Sunday, January 10, 2010

Pajama Guy Gets Results!!!

From "The Master," posted on this blog March 22, 2005:

Sondheim grew up next door to his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein. He said he learned more in a day with Hammerstein than he could learn in a year on his own. I remember years ago reading an essay (which I can't find on the internet) Sondheim wrote about lyric-writing that taught me more in a sitting than I could have learned in a year on my own.

I'd like him to write two books. First, an instruction book telling us everything he knows about creating musicals. He put so much into a short essay that a full-length work would be astonishing. Second, an autobiography--it'd be great to hear his take on a career that starts in the heyday of the integrated musical and comes up to, well, the age of Sondheim (or Andrew Lloyd Weber--you call it).

Now we get this in The New York Times:

And yet for an artist long admired for breaking new ground with composition form and incisive, nuanced lyrics, the new approach has also been stimulating. While he is now completing a two-volume book on theater and lyric writing, Mr. Sondheim said, he is not content simply to be a custodian for his shows or fly all over the world putting seals of approval on directors’ rethinking of his works.

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