Sondheim Rips the Great Lyricists

[JSngry]

Did I say that? Don't think so...

[Christiern]

I think many of Sondheim's songs suffer from pretentiousness. I would honestly prefer sings like If Your Phone Don't Ring, it's Me or One More Beer and I'll Go Home.

[Larry Kart]

Did I say that? Don't think so...

You're right, Jim. I misinterpreted/mis-remembered the final sentence from this of yours yesterday (in response to my quoting and commenting on two Dietz lyrics):

'And anyway, "play of sound and accent"...what does that mean exactly? To me it implies a linguistic ploy, and what if the language being used is no longer widely spoken? Or what of people who never really spoke that language in the first place?'

to mean that perhaps people back then never spoke that way, rather than what you said -- that back then some "people ... never really spoke that language in the first place."

Remedial Reading class for me.

[JSngry]

No dude, you're just getting old and forgetting stuff. Happens to me hourly.

On good days...

[seeline]

But, Seeline, when you posted the "I Remember" lyrics, though you did say they needed to be heard with the music to have their full effect, it was in a context within this thread where you were implying (or so it seemed to me) that you thought they also were quite beautful. Now you're saying that within the context of the show for which they were written, they're supposed to be taken as archly poetic? (which it me doesn't jibe with beautiful). I don't get it.

I'd already said that most of Sondheim's lyrics are very context-dependent; that they're all of a piece with the show. (book, libretto.) I think that's one reason why very few of them work out of context.

Go back a page or so and check. (I also noted the title of the show in the post with the lyrics, so people could check if they wanted to.)

The thing is, most people (at least most people over a certain age) are already familiar with the basic plot outlines of, say Gypsy and West Side Story, even if they haven't seen the shows. A lot of people can i.d. songs as coming from either one or the other.

But... those songs are extremely plot-and character-driven, already. Sondheim's work (and that of people who've followed him, like Adam Guettel and Micahel John LaChiusa) becomes even more so.

I 1st heard one of the ballads from Sweeney Todd without knowing anything more than the broadest outlines of the show. I was very surprised when I heard it in context. (For one, it's not sung as a ballad there, but that's only the beginning.)

Sondheim writes for the theater - and it's not theater with simplistic plotlines (as in the heyday of the Gershwin brothers). There aren't stock characters anymore, so the lyrics are tailored (well or poorly) to who is singing them.

But you probably knew that already.

Edited November 15, 2010 by seeline

[JSngry]

Sondheim writes for the theater - and it's not theater with simplistic plotlines (as in the heyday of the Gershwin brothers). There aren't stock characters anymore, so the lyrics are tailored (well or poorly) to who is singing them.

Should we then consider that Sondheim should not be judged in terms of "popular song", since that is no longer the mien in which he is deigned himself to be working?

I'm ok with that myself. It relieves a lot of people of a lot of responsibilities that they'd probably be happier not having.

[seeline]

My guess is that his show "Passion" is probably going to be in opera rep. eventually, just like Bernstein's "Candide." (Cheap to stage - just 3 principals - but demanding to perform!)

But... he often writes for specific performers (like Bernadette Peters). So he probably is limiting himself somewhat in consideration of the vocal range of those performers. But he does seem to like to use classically-trained singers, too...

I think his shows (and some by other composers, like Guettel and LaChiusa) are really meant to be about as "high culture" as Broadway gets. (Not opera, not operetta, but something similar to both.) One of LaChiusa's shows was killed after about 40 performances because the lead could only sing 6 performances a week instead of 8 - and that lead was Audra McDonald. (See "Down with Love" clip I posted on pg. 2.) If that show (Marie Christine) was staged by an opera company, they'd probably need to have 2 alternate leads, so that nobody would (hopefully!) have to take a day off because of overtaxed vocal cords.

And i'm not sure why anyone would need to be absolved of responsibility. He has a different approach to musicals than most composers and librettists. I kind of doubt he's writing anything with a "pop standard" approach...

Edited November 15, 2010 by seeline

[seeline]

Sondheim takes his playbook (or his starting point - likely both are valid descriptions) from Rodgers and Hammerstein.

"Oklahoma!" changed things - a lot. And other composers/lyricists/librettists (Lerner and Loewe, Meredith Willson) were among those who joined in. (Kander and Ebb, too - also Michael Bennett, with "A Chorus Line" - more in terms of book and characterization than song form, though.)

There are always going to be people willing to write Broadway hits like "Mame," "Grease" and "Hairspray."

