Sondheim Piano Sonata Analysis

Sondheim's Piano Sonata
Author(s): Steve Swayne

Source: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 127, No. 2 (2002), pp. 258-304
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical Association
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Journai ofthe Royal
Musical
Association, 127 (2002)
?
Royal
Musical Association
Sondheim's Piano Sonata
STEVE SWAYNE
In the autumn of
1949,
Stephen
Sondheim enrolled in Music
103,
the
first semester of the two-semester senior honours course in music at
Williams
College (in
northwestern
Massachusetts).
There were no
specific requirements
for the
course,
according
to the
college prospec-
tus for that
year,
other than
regular
consultation with the
supervisor
for music honours. In
essence,
Sondheim
began
a
programme
of inde?
pendent study
with Robert
Barrow,
then the
principal composition
teacher at Williams who had been
promoted
to full
professor
that
year.1
The 1956-7
college prospectus
contains the first mention of the
requirements
for the
degree
with Honors in Music. Barrow was chair
of the Music
Department
at the time.
In the senior
year history
candidates must submit a
thesis;
theory
candi-
dates a
composition
in one of the
larger
forms or a
group
of smaller works.
In both cases the first semester of senior
year
is
spent
in
preparation
of the
writing
of the thesis or
composition,
under
supervision
of one or more
members of the
department, meeting
twice
weekly.
The work of the second
semester consists
largely
of the actual
writing
of the thesis or
composition.2
Seven
years
before these
guidelines
were
issued,
Sondheim elected to
write for Barrow a
composition
in three of the
larger
forms: a
piano
sonata that uses
sonata,
extended
ternary
and rondo forms in its com?
pleted
movements.
The
continuity
between Sondheim's
early
musical
vocabulary
and his
mature musicals
emerges
more
clearly
in the
light
of the sonata.
Written when the winds of international musical fashion were
begin?
ning
to favour the Second Viennese
School,
the sonata
generously
employs
the
vocabulary
of Paul
Hindemith,
a
composer
whose influ?
ence on American
composers
has
yet
to be
fully
charted. What one
unexpectedly
discovers from the sonata is not
only
how
proficient
Sondheim was in this
vocabulary:
one also discovers hitherto unsus-
pected
concordances between the
sonata,
Sondheim's mature
works,
and the sound world and
compositional
aesthetics associated with
Hindemith.
Familiarity
with Sondheim's sonata
changes
the
way
I thank
Stephen
Sondheim for
making
his Williams
College
student
reports
available to me. I
thank Linda
Hall, archives assistant at Williams
College,
for her inestimable
help
in
researching
1
Sondheim went on to enrol in Music 104 in
spring
semester
1950,
completing
Music 103,
Music 104 and the Honors
programme
in Music
successfully.
Information about Robert Bar row
in this article comes from
papers
and
press
releases contained in the Robert
George
Barrow file
of the Williams
College
archives.
2
Williams
College
Bulletin
(March 1956),
146.
sondheim's piano sonata 259
scholars and
musicians,
classical and
popular
alike,
must talk about the
music of Sondheim's
maturity
and enriches our discussion of musical
America in the middle of the twentieth
century.
THE HISTORY OF THE SONATA
(AND
MUSIC AT
WILLIAMS)
The
scope
of Sondheim's
accomplishment
is best understood in the
context of the
emergence
of the
Department
of Music at Williams.
Before
1927,
Williams offered no academic courses in music. That
year,
the
Department
of the
History
of Art and Civilization
(renamed
the
Department
of Fine Arts in
1930)
offered the sole music course in the
Williams
curriculum,
a two-semester
'History
and
Appreciation
of
Music'. The
prospectuses give
the
impression
that this was a stolid work-
list
approach
to the Great Men of Music: Semester I went from Pal-
estrina to
Bach,
Semester II from Bach to 'the
present day'.
In
fact,
the
description
of the Fine Arts
major,
with its one music
course,
seems to
go
out of its
way
to exclude serious mention of music:
The
primary objective
is to
provide
a
sequence
of courses which will
acquaint
the student with the culture of the East and the West as it is
expressed
and as it
may
be evaluated in terms of the fine arts
throughout
the course of civilization. The
introductory
course
emphasizes
the
prin?
ciples
which form the basis for
design
and
expression
in the arts. The
major
is
planned
as a further
analysis
of these
principles
and as an introduction
to the fundamental
problems
of art
history
and criticism
through
the
study
of
significant
achievements in
architecture,
sculpture,
and
painting.3
In the autumn of
1939,
the
28-year-old
Barrow arrived at Williams. He
had earned three
degrees
from Yale
-
BA
(1932),
B.Mus.
(1933),
Mus.M.
(1934)
-
and was the
recipient
of the Ditson
Fellowship
for
Foreign Study
in 1934. The award enabled him to
study conducting
with Sir
Henry
Wood and
composition
with 'the
distinguished
com?
posers Ralph Vaughan
Williams and Paul Hindemith'. After his return
to the
USA,
he worked for four
years
as
organist
and director of the
choir school ofthe National Cathedral
(Episcopal)
in
Washington,
DC,
before
moving
to Williamstown. Barrow's hands-on
experience
with
choral and
organ
music and his
exposure
to continental culture would
be matched the
following year
when
Joaquin
Nin-Culmell,
a concert
pianist
who studied at the Paris
Conservatoire,
joined
the
faculty.
Barrow rose
rapidly
from assistant to full
professor
-
he held the rank
of associate
professor
for four
years
-
in
part
because of his ambition
and in
part
because of the
college's
needs. In
1940,
the Fine Arts
department
was renamed Fine Arts and Music. That same
year,
the
course
offerings
in music
grew
sevenfold to five
regular
two-semester
courses and two
year-long
honours courses for
juniors
and seniors
offered
by permission
of instructor. Seven
years
later,
the
department
was renamed
again,
from Fine Arts and Music to Art and Music.
Finally,
3
This
description appeared
in the Williams
College
Bulletin from 1937 to 1946, with the
exception
of 1943 and 1944.
260 STEVE SWAYNE
TABLE1
MUSIC THESES AT WILLIAMS
COLLEGE,
1943-60
year author/composer title/composition length
1943 Charles Gorham
Phillips
The
Jazz-Age
Isolationists' 108
pp. (text)
1946 Edwin Stube Slow Movement for
Organ
4
pp. (112 bars)a
1950
Stephen
Sondheim Piano Sonata in C
major,
1st 13+16
pp. (176
+ 171
bars);
and 3rd movements 2nd-movement sketch
(2 pp.,
32
bars) catalogued
in 2001
1951 William Farrar
Wynn
A Movement in Sonata Form 13
pp. (222 bars)a
1952
John Phillips
Seven Pieces for Piano 5 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 4
pp.
(84
+ 34 + 72 + 73 + 44 + 52 +
67
bars)a
1953 Alexander C. Post Sonata for
Organ,
1st 13
pp. (194 bars)a
movement
1954
John
T. Overbeck 'The
Bagatelle
and Beethoven' 89
pp. (text)
1955 Donald Robert Munroe Two Three-Part Inventions 3 + 3
pp. (24
+36
bars)a
Paterson for Piano
1957 Robert Kelton Goss Two Three-Part Inventions 3 + 4
pp. (30
+ 62 bars)a
for Pianoforte
1957 David
Gregg
Niven Two Three-Part Inventions 3 + 4
pp. (35
+ 57
bars)a
for Pianoforte
1958
Ridgway
M. Banks Sonata Form Movement for 17
pp. (96 bars)
Clarinet and Piano
1960
J.
