My musical sensibilities have been shaped by Sondheim far more than by any other artist. I’m certain that I’ve listened to his music far more than anybody else’s.
His death today has made it impossible for me to think of anything else.
So many songs run through my head. But when it came time to choose just two to share, I gravitated to these:
This song from ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ isn’t just gorgeous on its own. But its poignancy is increased geometrically because it heightens the unspoiled idealism of the three friends meeting for the first time on a rooftop while looking to catch a glimpse of Sputnik. Since the play takes place in reverse chronological order, we have seen how these lives have been filled with disappointment, cynicism and defeat, plus ‘success’ that’s not really success. Here, at the end of the show, we hear them at the start of their journey, when the sky, featuring Sputnik, was still the limit:
Some people consider this one of Sondheim’s most autobiographical songs, but I think that Sondheim had something deeper in mind. It’s a song about how an artist’s obsession with perfectionism leaves little in their life for anything else. But, at the end, the creation of the ‘hat’ is a joyous accomplishment. I saw ‘Sunday In The Park with George’ twice. First, with the original cast on Broadway featuring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. The second time was at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, just a stone’s throw from the Chicago Institute Of Art, where I had viewed ‘Sunday Afternoon On The Isle Of La Grande Jatte’, Seurat’s masterwork, earlier the same day:
