’t like he’s using the same tune, and yet there’s a coherence. And, of course, “Wozzeck” and “Lulu” are great examples of that presented on the stage. Each one is one piece. And then there are the other kinds of operas, like “Carmen,” which is just twenty of the best tunes you’ve ever heard in your life, but they’re twenty different tunes, you know? With a little fate theme that pops up every five minutes. But I like the idea of the kind of musicals I write, because they’re so strong in the librettos, and because you really try to interest an audience in the story, as opposed to what musicals used to be, before Rodgers and Hammerstein ruined it for the rest of us.
And in the case of the Buñuel—
I’m still feeling my way, because the quality of the material—it isn’t the kind of tight story that something like “Sweeney” or “Merrily We Roll Along” is. It’s a series of vignettes, really. There are six main characters, and they interact, but there’s very little plot. I mean, it’s about a group of people trying to find a place to eat.
So the musical is actually from Buñuel’s film “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”?
The first act, yes. The first half is: they try to find a place to eat. The second act is “The Exterminating Angel”: they find a place to eat, and they can’t leave.
This is something you’ve been thinking about for a long time, right?
It stems from a remark Hal Prince made in a cab once. We were out at night, coming back from the theatre or something, and he was looking around Park Avenue on the way to the Upper East Side, and he said, “You know what the dominant form of entertainment is? Eating out.” [Laughs.] Because all the restaurants were lit up—it was about ten-thirty in the evening, and that’s what people were doing. They weren’t going to the theatre. They were eating! And I thought, Gee, what an interesting idea. And I didn’t immediately think, Oh, that would make a musical. But somehow what happened was, David [Ives] and I started to write another show, and we aborted it for numerous reasons—and we had talked about Buñuel at one point. So that’s how the idea arose.
Do you have a bunch of things going at once?
No, no.
And has that always been the case for you?
Yes. I find it very useful to be only involved in one world.
So when you have an idea that you think is pretty good, but you’re working on something else, what do you do with the idea?
An idea for a show? Oh, I don’t. Well, that’s not quite true. The idea that we aborted was an idea I’d had for a long time. And I went to various playwrights—I went to Craig Lucas, I went to Terrence McNally—and they each were intrigued by it, but they didn’t get what I had in mind. And then finally I asked David, and he got it right away.
And ultimately the issue was on your end or his end?
I’ll tell you what the issue was: we started it, wrote it, and then a show was done which had a similar idea and only lasted two days. It was not the same idea, but it was a similar idea. And then a movie came out, and it was also a similar idea. If I had gotten off my ass and done the work quickly, we would have beaten them to the punch, but we didn’t.
Was it painful?
Yes, awful. Just terrible.
Where does the material go? Do you have an archive?
Before I write, I always spend time with the librettist, obviously, talking and talking and talking and talking—so we had talked, and David had written a scene, two scenes, and I wrote about two and a half songs.
For you, which comes first, the music or the lyrics?
Oh, they come together.
Together?
Oh, sure. I mean, you get the idea for the song, you talk to the librettist, and—if I could get a phrase that sort of sums it up, you know, “It was just one of those things”—you can start writing a lyric, and then the inflection of the lyric suggests a tune. If you wrote down “It was just one of those things,” I don’t know how you’d hear it, but I would hear it, maybe, as “It was just one of those things.” You might hear this: “It was just one of those things.” And that could be another tune: “da-da-da-dum.” And we’re talking about conversational lyrics—there’s a whole other kind of lyric. It was essentially pop music for so many years—the old pop music of the nineteen-twenties, thirties, forties. But as dramatic songwriting took over, Rodgers and Hammerstein, the kind of thing we’re talking about became more important: that they should sound as if they’re speaking, as opposed to just singing, “Youuu are so beautiful.”
When you have a conversation, are you hearing rhythms?
Yeah, quite often. And I’ll tell you, Oscar [Hammerstein] was—well, I won’t say a pioneer at this, but, because “Oklahoma!” was such a big hit, everyone started to do this. I’ve always been extremely critical of Larry Hart, but Oscar’s claim was that Larry Hart was the one who started to infuse popular music with ordinary talk, street talk. That’s true: if you look at songs prior to the nineteen-twenties, it’s all artificial. The point is that he started to infuse popular songs with the kind of daily talk instead of fancy talk.
It kind of corresponds to what went on in poetry.
Yes! Oh, yes, absolutely right. William Carlos Williams!
There’s nothing more painful than picking up a volume of nineteenth-century verse and just thinking, They tried so hard.