Edward Brash
*
Regina by
Marc Blitzstein: 51
pp. (text)
An
Approach
to American
Opera'
1960 Robert
J.
Stern Rondo-Sonata for
String
11
pp. (184 bars)
Quartet
a
The author wishes to thank Ben Isecke of Williams
College
for his
help
in
determining
the total bar counts
of these works.
by
1950
-
the
year
Sondheim
graduated
-
the Music
Department
was
completely separate
from the Art
Department.
(In comparison,
Yale
University appointed
its first music instructor in 1855 and had elevated
music to the level of an academic
subject by 1890.)4
The
faculty
and administration
might
have had the Music
Depart?
ment on an even faster track but for the intervention of World War II.
In the 1943-4 and 1944-5
prospectuses
we read: There will be no Fine
Arts and Music
majors
for the duration because of the limited course
offerings
under war conditions/5 As a result the senior theses in music
during
the 1940s are small in number and scattered. Sondheim's
sonata,
in
fact,
was
only
the third senior thesis in music
produced
at
Williams,
so there were few established
departmental guidelines
and
fewer
precedents
for him to follow at the time.
How
exceptional
was Sondheim's decision to write a sonata becomes
somewhat clearer when we look at the theses that followed Sondheim's
(see
Table
1).
On either side ofthe 1956-7
departmental guidelines,
as
many
honours students chose to write a
*
composition
in one of the
4
See Allen Forte,
'Paul Hindemith's Contribution to Music
Theory
in the United
States',
Hindemithjahrbuch,
27
(1998), 62-79
(pp. 69-70).
5
Williams
College
Bulletin
(December 1943), 94; (December 1944),
51.
larger
forms' as
opted
to
compose
'a
group
of smaller works'. But with
only
one
composition
thesis
preceding
his own
-
Edwin Stube's rela-
tively
short G minor
organ voluntary
-
Sondheim's decision to write a
three-movement
piano
sonata was ambitious and idealistic.
Perhaps
his
struggle
to
complete
the work is reflected in the more modest honours
compositions
that were written after his own.
Beyond
Sondheim's
compositional
difficulties
lay practical
ones as
well: he could not
play
the sonata. While his chosen instrument was the
piano, by
the time he reached Williams he had abandoned whatever
aspirations
he
may
have had to become a virtuoso.6 His
preferred
venue for
performance
at Williams was the
theatre;
he wrote shows for
the Adams Memorial Theatre and
appeared
in non-musical
plays
during
his
years
there.7 The
technically demanding
sonata
lay beyond
his considerable abilities.8
Certainly
either Barrow or Nin-Culmell
could have
premiered
the
sonata,
had Sondheim set his
sights
on a
performance beyond
whatever
passable
account he himself could
give
for
anyone
who would listen.
Sondheim, however,
did not have
performance
in mind. Nor did he
seem to see
beyond
the narrow confines of the
assignment
at hand.
Unlike
nearly
all the other students whose
composition
theses are listed
in Table
1,
he worked on music
paper
rather than
reproducible
vellum
and submitted his
manuscript (presumably
his
only copy)
to the
college.
A
piano
sonata
-
a
genre
with two centuries of
history
and a
host of associations
adhering
to it
-
gave
Sondheim an
opportunity
to
show his skill in
controlling
his musical
language
over a
long expanse
of time without the benefit of words. In
many respects,
and in contrast
to the musicals he
composed
and
eagerly performed
at
Williams,
the
sonata was more of an academic musical exercise than an
expressive
artistic
pronouncement.
The
mystery surrounding
the sonata's second movement can also
lead to a
cursory
view of the entire work. Until November
2000,
the
Williams
College
archives had
only
the first and third movements of
Sondheim's sonata in its collection. When in
September
2000 I asked
Sondheim about the
missing
second
movement,
he
responded by
sending
a
two-page
sketch for it with instructions that it be shared with
the Williams archives.
(That sketch,
marked
'unfinished',
is now on file
at the
archives.)
In a
separate
letter,
Sondheim stated: T can't find the
6
Sondheim: 'I liked
playing
the
piano part
of the first movement of the Rachmaninoff C
minor
[concerto, op. 18],
which I
played
in
high
school, toured,
and
gave
recitals in
Pennsyl?
vania.' He also
played Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasy
and Ravel's Valses nobles et
sentimentales, the latter
'entirely
for
my
own
pleasure'.
Personal
correspondence,
20 November 2001.
7
Not until the 1967-8 Bulletin did the
following appear:
'It is
expected
that music
majors
will
participate
in at least one
department sponsored performance group during
their
junior
and
senior
years' (p. 153).
New York Yankees owner
George
Steinbrenner
may
reminisce about
singing
with Sondheim in the Williams
College
Glee Club, but Sondheim declares that he never
sang
in
the Glee
Club,
nor was he
required
to
participate
in
any organized
music ensemble while he was
a music
major
at Williams.
8
Sondheim: 'As for the Piano Sonata ... it's never been
performed.
And of course I knew
how difficult it was -1 was
writing theoretically
rather than
practically.'
Personal
correspondence,
19
January
2001.
262 STEVE SWAYNE
complete
second
movement,
even
though
I'm almost certain I finished
it -1 doubt Bob Barrow would have let me
get away
with an
incomplete
thesis.' But Linda
Hall,
archives assistant at Williams
College,
assever-
ated that there is no record of the archives'
having
received the second
movement and that it is
unlikely
that it has been misfiled or lost.9
Even without a second
movement,
Sondheim's thesis dwarfs
nearly
all the others in its immediate
vicinity
in extent and
scope.
The other
theory
students
may
have
expanded
their
single
movements into multi-
movement works at a later
time;
in their
cases,
one sonata movement
apparently
satisfied Barrow. In
contrast,
Sondheim
produced
at least
two and
maybe
all three movements while he was a
senior,
with all the
pressures every graduand
knows
-
and then some.
(In
his last
year
he
was
composing
what would have been his third Williams musical
-
High
Tor
-
but the
project
had to be abandoned when Maxwell Anderson
would not
give
Sondheim
permission
to
adapt
his
play.)
And where one
of the
completed
movements rather
slavishly
adheres to sonata
form,
another charts its course with almost reckless abandon.
The sonata continues to
occupy
a
shadowy
netherworld in Sond?
heim's
biography
and creative
persona.
It has never been
performed
in
public.
It is not scheduled for
publication.
It is never discussed as an
influential work. It
may
be close to
being forgotten.
However,
with the
recent
premiere
of another
early
instrumental work
-
the Concertino
for Two
Pianos,
orchestrated for chamber orchestra with
piano
obbli-
gato by Jonathan
Sheffer10
-
it is time to reassess the sonata for what it
reveals about Sondheim's
development
as a
composer.
THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE SONATA
The
physical manuscript
exhibits numerous
fascinating
features. For
example,
the two outer movements are
separately
bound,
a curious
decision that
may
be
explained
in
part by
the omission
(and expec-
tation?)
of the second movement. The
bindings
themselves differ in a
number of small details
that,
when taken
together, suggest
that the two
movements
may
have been bound at different times and
by
different
individuals.
One can also see that Sondheim took
greater
care in
planning
and
writing
the third movement than the first. The
manuscript
of the first
movement consists of five
four-page
folios,
with each folio
consisting
of
a front
page,
interior verso and recto
pages,
and a rear
page.
One folio
serves as a
wrapper;
Sondheim used die front
page
as a tide
page
and
enclosed within this folio the
remaining
four folios.
(He
has continued
9
Personal
correspondence
with Sondheim, 19
January
2001, and with Linda
Hall, 2
February
2001.
10
See
my
review of the
composition
and Sheffer's
arrangement,
'The Concertino: When the
Music Got Lost',
Sondheim
Review, 8/1 (summer 2001),
33. In his
programme
notes Sheffer mistak-
enly
identified the Concertino as Sondheim's senior thesis. More
recently (12 April 2002),
the
presenter
of a US National Public Radio broadcast introduced a
recording
of Sheffer's
perform?
ance with the statement that 'when
[Sondheim]
was in
college,
he wrote a sonata for two
pianos
as his senior thesis'.
sondheim's piano SONATA 263
to use the
folio-as-wrapper
method of
organizing
his
manuscripts.)
The
movement itself is written from folio to
folio,
giving
the
manuscript
the
following layout:
folio 1
-
wrapper:
tide
page
on front
page; empty
interior verso
page
folio
2-pp.
1-4 ofMS
folio
3-pp.
5-8ofMS
folio
4-pp.
9-12 ofMS
folio 5
-
p.
13 of MS on front
page;
all other
pages empty
folio 1
-
wrapper: empty
interior recto and rear
pages
This
arrangement
of consecutive foliation results in six blank manu?
script pages,
a
relatively
inefficient use of
paper
for a
13-page
manu?
script
with a title
page.
Another indication within the
manuscript
itself further
suggests
that
the
transcription
of the first movement from sketch to fair
copy
was not
completely plotted
out in advance. On
page
3 a
piece
of
paper
has been
pasted
over the first
system.
The differences between the
original
manuscript
and the
palimpsest
are shown in Table 2.
Comparison
of these features of the first-movement
manuscript
with
those found in the third movement reveals that in the
latter,
rather
than
using
consecutive
foliation,
Sondheim interleaved his folios in the
following
manner
(page
numbers
correspond
to
front,
interior
verso,
interior
recto,
and rear
pages
of each
folio):
folio 1
-
pp.
1, 2,
15 and 16 of MS
folio 2
-
pp.
3, 4,
13 and 14 of MS
folio 3
-
pp.
5, 6,
11 and 12 of MS
folio
4-pp.
7-10 ofMS
This manner of foliation allowed the binder to
staple
the folios
together
at the centre
(i.e.
between
pages
8 and
9),
whereas the
arrangement
of the folios in the first movement
required
that the
binder sew the folios
together along
the
edges
of the
gathered
folios.
An unusual feature in the foliation of the third movement is found on
page
9 ofthe
manuscript,
where Sondheim used three staves to a
system
while
maintaining
an
empty
staff after each
system,
with the result that
there are
only
three
systems
on this
page
instead of the
typical
four.
Nowhere later in the
manuscript
does Sondheim
appear
to have tried
to make
up
for this lost
system by squeezing
in extra bars
-
in
fact,
the
final
page
has
only
three
systems
of
regular grand
staff
writing
on it.
Another
interesting aspect
of this movement is that Sondheim uses two
different
types
of
manuscript paper.
Folios 1 and 2 are from The Music
House
(an
establishment in the
neighbouring
town of North
Adams);
the
paper
for folios 3 and 4 was made for 'G. Schirmer' and is
slighdy
smaller and a litde more
yellowed
than the Music House
paper.
Where
the first-movement
manuscript
is a model of
waste,
the third is a model
of
efficiency.
The
two-page
sketch of the second movement stands
apart
from the
264 STEVE SWAYNE
TABLE2
SONDHEIM,
PIANO SONATA IN C
MAJOR,
FIRST MOVEMENT
COMPARISON OF MANUSCRIPT AND PALIMPSEST
MSp.
3, first system (bar no.)
first bar
(28)
second bar
(29)
third bar
(palimpsest only) (30)
subsequent
bar
(31)
original manuscript
identical in both versions
3/4 bar: beat 1 identical
in both
versions;
beats 2
and 3 identical with 2/4
bar in
palimpsest
identical in both versions
palimpsest
3/4 bar: new material for
beats 2 and 3
2/4
bar: identical with
beats 2 and 3 of second
bar in
original
completed
movements in a
variety
of
ways.11 Although
both
pages
are
written on the same Music House
paper
on which most of the sonata
appears,
the
layout
is unusual. The folios from the Music House have
distinctive footers on the front
page
and the interior recto but not on
the interior verso or rear
pages.
The first
page
of the sketch has no
footer,
thus
making
it either an interior verso or a rear
page.
It is also
clearly
marked,
like the
companion
first
pages
of the two
completed
movements,
with a roman numeral
indicating
which movement this is.
The second
page
is written on the front
page
of a folio that is turned
upside
down. Given that an
opened
and inverted folio would
put
the
front
page
on the left-hand side of a
two-page layout,
the two
pages
of
the sketch are written either on
opposite
sides of the same
piece
of
paper
(i.e.
interior verso and
front)
or on two different
pieces
of manu?
script paper.
In either
case,
the sketch was
provisional,
as other factors
demonstrate.
The
manuscript
is written in
pencil
rather than
pen,
and the musical
and
expressive
details that fill the
completed
movements
-
dynamics,
phrase
and
pedal markings, time-signature changes
-
are almost non-
existent here. In a few
instances,
the absence of
time-signature changes
leads to confusion as to how to realize the sketch: did Sondheim mean
to move from
3/4
to
6/4,
or are the notes
supposed
to be
semiquavers
rather than
quavers?
And the sketch breaks off mid-idea in this
predominandy
3/4
sketch with a
hovering
authentic cadence within an
unmarked
7/8
bar that has no
closing
barline
-
a
fitting
caesura for this
enigmatic
movement
(Example l).12
11
This
description
of the sketch is based on an observation ofa
photocopy
of the sketch and
corroboration from Sondheim.
12
I
acknowledge
the
cooperation
of the
copyright-holder
in
allowing
me to
quote,
here and
in
Examples 3-6, 8, 10, 11, 13-18, 20-7, 29-31 and 33, from the
piano
sonata
by Stephen
Sondheim.
Copyright
?
(renewed) by Rilting
Music, Inc. International
copyright
secured. All
rights
reserved. Used
by permission.
SONDHEIM S PIANO SONATA 265
Example
1.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
second
movement,
bar 32.
Example
2.
Suspended
dominant chords.
G7sus4 F/G Dmin7/G
THE MUSIC OF THE SONATA
The
7/8
bar also serves as a useful introduction to the musical
language
that Sondheim used in the sonata. While there are
gestures
to tradition
throughout
-
cadential
motion,
sequential patterns, primary
and
secondary
materials
-
Sondheim
employed
them within a
decidedly
contemporary
musical
language.
