Stephen Sondheim Interview (page: 5 / 9) Award-winning Composer and Lyricist	Print Interview

You've said writing is a matter of rewriting. It's interesting to read about the evolution of some of these shows, where songs are dropped, songs are added, and some of these songs that are dropped are great songs.

Stephen Sondheim: But that's part of the process, isn't it? Something might not fit in the show.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Musicals are -- particularly musicals -- plays also, but musicals particularly are... the last collaborator is your audience, and so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. And when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. Things that seem to work well -- work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece -- suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.

Is that a really important part of the process, being able to let go of some of your children?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Stephen Sondheim: That's something I learned from Oscar. He and Rodgers had written a ballad for Oklahoma! called "Boys And Girls Like You And Me," and they played it in the overture, and they sang it in the first act, and they did it in the entr'acte, and reprised in the second act. It was their big "plug" number to be a popular hit. And they dropped it in New Haven because it didn't serve the function in the show that it could, and that's ruthlessness, and I learned that from Oscar.

But sometimes you also have to write new songs for a show when it's already in previews out of town, don't you? Wasn't that the case with "Send in the Clowns" in A Little Night Music?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Stephen Sondheim: What happens is, when you're out of town or... yeah, out of town is what it amounts to -- although that one was written during rehearsals -- you know your cast well and you know their strengths and weaknesses, and you can start writing for them. Just the way Shakespeare wrote for his actors. And I've said it with heavy humor, that I really don't want to write a score until the whole show is cast and staged, because... that's why so many good songs get written out of town, and written fast, because you know exactly what's missing, you know exactly what has to work or happen, you know exactly who you're writing for, you know exactly what the audience is starting to feel. And so the more restrictions you have, the easier anything is to write, and when you're out of town and you're restricted by all those factors, it's much easier to write them than when you just have a tabula rasa and say, "Gee, we've got to have a love song here." You know, it's not the same thing.

You said "Send In The Clowns" was written during rehearsal, can you tell us how that came about?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Stephen Sondheim: We hired Glynis Johns to play the lead, though she had a nice little silvery voice. But I'd put all the vocal weight of the show on the other characters because we needed somebody who was glamorous, charming and could play light comedy, and pretty, and to find that in combination with a good voice is very unlikely, but she had all the right qualities and a nice little voice. So I didn't write much for her and I didn't write anything in the second act. And the big scene between her and her ex-lover, I had started on a song for him because it's his scene, and Hal Prince, who directed it, said he thought that the second act needed a song for her. And this was the scene to do it in. And so he directed the scene in such a way that even though the dramatic thrust comes from the man's monologue, and she just sits there and reacts, he directed it so you could feel the weight going to her reaction rather than his action. And I went down and saw it and it seemed very clear what was needed, and so that made it very easy to write. And then I wrote it for her voice, because she couldn't sustain notes. Wasn't that kind of singing voice. So I knew I had to write things in short phrases, and that led to questions, and so again, I wouldn't have written a song so quickly if I hadn't known the actress.

How long did it take to write?

Stephen Sondheim: I wrote most of it one night, and finished part of the second chorus and I'd gotten the ending. I don't remember. At any rate, the whole thing was done in two days.

Which came first, the lyrics or the music?

Stephen Sondheim: They come together, sure.

When you finished the song did you have a sense that you had done something amazing?

Stephen Sondheim: No. I didn't do anything amazing. I thought, "This is the kind of song that'll be played in boites -- supper clubs -- and that's all." By that time, hit songs did not come out of musicals. Pop-rock was creating the hits. There were very, very few songs that made the charts, in any way, out of any Broadway musical. There was no hit from Fiddler On The Roof. Hello, Dolly! may have been the only one. And so one didn't think in those terms. In the generation before me, the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, that's why they plugged the song, like in Oklahoma!, because popular hits came out of shows and movies. But this was no longer true, which was a great liberation because it meant you could write about anything.

You didn't have the pressure of writing a hit.

Stephen Sondheim: When I wrote "Small World," in Gypsy, Jule Styne, the composer, was very upset because he said, "This can only be sung by a woman, and my friend Frank needs a song." Sinatra. That's the way he thought, because he'd come from a generation in which you put the song in the musical, if it worked for the story, great, but the important thing was that it should get recorded.

So were you surprised when "Send In The Clowns" became the hit that it did?

Stephen Sondheim: Oh, completely. First of all, it wasn't a hit for two years. I mean, the first person to sing it was Bobby Short, who happened to see the show in Boston, and it was exactly his kind of song, he's a cabaret entertainer. And then my memory is that Judy Collins picked it up, but she recorded it in England. Sinatra heard it and recorded it. And between the two of them, they made it a hit.

What about Streisand?

Stephen Sondheim: Oh, that's many, many, many decades later. I don't listen to recordings of my songs. I don't avoid it, I just don't go out of my way to do it.

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