Well, that depends—
I don’t mean Tennyson. Tennyson is a genius.
Well, that’s the whole point. Tennyson and Keats—they made artifacts that have nothing to do with contemporary speech. That was not what they were interested in. Poetry was about carving and decorating the language—and still saying something, but lots of rhymes, you know, all the artificial stuff.
Listen, we can make parallels and analogies all night long, because that’s what opera is to me. Opera, as opposed to musicals, has nothing to do with real life. Now, I know that when opera works for people it’s much bigger than real life, in the sense that you get real life the way you’re supposed to out of artificial art.
Are there no operas that are exceptions to this?
Oh, of course.
Which ones?
Puccini, I think, was a master at psychological songwriting, and I believe his characters. And, if the story’s interesting, I get interested in the story. However, outside of “Wozzeck,” I don’t think I’ve ever seen an opera that sustained my interest all the way through. I prefer to listen to opera at home, because then I can just go from musical passage to musical passage, and I don’t have to fill in with, uh, [singing] “Will you take out the garbage?” “No, I can’t take out the garbage.” [Laughs.] Recitatif, to me, is the death of music.
What about “Rigoletto”?
Verdi and I do not get along. Harmonically, he just drives me crazy—and that’s just personal taste. I was brought up on movies, and, to me, Puccini is the kind of music that I enjoy. A lot of people find it overly fruity, and I don’t. . . . For me, the harmonies are what make music, and I love Puccini’s harmonies, and I don’t love Verdi’s harmonies.
Do you find that your taste in music has changed through the years?
Well, I don’t listen to much popular music. Even as a kid, I listened to movie music and classical music, and then when I got interested in the theatre I listened to theatre music.
So, like, the Beatles?
The Beatles are exceptional because they were so original and startling, but when I listened to others of their contemporaries I just wasn’t as interested. And very little pop music is harmonically interesting—one of the exceptions being Radiohead.
I’ve never really given them a full listen.
Well, if you’re into harmony, they’re certainly a lot more interesting than most of what goes on. But it’s unfair of me to speak this way. I don’t want to come off as somebody who disdains popular music. I just don’t listen to it very often.
And you’re drawn to show music—
From meeting Oscar [Hammerstein].
Not before that?
Not particularly. I was drawn only to classical music, in terms of what I wanted to listen to. All my records—I spent my allowance on recordings—they were all the Romantic composers. Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Ravel—all the late nineteenth, early twentieth century.
You told me once that you’d lived your “entire life in twenty blocks.” Have you been here for much of that time?
Oh, yeah, since 1960. It’s the house that “Gypsy” built.
And you never left? It was just perfect for you?
Nope. You know, look behind you—that garden out there. . . . I used to serve on the garden committee. There’s a little community garden. When I moved here, Katharine Hepburn was next door, and on the other side was Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin. This was theatre row down here, in this corner of the garden.
So you were trading up when you bought in here. How old were you?
I was thirty years old when I bought the house.
You were a boy!
Well, yeah. I’d had two shows, “West Side” and “Gypsy.” And “Gypsy” is the one that I got enough income that I could put a down payment on the house with a loan from the bank. My father co-signed the loan. He was a dress manufacturer, a very successful one—well, I shouldn’t say very successful. At the end of his life the business completely collapsed, and he died in a lot of debt.
Did any of this give you an interest in the costume side?
I have no visual gift at all.
Stephen Sondheim plays piano at his apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, in December, 2009.Photograph by Piotr Redlinski / NYT / Redux
Did either of your parents play the piano?
My mother was entirely visual; my father played by ear. He would go to a Broadway show and come home and pick the tunes out on the piano. And when I was a tiny kid I would sit on the piano bench, and he would put my little hand on his right hand, and I would play the piano with him.
Were you a good classical pianist?
Very good right hand; left hand, awful. I’m just very, very right-handed at everything.
You can’t be a great pianist with only the right hand.
But I didn’t want to. I had no ambition.
You didn’t want to be the next—
I certainly did not. When I was in prep school, I would give recitals around Pennsylvania, sometimes a solo and sometimes with my music teacher playing the second piano. One day, I was playing our main rival. . . . I was playing the Chopin F-Sharp-Minor Polonaise, which has an ABA structure. I finished the A, and I was on automatic pilot, and I thought, Oh, fuck, I don’t know what comes after the A. And so, in a panic, I went right back to the beginning of the A, and then finished the A.
And then?
