Stephen Sondheim Chats About Influences, Opera and 'Night Music'

Stephen Sondheim chatted with Mark Stryker of the Detroit Free Press about a wide variety of topics including his musical language, his favorite classical composers and how he feels about opera companies performing his work. Click here for the full interview.  

Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics for Bounce (2003), Passion (1994), Assassins (1991), Into the Woods (1987), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Merrily We Roll Along (1981), Sweeney Todd (1979), Pacific Overtures (1976), The Frogs (1974), A Little Night Music (1973), Follies (1971, revised in London, 1987), Company (1970), Anyone Can Whistle (1964), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), as well as lyrics for West Side Story (1957), Gypsy (1959), Do I Hear A Waltz? (1965), and additional lyrics for Candide (1973). Side by Side by Sondheim (1976), Marry Me A Little (1981), You're Gonna Love Tomorrow (1983), and Putting It Together (1992) are anthologies of this work as a composer and lyricist.

For films, he composed the scores of Stavisky (1974) and Reds (1981) and songs for Dick Tracy (1990), for which he won an Academy Award. He also wrote songs for the television production "Evening Primrose" (1966), co-authored the film The Last of Sheila (1973) and the play Getting Away With Murder (1996), and provided incidental music for the plays The Girls of Summer (1956), Invitation to a March (1961), and Twigs (1971).

He won Tony Awards for Best Score for a Musical for Passion, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, A Little Night Music, Follies, and Company. All of these shows won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, as did Pacific Overtures and Sunday in the Park with George , the latter also receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1985).

Mr. Sondheim was born in 1930 and raised in New York City. He graduated from Williams College, winning the Hutchinson Prize for Music Composition, after which he studied theory and composition with Milton Babbitt. He is on the Council of theDramatists Guild, the national association of playwrights, composers, and lyricists, having served as its president from 1973 to 1981, and in 1983 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1990 he was appointed the first Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University and in 1993 was a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.