Unadorned triads are difficult to find
in the
sonata,
appearing
most
noticeably (and
almost as non
sequiturs)
at the close of the
completed
movements.
Ninth,
eleventh and thir-
teenth chords abound. The dominant chord in
particular
often takes
on a
specific
colouration. In lead-sheet
parlance
and with C as
tonic,
Sondheim tended to use
G7sus4, F/G
and
Dm7/G
chords for the domi?
nant function in the sonata.
Example
2 shows these three chords next
to one
another,
with a fourth chord
showing
how
they
can also be
derived from
rearranging superimposed
fourths,
a device that will
become
important
in the third movement. The
7/8
bar also has a
pre-
ponderance
of
flats,
including
a double
flat;
in this it is
representative
of the sonata as a
whole,
which has no double
sharps
but has an abun?
dance of flats and double flats
along
with naturals
(cautionary
and
necessary)
to cancel them out.
Table 3
provides
an overview of the first movement. A
cursory glance
at the number of bars in each main division of the movement shows
that the
development
section is the
largest
of the three. The table does
not reveal another factor that makes the
development
still
lengthier
than the other sections. The base metre for the movement is
4/4.
The
development
has a
greater proportion
of bars that are
metrically larger
than
4/4,
and the other sections have a
greater proportion
of bars that
TABLE 3
g
0>
SONDHEIM,
PIANO SONATA IN C
MAJOR,
FIRST MOVEMENT
(numbers
are those of
bars;
*
=
in
inversion;
d
=
in
diminution)
exposition (1-61) development (62-128) recapitulation
and coda
(129-76)
first-theme
group (1-30)
1-11: 1st theme
(= motif)
in varied
guises (aand a1)
12-18: heraldic
triplet
idea
(T)
that
slackens
19-22:
agitated
transitional material
derived from
a;
notable for
arpeggios
at end of each bar
23-4: a6- in cadential 6-4
position
25-6: cascade of
figuration
derived
from a
27-30:
furioso
dissonant
passage;
a* in
accompaniment;
slackens at end to
lead to:
second-theme
group (31-61)
31-8: 2nd theme
(in
A
minor),
1st
statement
(b)
39-48: 2nd theme, 2nd statement
(developed);
leads to climax
(47-8)
(47-8): ascending
tetrachord
first-theme
group (129-52)
129-39:: 1-11
140-3
(1st beat)
:: 12-15
(1st beat);
voicing
of the final chord different
between 2 versions
143-5:
quieter
reflection on material
from 19-22
[no cognate
for
23-4]
146-7:: 25-6
148-52: reiteration and
transposition
of
27-30;
builds at end to lead to:
second-theme
group (153-69)
153-60: similar to
31-8;
at same
pitch
level
(i.e.
no
transposition),
but
now in C
major (cf.
2nd-theme
recapitulation
in 1st movement of
Ravel's
Quartet)
161-6:
compression
of ideas from
39-57;
?j
much more
agitated
than
jg
exposition
c?
167-9: tetrachord
(from 47-8)
thrice
|
repeated
in diminution
?
49-57: 2nd theme,
3rd
statement,
in
augmentation
and
piano
58-61: codetta built around
T;
music
comes to a near
stop
TABLE 3 continued
section 1
(62-6):
based on 1-11
section 2
(67-80):
combination of a
(accompaniment
and
ostinato)
and T
(melodic interest)
section 3
(81-3):
a'as dramatic
interruption
section 4
(84-8):
similar to 2nd half of
section 2
section 5
(89-94):
extension of section 3
section 6
(95-101): agitato
derived from
19-22
section 7
(102-13):
short introduction
from
ad,
then
contrapuntal
combination of a and
b,
b becomes
more
prominent
at section end
section 8
(114-24): impassioned
statement
pib fragments;
metre
effectively
switches to
12/8;
ad in
accompaniment
section 9
(125-8):
transition to
recapitulation
built on ostinato use of
ad
o
z
o
I
coda
(170-6)
ostinato built on a6, used
extensively
along
with tetrachord
diminution;
final dominant identical with
dominant used to
begin
the
recapitulation
268 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
3.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars
1-4.
Allegro
moderato
(J
=
138)
a
are
metrically
smaller than
4/4.
From the
description
of the discrete
sections within the
development
itself,
one can further see that the
development
section is far from trenchant.
Indeed,
because of the
nature of Sondheim's musical
material,
the
concept
of
development
becomes
problematic,
as the
opening
of the sonata demonstrates
(Example
3).
The first
phrase
of the sonata
encapsulates
the
procedures
that Sond?
heim used
throughout
the sonata. The harmonic
language
makes a nod
to
convention,
with a bass line that
clearly
traces a I-IV-V-I
progression.
The
chords, however,
are all substitutes for the
expected
chords: the
opening
tonic has an added
ninth,
is
missing
the
third,
and has an
accented fourth that
may,
in
fact,
redefine the function of the
chord;
the subdominant is a
chromatically
inflected ninth
chord;
the dominant
is a
suspended
chord.
Only
the
closing
tonic resembles a classic C
major
chord,
and even it is bent
by
an
appoggiatura
in the alto voice. These
alternative harmonies arise from Sondheim's linear
writing:
no fewer
than four voices make
up
the
contrapuntal
fabric. The
phrase
marks and
pedal
marks leave litde to the whim of the
performer,
and in the outer
movements Sondheim was
precise
in his
markings.
The motivic
aspects
of the
opening
warrant
separate
discussion. The
three-note motif that
opens
the
piece
-
the
ascending perfect
fifth fol-
lowed
by
the
descending
second
-
immediately
folds back on itself and
is
repeated
a fourth
higher.
It is then answered
by
a modified inversion
of the same idea in the alto
register.
The rest of the sonata will
give
ample
evidence that Sondheim chose this three-note
gesture
for its
protean quality.
In the first movement alone it will be used
extensively
as
melody, figuration
and
accompaniment,
in its
original
form,
in inver?
sion and in diminution. The motif will also
provide
the kernel from
which the
principal
melodies are derived for the other two movements.
In other
words,
Sondheim chose his basic musical material so as to
develop
it
immediately
and
continuously.
Such motivic concentration embodies Sondheim's beliefs of the
time,
reflected in his
contemporaneous
senior
analysis paper
on
Copland,
in which he cited as 'one of
Copland's greatest
virtues' the
manner in which the older
composer thoroughly
utilized his musical
Example
4.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars
9-13.
_Ji__
,f___ -1?v \t*M i-
_______jjm_u_.
__ 3
"
a
m
=_
t
A
a
r
#^##
3&. *
r r
materials in his Music
for
the Theatre.13
Here,
in the
sonata,
Sondheim
plotted
out a
piece
almost as
long
as
Copland's
but one that uses a
smaller nucleus than did Music
for
the Theatre.1*
By writing
the sonata in
the
way
he
did,
Sondheim
subjected
his
philosophy
about the
import?
ance of effective motivic construction to an extreme
test,
i.e. how to
compose
three distinct movements based on the same three-note motif
without
succumbing
to
repetition
or
triviality.