The audience applauded. And I thought, If they don’t know, there’s no reason for me to play the piano in public. They had no idea they’d been cheated of one-third! [Laughs.]
How old were you?
Fifteen. And the music teacher did want to groom me for a piano career.
Did your parents ever want you to be, like, a lawyer?
No. I think Dad wanted me to be in the dress business, but he never pushed. My mother was a designer for my father, and then they split when I was eleven.
What year did she pass away?
Ah, she passed away the night that “Merrily We Roll Along” opened in Leicester, England, ’cause that’s where I was. George Furth and I rewrote the show and finally got it the way we wanted it, and we opened it in Leicester, and the phone rang just before the show began. And the mayor of Leicester was coming to see the show, and this was in an upstairs office, and I got the news that she had passed away—she was in a nursing home—and I got into the elevator with the director, and he said, “Are you O.K.?” I said, “Oh, yeah, my mother just died.” The elevator doors at that point opened, and there was the mayor, and the director was gobsmacked. He was staring into the middle distance. “Yeah, my mother just died. Oh, Mr. Mayor, so nice to see you!” [Laughs.]
She lived long enough to see her son as the glamorous person she would have wanted.
Oh, yeah, don’t think she didn’t play off the celebrity. . . . She was so outrageous that now I can tell funny stories.
But it hurt at the time?
It’s not that it hurt. It was an annoyance. She kept trying to blackmail me, and, you know, “I’m dying, I’m dying.” She was terrible at it. Always got caught in the lie. And she milked me for money—she stole money from me. I still would like her to suffer. [Laughs.] But I don’t think about her. She was completely exorcised, because I’ve told so many people about what a horror she was, and I’ve told so many funny stories that I laugh at them now.
She’s become material.
Yes, that’s very good. Exactly. It’s a help, because you’re still getting back at them, but you’re doing it in a way that doesn’t irritate you.
Where is your father sitting with you?
Oh, I liked him a lot. But, you know, I went to a shrink—to two shrinks—and what became apparent was that he was a swell guy, but he left me in the lion’s den. He couldn’t live with that monster, and he fell in love with another lady, so why the fuck shouldn’t he leave? On the other hand, it wasn’t so good for the kid. So if you were he, what would you do? He was not careless about me—he was trying to make things nice and help—but she wouldn’t talk to him.
She made him suffer for the break.
Oh, yeah. And she tried to poison me against him, but she was so rotten, the more she tried to poison me, the more I liked him.
She was a theatrical figure in a way.
Yup. And the other side of her is that she was talented. She was very good at what she did. I’m told she was a good dress designer.
Just getting to work habits: this show that you’re working on now, for instance—what is the process? Do you sit at the piano? Look at the sky?
Are you talking about writing music? I write longhand, because a lyric is only sixty words. Actually, I’m lying, because in the last couple years I’ve started to sketch lyrics on the computer.
How does one sketch lyrics?
Well, it’s sort of free association.
How many songs have you got written for the Buñuel?
I’ve written seven.
Wow!
Oh, no. C’mon now.
How many songs are in “Sweeney Todd”?
“Sweeney Todd” has many more songs than most shows. There are more than twenty-three—twenty-four, maybe. An ordinary musical score is about fourteen—you know, “Merrily We Roll Along,” “Company.”
What else do you have coming up?
There is gonna be a production of “Company” with a female Bobby, directed by Marianne Elliott, who may be the most brilliant director alive.
I’ve got to do some rewriting, because it isn’t just a matter of changing pronouns. I’ve got to rewrite some songs. We’ve had numerous conversations. I’m just, you know, in my usual way, I’m way behind on everything, and my priorities are all wrong.
What sort of changes have you said no to?
Well, John Tiffany, who directed “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”—a really good director—wanted to do a gay male version of “Company.” So we had a reading of that about a year and a half ago, and I thought it didn’t work at all, and I said no.
What didn’t work?
It just felt forced. The only scene, curious enough, that seemed to work was Bobby and three girls on the park bench as Bobby and three guys on the park bench. The rest of it seemed—it just wasn’t written for it. As a friend of mine said, George Furth is really J. D. Salinger. His ear for the way people talk—and, because he was an actor, he really understands character instinctively. He’s one of those playwrights who write two lines, and you know who to cast. If you saw people audition, you’d say, “That’s the guy that George wrote.” Because his writing is so character-specific. And that includes gender.
But you could flip Bobby?
Well, Bobby is another matter, because Bobby is a cipher. At least Marianne’s point is that the problems the Bobbys of the nineteen-seventies faced are similar to the problems women today face.