People like Sondheim, Guettel (who is a Rodgers, btw), Ricky Ian Gordon et. al. are probably not as plentiful, nor will they ever be.

Edited November 15, 2010 by seeline

[AllenLowe]

"What does that mean, in a totally objective sense? "

it means:

they are forced and awkward (see google translation for further info)

[JSngry]

"What does that mean, in a totally objective sense? "

it means:

they are forced and awkward (see google translation for further info)

Exactly.

They mean nothing w/o a point of reference, which ideally should included not just "other examples", but other examples of similar material written for similar situations & similar characters that are decidedly not forced and awkward, and for bonus points, should work towards proving that "forced" and "awkward" are not at least some part of the point.

Your move, with or without Google.

[AllenLowe]

give me a break. Silly stuff, Jim, that's not an argument but another day in Speech Class.

Edited November 15, 2010 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

You're right, there's no argument here, just a general statement of general opinion-as-fact, which would be ok if stipulated to as such, but to this point hasn't been.

[skeith]

It ain't "he got the house and he got the garden, and their hearts began to harden,"

Assuming that the house/garden metaphors were intended as suggested earlier, why the condescending tone? It's a metaphor to which many people can relate to their own life experience, probably at least as many as can relate to "The starless night were not in vain"...that it's not "artfully constructed" assumes that it is even concerned with working the same "technical" turf as Dietz/Schwartz, which I seriously doubt is the case.

That it for whatever reason "should" be so concerned is a conceit which I do not share. This specific instance is hardly a "glorious" example, but I have a very difficult time justifying why anybody "should" strive for one mode of expression over the other, especially when somebody is communicating effectively to/with whom they are attempting to communicate about that which they are attempting to communicate. I have an even greater time assuming "superiority" when I myself may very well not be able to communicate effectively with that target/group/audience/whatever.

What I have no difficulty in saying is that my wife enjoys gardening, that my heart would have to ready be very hardened for me to even try to take that from her, and that if I did, her heart would be irrevocably hardened, and that, yes, that would be a pretty damn sad thing to have happen, no matter how you express it, the bottom line is that it would pretty much suck as hard as anything could suck.

There's an infinite number of ways to express that, but none of them would make it suck any less.

Jim -- How you can't see that both "By Myself" and "Alone Together" are powerfully about aloneness baffles me. It makes me wonder whether we can even continue to talk about this stuff, though of course we can and will continue to talk about a whole lot of other things.

I'm kind of baffled, too, about your use of the phrase "linguistic ploy," as though constructing a song in which the interplay of words and music, sound, sense, and accent, were some kind of elitist lifted-pinky game. Surely it's quite common in music in general, and in jazz in particular, to set up a framework of structural expectations (harmonic, rhythmic, etc.) such that a deviation from those expectations give a particular phrase or note a meaning that comes in part from its novel "position" within that structure, a meaning different from what it would have had otherwise. That's what I'm talking about.

In particular, and you do know those songs, here's where some the accents fall at key moments "By Myself" and "Alone Together":

I'll face the unknown,

I'll build a world of my own;

No one knows better than I, myself,

I'm by myself alone.

Alone together the blinding rain

The starless night were not in vain

For we're together and what is there

to fear together

And we can weather the great unknown

If we're alone [pause] together

Surely you can see, for example, that the enforced pause between "alone" and "together" in the final line of the song gives that final repetition of the title phrase a new darker meaning, one that is set up above by the chime between "we're" and "fear."

As for your "Words don't mean a whole helluva lot. Sentiments do, a little bit more..." forgive me if I mention the famous conversation between Degas and Mallarme, as related by Paul Valery:

"[Degas] told me that, dining one day...with Mallarme, he gave vent to his feelings about the agonies of poetic composition. 'What a business!' he lamented. 'My whole day gone on a blasted sonnet, without getting an inch further.... And all the same, it isn't ideas I'm short of ... I'm full of them... I've got too many....'

"'But Degas,' said Mallarme ... 'you can't make a poem with ideas... You make it with words.'

Go tell the shade of Lockjaw that his solo on "Whirlybird" was made of sentiments, but its notes "don't mean a whole helluva lot..." Sure -- Jaws, and you and I and everyone and his uncle know about and feel the sentiments, but the actual notes matter immensely, no?

As for my condescending tone about "he got the house and he got the garden, and their hearts began to harden," I have no problem with the house-garden metaphor or with the sentiment, but its verbal expression seems awfully clunky to me, rhythmically and otherwise. And if you're going to do a "but that's the way plain people talk" number, I think you'll be under-rating so-called plain people terribly. No, they may not talk in the same way Howard Dietz's lyrics do, but Johnny Cash's

I keep a close watch on this heart of mine

I keep my eyes wide open all the time

I keep the ends out for the tie that binds

Because you're mine, I walk the line"

or the lyric of Patsy Cline's "Crazy"

Crazy, I'm crazy for feelin' so lonely,

I'm crazy, crazy for feelin' so blue...

I knew, you'd love me as long as you wanted,

And then someday, you'd leave me for somebody new.

Worry, why do I let myself worry?

Wonderin', what in the world did I do?

Oh, crazy, for thinkin' that my love could hold you...

I'm crazy for tryin' and crazy for cryin'

And I'm crazy for lovin' you.

or Clarence Ashley's version of "The Coo-Coo Bird"

Gonna build me a log cabin

On a mountain so high

So I can see Willie

As he goes passing by.

Oh, the coo-coo, she’s a pretty bird

She wobbles as she flies

She never says coo-coo

Till the fourth day of July.

I’ve played cards in England

I’ve played cards in Spain

I’ll bet you ten dollars

I beat you next game.

Jack-a-Diamonds, Jack-a-Diamonds

I’ve known you from old

You’ve robbed my poor pocket

Of my silver and my gold.

My horses ain’t hungry

They won’t eat your hay

I’ll drive on a little further

I’ll feed ‘em on my way.

are crafted IMO in ways that "he got the house and he got the garden, and their hearts began to harden" are not. Craft does matter, even though styles of craft obviously vary a great deal. "Obstacles ... prompt despair in some, while they only convince others that there is something beyond."

Of course you know that Willie Nelson wrote "Crazy"

[Larry Kart]

Yes, I know who wrote "Crazy." My reference was to Cline because her recording was very fresh in my mind.

[seeline]

Just to wind this up...

Do I think Sondheim is a "pop" songwriter/lyricist?

Yes and no; it depends on which show is being referenced. I think some of his shows are a hybrid of opera and Broadway musical, while others are closer to opera. (IIRC, at least one major US opera company has staged "Sweeney Todd"; there are probably other things in his rep that will be taken on by opera companies, given time.)

Do I like the song "I Remember" - as well as its companion piece, "Take Me to the World"?

Yes, I do. The right kind of performance can make the objections about the lyrics pretty irrelevant.

All that said, I can see why some people might not like the lyrics (and the melodies), but the "why" of that seems - to my mind - like a different discussion. (One about the merits or lack thereof of Sondheim's skill as a lyricist and, sometimes, composer - he still works with others on occasion.)

If that discussion happens, I'd think it fairest to start with some of his earlier work, like the lyrics for "Gypsy."

Edited November 16, 2010 by seeline

[medjuck]

I saw the original (panned by critics) production of Pacific Overtures and was knocked out. But then saw A Little Night Music and was bored shitless. Who wrote lyrics for One Touch of Venus? Ogden Nash? SJ Pearlman? Saw a concert production. Sondheim's never written anything that clever. Or as good as "there is a crack in everything -- that's where the light gets in". Though this is not original with Leonard Cohen. Where do he and Warren Zevon fit in here?

[seeline]

Ogden Nash? SJ Pearlman? Saw a concert production. Sondheim's never written anything that clever.

Ogden Nash, and i tend to agree with you.

Edited November 16, 2010 by seeline

[AllenLowe]

I'm an Irving Caesar man myself.

[AllenLowe]

I actually think you guys need to spend more time with TS Elliot than with Sondheim. Now THERE's a lyricist (not to mention fellow traveler, anti-semite Ezra Pound). There's more to be learned about language from these guys then you'll pick up on the internet.

then check out Dorothy Scarborough and Howard Odum.

Edited November 16, 2010 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

"alone with the sound of my voice..........................."

[AllenLowe]

Hello, I must be going

I cannot stay

I came to say

I must be going

I'm glad I came

But just the same

I must be going

Edited November 16, 2010 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

Today, father, is father's day,

And we're giving you a tie.

It's not much we know,

It's just our way of showing you

We think you are a regular guy.

You say that it was nice of us to bother.

But it really was a pleasure to fuss,

For according to our mother,

You are our father,

And that's good enough for us.

Edited November 16, 2010 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

Aw, man Oh, Hitler had Ava Braun,

Manson had Squeaky Fromm,

Ted Bundy got lots of dates,

I wonder what I'm doing wrong.

I don't pretend to understand women's little quirks

Just one thing I know for sure - chicks dig jerks, yeah.