While he was not
entirely
successful in
making
the motif
interesting
-
the first movement in
particular
has its
longueurs
-
Sondheim here set out on a
composi?
tional
path
to which he would return in
Sweeney
Todd
(1979)
and the
musicals that
followed,
works noted for their motivic construction.15
After this confident and assertive
opening,
the second
phrase
varies
the
motif/first-group
material
rhythmically
and
directionally.
Sond?
heim's
repeated
use of mirrored statements ofthe motif further under-
scores his interest in
counterpoint
at this
juncture
in his
compositional
development.
An awkward transition from a
highly
inflected F minor to
a stark E minor also
brings
in a new thematic
idea,
notable for the
heraldic
repetition
of the E and the
triplets
that follow
(bar 12).
These
two
gestures,
sometimes
presented
in
tandem,
sometimes
separated,
will
recur at
pivotal
moments
throughout
the movement
(Example 4).
The
motif
temporarily
recedes in the
background
as the new idea
briefly
13
Stephen
Sondheim, 'Notes and Comment on Aaron
Copland
with
Special
Reference to his
Suite, Music
for
the Theatre'
(unpublished paper, 1950),
5. This
paper
is now housed at the
Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the
University
of Wisconsin
(hereafter
'Wisconsin').
See also Steve
Swayne,
'Music
for
the
Theatre,
the
Young Copland,
and the
Younger
Sondheim', American Music, 20/1
(spring 2002),
80-101.
14
For an
analysis
and
history
of Music
for
the
Theatre,
see
Larry Starr,
The Voice of
Solitary
Contemplation: Copland's
Music
for
the Theatre Viewed as a
Journey
of
Self-Discovery',
American
Music
(forthcoming),
and Howard
Pollack,
Aaron
Copland:
The
Life
and Work
ofan
Uncommon Man
(Urbana
and
Chicago, 2000),
128-34.
15
The best and most
widely
available
analysis
of
Sweeney
Todd is found in
Joseph
P. Swain, The
Broadway
Musical: A Critical and Musical
Survey (Oxford, 1990),
319-54. Sondheim had
engaged
in motivic
writing prior
to
Sweeney Todd, as can be
clearly
seen in
Anyone
Can Whistle
(1964).
But
when asked whether he was a 'motivic-oriented
composer,
one who builds a
melody
and an entire
score out of small and motivic
components',
Sondheim
responded:
T started to
put my
toe in the
water .. . with
Pacific
Overtures.
Then,
it
sprang
full flower in
Sweeney.'
See Steven Robert
Swayne,
'Hearing
Sondheim's Voices'
(Ph.D. dissertation, University
of California, Berkeley, 1999), 344;
pp.
331-49
reproduce
the author's 1998 interview with
Stephen
Sondheim.
270 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
5.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars
22-5.
M
rppjy
M
Jp
JjJS
_?
___4J
/Nj
y_
=____
a
i
s: t
ip m
*r=rr
$fi>.
turns
lyrical.
The
triplet gesture
is used in a
sequence,
after which the
music becomes more
agitated
with the
presence,
for the first
time,
of
semiquavers.
This transitional music is
loosely
derived from the motif
-
especially
as it
appeared
in the first bar
-
and itself will
reappear
later
with its distinctive
auxiliary-note figure
and the
concluding arpeggio.
The music is
clearly building up
tension on its
way
to the next
signifi?
cant structural
signpost;
even the motif
definitely
returns,
but in diminu-
tion,
in
keeping
with the rush towards the second thematic
group.
The
music
erupts
in a cascade of
figuration
both derived from the motif and
reminiscent ofthe
heraldic/triplet
idea,
with its E-B bass
(Example
5).
Yet another transitional
passage,
this one
marked/wnoso
and with the
motif diminution now in the left hand as an
accompaniment figure,
leads to the second
subject,
in the relative minor
(Example
6).
Its
resemblance to the
comparable
theme in the first movement of the
Ravel
Quartet
is more than incidental
(Example
7).
Both themes
initially appear
in the relative minor. Both
prominendy
feature the
9-8-7-6
tetrachord,
first in
descending
motion and then in an ascend-
ing
answer
(bars
56 and 58 of the Ravel
melody).
Both themes share
the same
rhythmic
contour,
with Sondheim's
rhythm being
an
aug-
mentation of Ravel's. These are all
suggestive
but not conclusive. Alook
at Sondheim's
recapitulation,
however,
provides
the telltale evidence
that he had the Ravel in mind when he was
composing
his sonata.
Ravel's theme is notable for the manner in which it is
recapitulated
in
the tonic
major
without a shift of the
pitch
classes;
the tetrachord thus
becomes 7-6-5-4. Sondheim's theme
reappears
in
precisely
the same
way (Example 8). (One might
further
posit
that Sondheim's three-note
motif is derived from the first three notes of the Ravel
melody, though
this would be far more difficult to
prove.)
SONDHEIM'S piano sonata 271
Example
6.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars
30-5.
Ravel is not the
only
modern musician
lurking
behind Sondheim's
second theme. The sinuous
accompaniment
of
Example
6 resembles
the
piano writing
of Prokofiev. Sondheim not
only
knew but
may
have
also
played
some ofthe Visions
fugitives, op.
22,
prior
to his matricula-
tion to Williams
(see
Example 9).16
Sondheim's texture is more
involved than that of the Visions
fugitives
and more
closely
resembles
passages
from Prokofiev's
piano
sonatas,
although
Sondheim said he
was not familiar with Prokofiev's sonatas at the time he was
writing
his
own sonata.17
Despite
this
unfamiliarity,
the third statement of Sond?
heim's second
theme,
in
augmentation
and marked
piano,
looks and
sounds like a
page
lifted
straight
out of one of Prokofiev's nine
piano
sonatas
(Example 10).
In
addition,
Sondheim used the term martellato at bars 199 and 125
in the
development
and a third time at bar 170 in the coda.
(It
also
appears
in the coda ofthe third movement at bar
165.)
One associates
16
Sondheim: T never studied Prokofiev's
piano
sonatas and I didn't become familiar with them
until after
college.
The
only
Prokofiev
pieces
I
might
have been in contact with as
part
of
my piano
playing
career
[was]
when I was 15-16
years
old. I have a
memory
of the Visions
Fugitives,
but
that
[and]
the Love for Three
Oranges "March,"
which I
played
on the
piano,
are the
only
Prokofiev I think I ever came into immediate contact with.' Personal
correspondence,
21 March
2001. In this
context, 'study' suggests preparation
for
public performance.
17
See note 16. The similarities between Sondheim's second theme
(first movement)
and the
second theme of Prokofiev's one-movement Sonata no. 3 in A
minor, op. 28,
are
particularly
suggestive.
In the Prokofiev, the tenor line traces a
descending-ascending
tetrachord, 8-7-6-5 of
the C
major sonority
in the first bar but 9-8-7-6 of the D minor
sonority
in the third bar. Like
the Ravel and the
Sondheim, the Prokofiev
presents
the second theme in the relative
key (here,
C
major)
and
recapitulates
it in the tonic
key
without
shifting
the
pitch
classes.
272 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
7.
Ravel,
Quartet
in F
major,
first
movement,
second theme.
pp tresexpr.
ri
55 I ?
itl f~h fn _
___
vlns |
1,2
&-T
u
U' U'
* __i
_c__ tresexpr.