I’m trying to think about what that would imply. He’s a cipher, right?
That’s it, yep. Everyone else is a character, and Bobby is the vacuum in the middle. And there’s a reason he’s a vacuum. He’s somebody who soaks up and bottles up, and theoretically what he does at the end of the show is grow up and become somebody. That’s the idea. The show either works or not, but that’s the notion: that he learns from his friends to be a person. In fact, it’s really like he’s graduating at the end. When I came in to help direct a production down in Washington, in 2002, that was my metaphor to the cast. I said, “You are helping this boy grow up. Think of it that way throughout the show—that is what you’re doing. And at the end, when you say, ‘Happy birthday, Bobby,’ it really means congratulations.” And that’s what I think the show is.
Sondheim often described himself as a creature of New York, but he had a second home, in Roxbury, Connecticut—a “converted turkey farm” that he’d purchased in 1984—and he spoke of it with a Manhattanite’s ironic enthusiasm for the verdant world outside the city. In 2017, he invited me up. “It will help familiarize you with my other life venue,” he wrote.
One day that September, I walked past the tall rhododendrons and knocked on the door. Sondheim was alone, working on Act II of the Buñuel musical. He walked slowly, owing to a bad back, which he explained as the result of too much time bent over a piano or lying on a couch. “I spent my entire life either as the letter ‘C’ or the letter ‘L,’ ” he said, and mimicked the dual affronts to his posture. He told me that he was trying to write a song for a character called Marianne, and that it wasn’t going well. He took me into his composing room, which had a big black piano, posters from shows, and, touchingly, blank music paper. Here was where the hat got made. I saw some handwritten lyrics:
Marianne: I like things that shine
about me.
I like things that glow.
Would you like to dance, miss? [Soldier putting arm around Marianne’s waist.]
Marianne: Why can I not be free?
Why do I like what I see?
And not what I know?
Next to these lyrics was a sheet of music paper in a key with four flats, a series of half notes and quarter notes, and the lyrics “Life in this room, in this gor-geous God-damn room.” The hyphens had been stuck in to line up the syllables with the rhythm of the song. I could hear it in my head, and it sounded as fresh as everything that Sondheim did. But, to my surprise, he apologized to me for being out of date. The past fifty years had seen him remake the musical, but he seemed to have experienced the decades differently: he had watched his art form become a more and more antiquated part of American culture.
No one was there to walk on and lighten our conversation. The house had a feeling of being offstage, at least compared with the comic roundelay of Turtle Bay. His dogs were nowhere to be seen. His husband, Jeff Romley, was in New York. But Sondheim discussed the minutiae of his technique gamely, and his attitude toward death with candor, and, despite some reservations, he appeared determined to continue his work.
At this point, you’ve done the first act of Buñuel. You even workshopped it, right?
We had a reading. A reading is eight people sitting in chairs with scripts in their hands and then standing up and singing when it comes time to sing, with an invited audience. No staging. A workshop is minimal staging, but a staging, nonetheless. You get up and you go kiss her over there, and then she gets up and she goes and shoots him over there. Whereas, in a reading, you go “Mwah,” and she goes “BANG!”
Does that mean that what you have of the first act is comparable to the first draft of a book?
Yes, the first draft. There is a complete score and a complete act, but I want to add and tweak. Second act, there is a complete draft of the book, and I’ve just begun the score.
This is all complicated by the opera that is about to open at the Met. There is a composer in his early forties, who is one of probably two or three leading composers in Britain today, whose name is Thomas Adès. He has written an opera of “The Exterminating Angel,” which will open at the Met in October. None of this is a surprise, ’cause we had numerous communications with the Buñuel estate about the rights: they have granted him the opera rights and granted us the musical-theatre rights. They didn’t know the difference, but we educated them. [Laughs.] And then I talked to Adès about it, and I said, “Listen, I hope you don’t think this is in any way competitive, because I can assure you, the treatments will be different.” Adès is a master of orchestration—the orchestration for this opera is gigantic, wonderful, and weird—and the opera got rave reviews in both Salzburg and London, where it was done a month or two ago.
Will you listen to it?
No. I will go see it, but I probably will not go see it before I finish what I’m writing. I’m not sure.