Well, if I meet one more single mom

Whose true love is up and gone

Tells me on her trailer porch

'Bout that man

Still carries a torch,

Sure, he came home drunk each night

Beat the kids and her in a fight,

But, man, she loves him so,

It's so hard to let him go, aw.

Well, I don't pretend to understand women's little quirks,

Just one thing I know for sure - chicks dig jerks.

Well, I'm sure there's some out there who can relate,

Particularly young men without a date

See some jerk, some fine, fine babe,

Go driving away, aw.

Well, is that a new bruise you got on you?

What does it say, that he loves you?

Sure he beats you, but afterwards he cries, "Oh, baby, I could die."

Honey, I don't think that's nothing to be proud of,

I think it's called alcoholism

I don't think you should move away,

Stay with him till you're in your grave, yeah.

"You're so sweet."

"Can't we just be friends?"

"I think of you as a brother."

Aw, man. You're hurting me.

What do I have to offer you, baby?

Poetry and true love.

That's not enough, I know for sure,

You need someone to throw you through the door.

Well, I don't pretend to understand women's little quirks.

Just one thing I know for sure-chicks dig jerks!

Chicks dig jerks, it's so true.

Tell you, man, be mean to 'em man, they'll never leave you, then,

'Cause chicks dig jerks.

Just ignore 'em.

Act like they're not there.

Man, you're gonna be pulling chicks out of your hair.

They love that.

Act like you don't care,

Aw, look at them everywhere, they come running.

Tired of being a good guy Such a lonely life.

I'm gonna be a jerk Yeah, that's right, I'm gonna step on lots of toes.

Whoo, girls gonna go crazy for that kind of guy.

Baby, I'm gonna act like I don't know you.

Not gonna return one of your calls.

Yeah, I'm a jerk And it's working out.

[AllenLowe]

My Aunt Minnie bought a mini-skirt,

A mini-skirt,

A mini-skirt.

She's too skinny for a mini-skirt.

Such a skinny creature

Shouldn't feature such a feature

But my old Aunt Minnie bought a mini-skirt

And all the fellas flirt.Everybody's wise

To my Aunt Minnie's thighs

In her crazy mini-skirt.

She's thinking young,

She's thinking young.

She's thinking younger than the youngters she's among.

She's really cool, she's hip,

A gas, a trip.She's the inspiration

or the Pepsi generation.

And she popped up later at a pop art show

A pop art show,

A pop art show.

What's she doin' at a pop art show?Trading her Utrillo

For a plastic box of Brillo

For a painting of a can of lentil soup

She traded her Van Gogh

Then she took all her popAnd traded it for op

At that crazy pop art show.

She's thinking young,

She's thinking young.

She's thinking younger than the youngters she's among.

She's really cool, she's hip,

A gas, a trip.She went to a happening

(And didn't know what's happening.)

And then she go-goed at a discotheque,

A discotheque,

A discotheque.

Uncle Morris was a nervous wreck.

Poor old Uncle Morris

Only lasted half a chorus.But when Minnie go-goed at that discotheque,

The kids picked up her check.

Why they could hardly look

At how Aunt Minnie shook.

First they saw her do

Her wicked boogaloo,

And then they saw her swing

Her shaky shing-a-lingAt that crazy discotheque.

[AllenLowe]

Shine On, Harvey Bloom

My name is Mr. Bloom, and I'm from New Rochelle,

And I sing this happy tune,

Because my son, the astronaut, young Harvey Bloom,

Has landed on the moon.

My wife and I, we miss our little Harvey so,

Back here in New Rochelle,

That every single night,

In the pale moonlight,

We walk out on the patio and yell:

Shine on, shine on, Harvey Bloom-- up in the sky.

You have been in orbit since January, February, June and July.

Don't come back too soon, we rented out your room.

So shine on, shine on, Harvey Bloom--

up there on the moon.

We'll miss you on the holidays, this year they're coming later.

We hope you have a very lovely seder in your crater.

Your mama sent the astronauts some chicken soup at school.

They're using it instead of rocket fuel.

If you like outer space, you oughta see your sister Janet.

She came in with a hairdo that is from another planet.

Your girl friend Shirley misses you, the Air Force says she had

A temper tantrum on the launching pad.

Shine on, shine on, Harvey Bloom-- up in the sky.

Under separate cover, I'm sending you some pickles and a corned beef on rye.

You brought Bromo Seltzer with you, I presume.

So shine on, shine on, Harvey Bloom.