^
m
f
rrr
rr
j.
JI2
vlc
55
pizz.l
*=T
r r
l n?
n
i-?-rm
L-Jf L?J*
Jr
-A-JJ2
*==f=f
Example
8.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars
152-7.
# %*. *$&.
/5ff
^?^jtg:
a
fiEMM
i___b
%b.
'hammered out'
piano
not with Ravel
(or
with
Sondheim,
for that
matter)
but with Prokofiev and his
percussive piano style.
At this time
Sondheim was also
playing
the
transcription
of the March from The
Love
for
Three
Oranges,
whose
opening,
with its two bars of
repeated
Example
9.
Prokofiev,
Visions
fugitives, op.
22 no. 3
(Allegretto),
bars
1-4.
|t*j
j
i
I
j
h
fflp
n
ffl^^
s
rj^*^ r^*^
i
i-Qb-Q
^^
r
p
Example
10.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars 49-53.
52
i)
iglg
11 fl
rg
s
s
^TO-^
notes,
has a martellatoiike character to it.
Prokofiev, however,
never
used the term martellato in his
piano
music,18
so Sondheim
evidendy
encountered it
elsewhere,
as will be seen below.
Whereas Sondheim's indebtedness to Ravel has been and continues
to be
explored,
the connections between Sondheim and Prokofiev are
virtually
uncharted. In his
study
Sondheim's
Broadway
Musicals,
Stephen
18
Although
Prokofiev did not use the term
marteUato,
there is
percussive writing
in the Visions
fugitives, especially
nos. 14 and 19. The term marteUato
appears
three times in
Gyorgy
Sandor's
edition of Prokofiev's Third Sonata
-
twice in the
development
and once in the coda
-
but this
edition did not
appear
until
1966,
and earlier versions of the sonata do not use the term.
274 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
11.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars 67-72.
"illin Wrigi
marcato
Banfield writes about the Trokofiev-like
polytonality'
of There's Some?
thing
About a War'
(cut
from A
Funny Thing Happened
on the
Way
to the
Forum)
and the
'uncharacteristically
discursive' harmonic scheme of
'Green Finch and Linnet Bird' from
Sweeney
Todd which 'could almost
have been written
by
Prokofiev or
Berkeley'.19
But the links between
Sondheim and Prokofiev
clearly
run
deeper
than a harmonic
similarity
here and there. Prokofiev's linear
writing
and acerbic harmonies must
have
delighted
Sondheim,
whose own work is suffused with involved
linear
writing
and non-conventional harmonizations. And Sondheim's
predilection
for ostinati and
vamps
finds a
cognate
in Prokofiev's
motoric
rhythms.
The
passage
from the
development
of Sondheim's
sonata shown in
Example
11 demonstrates his
ability yet again
to
put
his three-note motif
through
its
paces,
the result
being
a sound not far
removed from the mechanistic
writing
for which Prokofiev is famed
(note
the
presence
of the
heraldic/triplet
idea).
Motoric ostinati are to be found in
nearly every
mature Sondheim
show. To
pickjust
one from a score full of
examples, Sunday
in the Park
with
George (1984)
uses an ostinato which
accompanies
the
painter
Georges
Seurat when he is
engaged
in
painting
in his
pointillistic
manner and which recurs elsewhere in the musical
(Example 12);
this
particular example
comes from 'Color and
Light'.20
The
similarity
between this ostinato and a
passage
in the
development
of the
sonata,
written 34
years
earlier,
is
striking (Example 13),
and in each case the
sound world of Prokofiev is in the near distance.
(Notice again
the use
19
Stephen
Banfield, Sondheim's
Broadway
Musicals
(Ann Arbor, 1993) (hereafter SBM),
99 and
292.
20
'Color and
Light',
music and
lyrics by Stephen
Sondheim ? 1984
Rilting Music, Inc. All
rights
administered
by
WB Music
Corp.
All
rights
reserved. Used
by permission.
Warner Bros. Publi?
cations U.S. Inc, Miami,
FL 33014.
SONDHEIM'S PIANO SONATA 275
Example
12. 'Color and
Light' (Sunday
in the Park with
George),
bars
172-5.
Example
13.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars 86-9.
of the motif in the left
hand.) Considering
Sondheim's
penchant
towards
pastiche,
other
parallels
between his music and the music of
Prokofiev are
waiting
to be drawn. The
linearity
of
multiple
voices,
the
texture of the
piano accompaniments,
the dissonant tonal
harmonies,
and the
deployment
of motoric ostinati in the works of both
composers
suggest
that further
exploration
of the connections is warranted.
Two other
passages
from the first movement deserve mention. In his
musicals,
Sondheim is noted for
layering
one
melody
on
top
of the
other,
typically
in ensemble numbers and often before a climactic
reprise
of the main musical idea of the ensemble
(e.g.
Tt's a Hit!' in
Merrily
We Roll
Along,
Tlease,
Hello' in
Pacific
Overtures,
the trio from
'Soon' in A Little
Night
Music,
the
'Johanna' quartet
in
Sweeney
Todd,
and
others).
In the sonata we find an
early example
of this
quodlibet-
like
aspect
of Sondheim's
style,
as Sondheim in the
development
section
cleverly
interleaved the first and second themes
(Example 14).
Here
again,
the
piano writing
bears an
uncanny
resemblance to
Prokofiev's,
although
the
marriage
of first and second themes can be
found in the first movement of Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata in Bt
(1936),
another sonata that Sondheim's sonata
-
especially
the third
movement
-
brings
to mind.
The second
passage
of note is found in the coda of this first move?
ment,
where Sondheim
recapitulated
material that
appears only
in the
development
section. The
figuration
from the final section of the
development,
once
again
built from the three-note
motif,
winds down
276 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
14.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars 106-12.
uo
-i
*?
m
i=a
m
i
Ltijt
p
T
=f
cresc.
poco
a
poco
U
*f ?y \-rif dt
i
'frn'Tn ^
wm m
T-^
Sfi>. * 5a. * %b.
Example
15.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars 125-9.
rit. molto
125
<t)
H; ?J\rJ-J/ zi
?*?
w7 z"
?*"
~w7 ~L ~*^w7 zr
?
w7 z
"?*"
"J"/N
JJDQt p
martellato
mp
dim.
poco
a
poco
njTTf
1^ ijjjJ JT^
$&. # 3a.
Jgju
i^
ta^
tempo pnmo
IS
*/
to a dominant chord with a flattened fifth
(Example 15).21
Sondheim
repeated
the
figuration
and the altered dominant at the end of this
movement
(Example 16).
The third movement
similarly
contains
material from the central section of the movement that returns in the
21
Note how Sondheim demarcated the
development
and the
recapitulation
with a double
barline; the same demarcation
separates
the
exposition
from the
development.
Example
16.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
first
movement,
bars 168-70.
coda,
giving
us two
examples
in this sonata of a
technique
Sondheim
will use in his
maturity:
the
delayed presentation
of
important
and
recurring
musical material.
In
discussing
the
manuscripts
of the
completed
movements,
one
could summarize the differences between the two
manuscripts
as one
of excess
(first movement)
versus
efficiency (third movement).
Musi-
cally,
the first movement contains a surfeit of
material,
not
only
in the
development
but in the other sections as well. As Table 3
shows,
tran?
sitional material from the
exposition proves
to be almost as
significant
in the
development
as do the two main themes. The second theme in
particular
is
fragmented
in the
development
to the
point
of
being
nearly unrecognizable.
Some of the transitions are
jarring,
and some
of the
passage-work
sounds contrived. Given the numerous short-
comings
in the first
movement,
one
might sympathize
with Sondheim's
decision to leave the sonata unrevised and
unpublished.
This is a far
cry,
however,
from
saying
that the first movement is
atrocious. The music
may
be out of balance at certain
points,
but the
skill revealed in the sonata is considerable. In addition to the element
of
craft,
one
gets
from the first movement a sense of
passion
and
engagement,
as ideas build to dramatic
(and
generally
effective)
musical climaxes. The music is both
deeply
heartfelt and calculated to
an almost unnatural
degree.
In Sondheim's
case,
at this
early stage
in
his
career,
these two
aspects
of
composition
are not as
separable
as
they
might
be with other
composers
at a
comparable
level of musical matur?
ity (Chopin springs
to
mind).
Here in the first
movement,
the calcu-
lations are in
general
too close to the surface and thus make the
passions
sound less mature. Sondheim would
grow
in his
ability
to
handle
large-scale
musico-dramatic
structures;22
the third movement
already provides
an illustration of how Sondheim learnt to hide some
of his calculations more
skilfully.
But before I turn to that
completed
movement,
there is more to
say
about the second movement.
22
See Banfield's discussion of 'Someone in a Tree'
(SBM, 267-71),
where he
speaks
of
Sondheim's 'additive' and
'permutationaT techniques
in this
song and, by implication,
Sondheim's other extended
songs (see p.
358 for other
examples).
278 STEVE SWAYNE
The sketch of the second movement contains 32 bars of continuous
music before it breaks off
inconclusively.
There
are, however,
numer-
ous instances of erasures and second
thoughts throughout
the sketch.
No
dynamic
marks are
provided,
and there is
only
one
expression
mark
(a
marc. at bar
27)
as well as a few
phrase
marks and one ritard followed
by
a
Tempo
Primo. The
manuscripts
of the other two
movements,
in
contrast,
are full of
dynamics, pedal markings
and other
expressive
indications. In this
sketch,
Sondheim had not
completely
settled on
how this
portion
of the second movement should
sound,
let alone how
it
might
continue.
Marked
'Andante',
the music has a
key signature
of five flats. This is
something
ofa
curiosity,
as the
opening
bass line undulates between Et
and At and the first real cadence at bars 11 and 12 moves from a Dt
suspended
chord to a Gt
major
ninth chord. The movement has a
texture akin to a Satie
gymnopedie.
a
3/4
time
signature;
a bass line of
one note
per
bar;
a
tenor-register
chord that enters on beat
2;
the four-
bar introduction before the sinuous
melody
line
appears (Example
17).
The combination of these musical details
suggests
that Et Dorian
could be the mode Sondheim has chosen. Before this mode is con?
firmed, however,
the music
begins
to use
sharps
and flats in
equal
measure and in a
decidedly un-gymnopedie
fashion. The harmonic
rhythm
here
speeds up
as Sondheim
employed
his standard
suspended-
chord substitution for the dominant chord in a cadential formula. In
fact,
two cadences a semitone
apart
chime back and forth. The disso-
nant bell-like notes on beat 3 will later coalesce into the first three bars
of the
opening melody,
now in D Dorian and in the
upper register
of
the
piano (Example 18).
After this melodie
fragment,
die music
grows
more
agitated
with an
eruption
of
semiquavers
that
incorporates
the
suspended-chord
cadential formula. A
slackening
of
tempo,
a return
to
quaver
motion,
and a
4/4
bar lead to a third statement of the
melody,
this time with its first four bars in the bass. The
writing
here is
contrapuntally
conceived,
with four
independent
voices,
though
the
impression
is one of stasis. After a one-bar
passage
of
ascending
semi?
quavers, Example
1
occurs,
and the sketch ends.
It is difficult to
imagine
in what direction the movement would have
gone
from this
point
forward. A few months
later,
Sondheim encoun?
tered difficulties with another slow
movement,
that of his Concertino
for Two Pianos
(c.
autumn
1950).
In
preparing
it for its
premiere nearly
50
years
later,
Sondheim made a few small cuts in the first movement
and extensive cuts in the 'endless' second movement.23 One could
posit
that the second movement of the earlier sonata is also
(and
literally)
endless
because,
at this time in his
writing
career,
Sondheim
found it difficult to control his musical material when it unfolds at a
more
languorous
rate.
Indeed,
a
cursory
overview of his mature
songs
turns
up
scant few where the
melody
unwinds in a
plaintive
arioso
(e.g.
sections of 'There Is No Other
Way'
in
Pacific
Overtures,
Anthony's
'Johanna'
in
Sweeney Todd).
More
frequently,
his ballads
incorporate
23
Personal
correspondence,
19
January
2001.
SONDHEIM'S piano sonata 279
Example
17.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
second
movement,
bars 1-8.
Andante
Example
18.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
second
movement,
bars 13-18.
13
2P_=?
fejg?
?*m
?_S
Sva,
i
m
m* ^^^a ^m^
rf
tU
l LdX
l **%
m
E
S=S m
^m
r=rf
?
more active
melody
lines that come to rest on
longer
notes
(e.g.
'Send
in the Clowns' in A Little
Night
Music,
'Good
Thing Going'
in
Merrily
We
Roll
Along,
'No One is Alone' in Into the
Woods,
'What Can
you
Lose?'
in Dick
Tracy,
T Read' in
Passion).
But the second movement does sound
strikingly
like another Sond?
heim
song,
one that was written for the
musical-in-progress
The Girls
Upstairs (begun
in
1965), withdrawn,
and then
reincorporated
in the
overture of the renamed Follies
(1971).
'All
Things Bright
and Beauti?
ful' is also in
3/4,
has a
gymnopedie-like accompaniment
and a
long-
breathed
melody,
and contains chains of
suspended
chords that
slip
from one to the other
by
semitone motion. The
song
is also
noteworthy
for the number of
expression
marks Sondheim
employed
here,
includ?
ing
the unusual
designation
colla
voce,
making
the
song
look like the
outer movements ofthe sonata in its
expressive
exactitude. The resem?
blance between the two works is so
extraordinary,
in
fact,
that a rework-
ing
of the
song
could
easily
serve as a central section for a slow
movement east in
ternary
form,
even
though
a distance of 16
years sep-
arates the sonata from the
song (Example 19)
,24
24
For the USA and Canada: 'All
Things Bright
and Beautiful'. Words and music
by Stephen
Sondheim.
Copyright
? 1971
by Range
Road Music Inc, Quartet
Music Inc. and
Rilting Music,
Inc.
Copyright
renewed. All
rights
administered
by
Herald
Square
Music Inc. International
copyright
secured. All
rights
reserved. Used
by permission.