Really? You’re able to—
Oh, yeah, because it’s chalk and cheese. I mean, what he writes and what I write are just entirely different. His is real opera, with a great deal of very high singing, and spectacular orchestral effects, and a large cast. And he’s only doing “The Exterminating Angel.” He’s got twenty-four in his cast. Our version of “The Exterminating Angel” is the second act and only has eight people, so there is a big difference. . . . If I were thirty-five years old, I think it would upset me a lot more. But at this age how can I be upset?
There was the previous project with Ives, which you guys abandoned because of something similar—
That was a new idea, and then Pixar came out with something even more similar: “Inside Out.” The segregation of personality. It was an idea I’d had for twenty years, and Pixar did it and I didn’t, because I delayed too long. But they had one idea I didn’t have.
What was the idea that they had that you didn’t?
That sadness is the necessary part.
And what was yours?
My idea is that every moment of human intercourse—like right now, between you and me—there are sixty-four of you in this room and sixty-four of me in this room that we bring into a conversation. So every sentence we say, any intercourse we have, is so filled with layers, and I personalized those by having two people meet in an airport. Their planes are delayed, and they start chatting. They have those vouchers for an overnight stay, so he’s flirting with her, and he says, “Why don’t you come up to the room for a drink?” And suddenly the entire stage goes berserk, and we’re in the middle of a party, and there are twelve people, and now we play the exact same scene over again—but this time a lot is going on. But the first fifteen minutes are just talk. And then they drink, and they get a little drunker. And then we play it all over again. Each person has a chorus, and at the very end your chorus gets together, and my chorus gets together, and they consummate. And I just delayed too long. I actually wrote some stuff, and so did David—
You wrote songs for it?
Mm-hmm.
Where do those songs now live? In the box?
Live is not quite the word. [Laughs.] They’re in the box, yeah.
And you would never play them as one-offs?
No. Because the kind of stuff I write, the music and the lyrics are so intertwined.
But your songs do get played—you can go to any piano bar and hear “Not While I’m Around”—so people get many of the songs without the context of the characters.
It’s not about that. It’s about the actual lyric. It’s not even about the context. Unless I have a need for a song called “Not While I’m Around,” it doesn’t matter who the characters are. Well, God knows the history of musical theatre is filled with tunes that went from one place to another. But to do that you’re admitting that your well is running dry, which I think is psychologically not good. And don’t think I haven’t been very close to that edge of that well, man—particularly these days. But I’m not doing it if I can help it.
Do you find the music and the lyrics harder today? Or one is harder, and one is not?
Both. I just feel less inventive. And, also, I feel I’ve written it before. “Oh, I’ve used that.” Also the constant feeling, which is not unreal, of being old-fashioned.
You feel that way?
Well, I am. I mean, you know, the kind of music I write has nothing to do with anything in pop music since the mid-fifties.
Personally, I don’t think genius is ever old-fashioned.
Well, thank you for the word. But my feeling—I really believe this—I think it’s the supreme geniuses, like Picasso, Stravinsky, who are able to take in the changes in their world and incorporate them into their own work. You know, Stravinsky took atonal music and wrote things like “Agon” and then decided, “Eh, I don’t like it so much.” But he was able to incorporate it. Picasso just took every style that was going on, and it was always Picasso, but he sucked in everything in the artistic air. And I feel very strongly about that. And I think if Gershwin were alive he’d find a way of using, you know, rock and pop and rap and all that, because he was alive to everything going on around him, and he sucked it in.
And you don’t find you do that?
No. Because for me the lifeblood of music is harmony, and that is not what pop and rock are interested in. They are interested in visceral; they are interested in rhythm; they are interested particularly in sound and orchestrations and effects. And it’s not that I am not interested. It’s just that that does not make me want to write.
Have you ever tried to—?
A lot of pop and rock comes about because the people who write it are the people who sing and play it. I am not a performer. That’s just not my temperament; that’s not the way I was brought up. We do what we did in our childhood. We like what we like. My whole generation doesn’t write pop or rock. And I think of Burt Shevelove’s phrase about—I’m just debating whether—O.K., I’ll say it. When Burt heard Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass,” which has a whole rock section: “Rip Van With-It.” [Laughs.]
So that’s the fear?
Yeah. I don’t want to be that. And then Jule Styne trying to put it in “Hallelujah, Baby!”—it’s just embarrassing. It’s not in their blood, you know?
I just don’t want to fall into that trap of writing something that doesn’t come from what I want to write but what I think I ought to write. And that’s the lesson any creative artist has to learn.
This feeling weighs on you, though.
All the time. And it holds me back, because I think I’m gonna be a fool in public. I remember making fun of Victor Herbert and Rudolf Friml with my father. . . . My father loved operettas, and I’m, like, “C’mon! This old-fashioned shit!” I still think it’s old-fashioned shit, but nevertheless. Now I’m old-fashioned shit!
How do you push those doubts away when you’re writing?
I don’t. I mean, they’re there all the time.
“Company” had a very au-courant feel to it.
Yeah. It had a soft-rocky feel, but only really in the opening number.
But also culturally. In “Company,” you brought news to people about the culture that they were currently living in.
I was just writing about the generation of people I knew. Actually, I was really writing about the people George Furth knew. He was pretty close to my age, but he came from a whole other culture, California culture. I came from, you know, New York, upper-middle-class culture. And those combined. But the attitude of “Company” is very much George, because it’s all built on his little plays . . . and I’m imitating him. That’s what I do best: imitate the playwright.
So there is always a book for you before you even begin writing the songs?
Not necessarily. In the case of George, yes, there were these little playlets. But in all the other cases, or almost all of them, it’s sitting with a book writer, and then the book writer writes a scene or two, and I get the flavor of the dialogue and the flavor of the characters. We discuss them—I know who they are—but until your version of that character and his version of that character are the same character it could be quite different in tone, because you’re different writers. So I wait, and I do what an actor does: I get into the character. By the time I get through, I know the character better than the author does, because I’ve looked at every sentence the author has written and quite often questioned them.
And in the case of the Buñuel—
We are making up our own characters based on the Buñuel characters. But the thing is, Buñuel doesn’t have characters, and he doesn’t have plot, which is why we are having difficulty. But David Ives is creating characters based on those. I mean, we have talked about the characters at great length between us, but he is the one who sits down and writes the sentences that I start to play with. . . . The worst mistake you can make, in a collaboration, is writing different musicals.
What’s the closest that’s ever come to happening?
Oh, gosh . . . “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” We wrote it, and then I decided to show it to Jim Goldman, the one who wrote “Follies.” He was just somebody I knew and respected, and we were friends. So I gave it to him and played it for him. He said, “I think the book is really wonderful. The score is really elegant.” And I said, “Oh, that’s good.” I said to him that I had this awful feeling in my stomach. I said that I guessed I was just being neurotic, and he said, “No, it’s not neurotic. There’s a real problem. The book and score don’t go together. Burt and Larry have written a very high-class low comedy, and you have written an elegant salon score, and they have nothing to do with each other.” These are not exact quotes, but he was right. And we got out-of-town shows, and it was terrible for a while, and part of it was exactly what he talked about.
What was the solution?
The solution was getting Jerry Robbins in. I had written two opening numbers—I wrote one number that was probably just right for the score, but [the director] George Abbott said that he couldn’t hum it. So that was the end of that. [Sighs.] And so then I wrote another song called “Love Is in the Air,” which was lighthearted, airy, and filled with little puns, and chock with charm—and the show was a disaster. So Jerry Robbins came down at my behest, and said, “You gotta write a number for the opening. The audience thinks they’re going to be in for a lighthearted, light comedy, instead of which it’s a baggy-pants musical. You gotta write one with baggy pants.” And I played the first one for him, and he said, “That’s the right one!” And I said, “Well, George won’t have it.” And he said, “Then, Steve, write another one!”
That’s a very important lesson in show biz. Many a show has tripped over the fact that people hate to be wrong. Anyway, I wanted Jerry to say, “You’re right, George Abbott is wrong, I’m going to tell him.” All he said was, “Write another one, Steve—and don’t write any jokes. I’ll do the jokes. Just write an opening number that says folks are gonna watch a baggy-pants show, and I’ll stage it, and I’ll do the jokes. No jokes, Steve!” And, boy, was he right. It made the show a hit overnight.
Returning to Buñuel: How do you create characters if there are no characters?
They are slightly defined by the situation. They represent a certain aspect of society. That’s why we call it “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.” These are our own versions. These are the American versions of the French bourgeoisie—you know, the movers, moneyed people, people in power. Power is too big a word, but people who move society. The social animals. The well-off. We have fashioned them after certain people who are in the newspapers.
And what’s the conflict?
Good question. There isn’t any. That’s the problem with Buñuel: there never is. What we’re hoping to do is—it’s a ship of fools. We’re hoping the audience gets involved with their tribulations. And, also, unlike the Buñuel movies, it is funny. And that is one of the things these readings have proved. So it’s exciting. Different tone to the movie, and certainly a different tone than the opera.
Are you sorry this is what you’re working on? Or do you still feel like it’s the right thing?
Well, I don’t know. I don’t want to say, because it will come out in print, and it won’t look good. . . . I don’t know. I can’t tell how much is me, how much is the project, how much is age, and how much is general. . . .
But if I happened to be here on a day after you had done something that worked for you—
I’d probably be in a different mood, yeah. I wouldn’t be giddy, but I wouldn’t be depressive about it.
So you’re working on songs at the beginning of the second act now?
Yeah, I write in order. I’ve just finished the first song of the second act, and I’m halfway through the second song. Just plodding ahead.
When you are doing that, when you’re creating, do you sit at the piano?
I try to write away from the piano, because when you’re at the piano you get limited by your own technique—not to mention muscle memory. Your fingers fall in the same patterns that they’ve fallen into before, then you’re writing the same chords, and the same accompaniment figures—that’s the problem. And I have a very fleet right hand, and a lox left hand. So I try to write away from the piano, on music paper, and then go to the piano and check it. And quite often I’ll say, “Oh, that was not what I was thinking of,” and I’ll fiddle at the piano.
If you’re trying to establish a musical mood, I’ll go and noodle at the piano, just noodle, and sometimes come up with something in the way of figure or a harmonic progression that seems like it’s the right feeling. If I know what the song is going to be—quite often it will start with either a title or an idea that can be compressed into a few words, but they tend to come together at the same time. Or often I will write a lyric and write notes at the same time, without knowing exactly what the notes are, but knowing that this note is going to be higher over this word, and this word will have a higher note than that word: this one is going to be “ba-dum-bum,” and this one is going to be “bum-ba-dum-dum,” or whatever. I write little notations, the melodic rhythms.
That’s very useful, to know what the rhythm is going to be, because that helps propel the contours of the melody. And that is another thing: because I write very conversational lyrics—I mean, that’s what I like to do, that’s what I’m trained to do—inflection is what makes the music. In-flec-tion. That word is going to be “ba-dum-bum.” It’s not a big “ba-dum-bum.” So the inflection will dictate the contours and the rhythm of the tune.
And do you hear, in your head, a B-flat as a B-flat?
No. I hear the notes relative to each other. If I hear this note, and then that note, I know this one is a third below that one. That’s another thing, too, at the piano. When I write at the piano, I try to write in a key I haven’t written in in a long while. Because, if you’re writing in B-flat all the time, you’ll write the same progressions.
And that’s what you were trying to do this morning?
I was trying to make a modulation into something. I was writing in A major, which I haven’t written in in a long time. And then I had an idea for how that all could relate the whole thing to F minor. . . . It’s a relative minor of A-flat major. What I am essentially doing is going from A major to A-flat, which is a halftone away, which is an odd progression, but there is a relationship between them, because A major contains G-sharp and E. And if you change E to an F, suddenly, guess what? You have A-flat and F. So with a half-step change in the melody or, in this case, in an inner voice, you have gone from China to England—you’ve gone really far away, from one key to another. I said, “Ooh, that’s darling! That’s nice!”
To put it into the language of how we actually hear music, what would be the emotional implications of that modulation?
Oh, c’mon. You don’t get real emotional implications from just a modulation. It’s a surprise.
I just didn’t know you talked this way!
I talk to myself this way! I am a trained musician. I’ve always been interested in what Milton Babbitt called tonicization—what other people call modulation. But what he says, which is actually a little bit more accurate—he’s saying, “You’ve gotta tonicize something new.” So here you are in the tonic of A major, and now you’re going to the tonic of A-flat. It seems like an academic distinction, but it lays out the path more clearly if you think of it that way: that you’re temporarily making a tonic out of a completely foreign key.
Would you use it for a surprise?
That’s what it’s about. What it’s about is making things surprising, but inevitable. That’s the great principle of all art that takes place in time. That can be true in painting, which does not take place in time, but, you know: “Goodness gracious! What is that red spot in the middle of this blue painting?!”
But you have the additional, particular burden or blessing of having words that go along with it—
Yes. But you do the same thing with words.
Is there an example from one of your earlier musicals where you did something like this?
I do little bits of this all the time. Well, “Too Many Mornings” does this, in “Follies.” When I wrote it, it began in B major, and ended in F major, which is as far away as you can get tonally. And nobody has ever noticed it. It sounds like it begins and ends the way all songs begin and end—in the same key. And the F, which doesn’t belong in the key of B major, occurs very early on in a chord. But Milton taught me those principles of how you pair things around, so when it does land for the audience it’s both surprising and inevitable, because you lodged a little thing at the back of their heads. But, you know, that’s all technique.
Technique is interesting!
Well, it is if you’re interested in technique. I am! Sheepshearing: I want to know exactly how you take the wool off. I love the details of technique—of art in particular, but also anything, any craft. I don’t know how people figure out how to do things. . . . But the point is, any art is a matter of a hundred thousand little decisions you make. And that’s called technique: the principle behind the decisions.
How do you divide up your day when you have a whole day?
I try to work. And if not—I am a very slow reader, so it takes me a long time to read the Times.
Do you read the whole thing?
I read the news. I’m always interested in international news and New York City news. I read the arts section. And I read the obits, because I want to see what everyone died of. [Laughs.] I don’t read sports. I look at the headlines of the business, to see if there is anything in there that interests me.
Do you think about death a lot?
Mm-hmm, all the time.
What do you think about it?
I think it’s a bourn from which no traveller returns.
Do you have a way of conceptualizing it?
No, no. It’s the usual thing. I don’t mind dying. I just hate—I just don’t want it to be uncomfortable. And I don’t want it to be prolonged.
So you fear losing your skills more than—
Yes. That and pain. So many deaths are so unpleasant. Dying is so unpleasant. But I do think about it.
And do you worry about not finishing this work because—
No.
Are there other ideas waiting in the wings for you?
No, no. I rarely have something in the future, unless it is an obligation for a company or something like that. I’m usually dragged into work. Occasionally, I’ve had my own ideas.
Which ones are your own?
“Sweeney” was one. “Passion” was one. Together [with Lapine], “Sunday in the Park” was one. When we finally got the idea, we were both eager to write it. And “Company” was also one.
That was your idea, but—
It was Hal’s suggestion to make it a musical. George had written these plays; he had never written before. There was an actual meeting in New York with John McMartin, Ron Leibman, and, I think, Kim Stanley. And George said, “The producers aren’t moving.” I said, “Well, my friend Hal Prince will know what to do.” So I sent him to Hal, and Hal said, “You know what I think? I think they should be made into a musical.” So he was the producer, and he got George in from California. We sat and we talked and made it into a musical. Oh, and “Follies,” again, was something Jim Goldman and I cooked up.
But “Sweeney,” if I’m hearing right—is it fair to say that was the most purely you?
Well, I had to persuade people, that’s all. Hugh [Wheeler, the book writer] didn’t require much persuasion. Hal did. He only wanted to do big productions, ’cause he liked to show off his skills. I wanted it to be intimate and scary. But I wanted Hal, so I thought, It can always be done small, and if Hal wants to do it big then let’s do it big and see if it works.
What is the first song you wrote for that? Did you begin at the beginning?
Yeah, the very beginning.
Sondheim with Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Laurents on September 26, 1957, opening night for “West Side Story.”Photograph by Ben Martin / Getty
My son used to go around singing “The Barber and His Wife.” It’s got the word “shit” in it, you know.
I deliberately did that. I always wanted to be the first person to use a four-letter word on the musical stage. That’s why [in “West Side Story”] I wrote, “Gee, Officer Krupke, fuck you!” And one of the co-producers practically fainted when she heard me play it.
Oh, it originally had “fuck you” in it?
Yeah. So I had to change it.
You’ll be pleased to know that my kids sing it with “fuck you.”
Well, they’re right!
The music here—this is actually your draft?
Yeah. What happens is, I write them out in pencil, like so. Then it goes to the copyist. . . . This is what I was working on—this harmonic transition.
Oh, it is thrilling to see this. It’s all so abstract till you—
It is, yeah! Until you hear it. So I am filling out the melodic line. I don’t always do this, but because I think I know where I’m going I’m doing that. And I follow it with the harmony. I’m just sketching in the harmony now.
And this is the first song of the second act of the Buñuel?
Act II, Scene 1. That’s the way that happens.
What in this room inspires you?
The pillows! [Laughs.] Nothing, nothing. Just the room itself is terrific. The problem is that it’s distracting, because you look out—see, the great thing in New York is that there’s nothing to look at. Lenny Bernstein had a twelve-room apartment, and he wrote in a room about twice the size of this. Looked out at an alley. It had no light. It had some homemade bookshelves—not even good ones. A bar. A coffee table. A couch. An easy chair, and a piano. And that was it. No distractions. . . . That is the only thing I regret: that this is so pleasant.
Sourse: newyorker.com