For the world
excluding
the USA and Canada: 'All
Things Bright
and Beautiful'
-
Stephen
Sondheim. ? 1971
Range
Road Music Inc, Quartet
Music Inc,
Rilting
Music, Inc. and Burthen
Music
Company,
Inc All
rights
administered
by
Herald
Square
Music Inc.
Copyright
renewed.
Used
by permission.
All
rights
reserved.
280 STEVE SWAYNE
The third
movement,
like the
first,
shows Sondheim's concern for
traditional forms and architectural balance even as it
gives greater
evi?
dence of motivic and structural
creativity.
Cast in a
large ternary
form
(ABA'),
the movement combines elements of sonata and rondo form
without
being
a Beethovenian sonata-rondo
(as
in the final movement
of the Second
Symphony).
Where the first A section is itself cast in
ternary
form,
suggesting
a rondo for the whole
movement,
the second
A' section is
binary
in
form,
in
keeping
with the
recapitulation
of a
sonata. The central B section
-
more a
respite
from,
rather than a result
of,
the outer sections
-
gives
free rein to Sondheim's
contrapuntal
skills
and culminates in a
fugato.
Table 4
provides
a schematic overview of
the third movement.
The workmanlike three notes of the main motif once
again
serve as
the basis for a
large proportion
of the musical material in this move?
ment
(see
Example
20)
,25 As in the first
movement,
the music
opens
with the
upward leap
of a
perfect
fifth followed
by
the descent of a
major
second;
once
again,
the basic
rhythm
is
short-short-long
(marked a).
But a number of alterations make the motif sound new. It
now
begins
on the fifth scale
degree
instead of the
tonic,
starts with a
quaver pickup
to the first bar instead of on beat
2,
and is
accompanied
by independent
voices instead of
being anticipated by
an
emphatic
chord.
Together
with the
slighdy
slower
tempo,
these
changes provide
a contrast to the
declamatory
nature of the first movement's
opening
and combine here to
give
the motif a
yearning quality
(for
example,
the melodic
appoggiatura
of the
right
hand resolves on the tonic after
the
downbeat).
Moreover,
after the motif has been
stated,
the music continues with
variants of it. The bass voice
immediately
echoes the first two notes of
the
soprano
-
a truncation ofthe motif-with its
arpeggiated
fifths. The
soprano presents
no fewer than three variants ofthe motif in
quick
suc-
cession: the
original;
a variant that features a downward fourth instead
of the
upward
fifth;
a five-note elision of these first two
(the
centre of
which is marked
r,
compare
b in
Example 3);
and a
fragment
that con?
tains
only
the
upward
fifth. At the same
time,
the alto
contrarily
answers
the
soprano
with inversions ofthe
stepwise-moving
section ofthe
motif,
sometimes
following
the
soprano,
sometimes
coming
in with the
soprano,
and sometimes
anticipating
the
activity
of the
soprano.
Sond?
heim could have added
'giocoso'
to his
tempo marking,
as the voices
play
with each
other,
taking
turns as
they expand
their
independent
but related musical ideas. The
counterpoint
that
opened
the first move?
ment
clearly
established a
hierarchy
where the
top
voice
reigned.
Here,
the clear three-voice
writing
of the first two bars
provides
a clue from
the
very beginning
of the movement that the
activity
in the inner and
lower voices will
prove
to be as
important
as what is
occurring
in the
soprano.
25
See Table 4, note
a, for an
explanation
of the
bar-numbering
in this movement.
Example
19. 'All
Things Bright
and
Beautiful',
bars 65-77.
65
a
tempo, poco
rubato
poco
rit
All
^
l=? ?
things
j?
Bright
and beau
-
ti
-
ful,
*
H ^m
colla voce
f
mm
^^
i *=$
a
fg
%.
f
5o5.
^a/..
tfS
a
tempo
=tbt
t
uTjf
f
j?
Ev-
'ry-thing
for
-
ev
-
er,
ask
Ev-'ry-thing
for-
H,n? ii.
?rf3 n
W r
^=&g
fT
d&L
ZKC5!
UP- d?F
4^r
r
i
^ 4
ry day..
*=k
S
ff^
*-Bf
*Wfr^
&m
u
^M^
r
After a scalar
gesture
that will later
figure prominently
as a tran-
sitional
figure
(bar 3,
right hand),
the main idea returns
(Example
21).
Only
two bars
separate
the two statements of the main
idea,
but Sond?
heim
ingeniously
varied the
pitches
ofthe idea at its
repeat.
The return
is so
emphatic,
in
fact,
that the alteration could
pass
unnoticed. But this
is no slavish imitation. Where the
leap
of a
perfect
fifth
opened
the
motif
before,
now it is a
major
sixth,
and the other intervals ofthe motif
now outline a C
major pentatonic
scale as the
accompaniment begins
TABLE 4
?g
SONDHEIM,
PIANO SONATA IN C
MAJOR,
THIRD MOVEMENT
(numbers
are those of
bars)a
A
(1-73) B
(74-118)
A'
(119-70)
ternary (ABAr)
with codetta
A
(1-27):
first-theme
group
1-10:1st
theme,
repeat
of 1st theme
and extension
11-19:
sequence
of lst-theme
rhythm;
ostinato
accompaniment;
climax
and relaxation at 18-19
20-7: transition theme
B
(28-51):
second-theme
group
28-38:
introduction, 2nd theme and
extension
39-42:
sequence
of 2nd-theme
fragments
43-8: transition built
up
of
juxtaposed
and combined elements from A and
B
49-51: transition derived
primarily
from
rhythm
of 1 and melodie line
of lst half of 2
binary (CD)
C
(74-100):
intermezzo
74-9: main idea derived from 1
80-4:
development
of 2nd half of 74
85-?: reiteration of main idea
89-95:
lyrical expansion
of main idea
fragment
binary (AB')
with coda
A
(119-45):
verbatim restatement of 1-27
119-28:: 1-10
129-37:: 11-19
138-45 :: 20-7
B'
(146-60):
second-theme
group
146-56: 2nd theme and extension,
but
with different
accompaniment
from
that in 28-38
157-60 :: 39-42
coda
(161-70)
161-2: transition material similar to
43-4
163-4:
recapitulation
of 80-4
i
I
TABLE 4 continued
?
o
96-100:
augmentation,
climax and
??
relaxation based on main idea
g
D
(101-18): fugato
?
101-2:
subject
derived from 74
g
103-6:
answer,
fifth
below;
countersubject ?
includes motif of
upward leap
followed co
by
scalar
descent; 2 bars free
counterpoint
2
107-15:
answer,
tenth
below;
countersubject
H
motif
present;
7 bars free
counterpoint;
hint of Aat 115
116-18:
subject,
2 octaves
below;
continuation of
A;
1-bar transition
A'
(52-67): recapitulation
of first-theme
group
52-60: 1st
theme,
repeat
of 1st theme
and
extension; 52-6 ::
1-5;
equivalent
of 6
missing;
57-60
similar to
7-10,
with different
accompaniment
at
7/57
61-9:
sequence
of lst-theme
rhythm;
ostinato
accompaniment;
68-9
similar to 18?19
codetta
(70-3)
70-1:
development
of material in 49-51
72: climactic
augmentation
and re-
harmonization of 1st half of 2
73:
emphatic
statement of
upward-fifth
motif
(2nd
half of
2)
165-6: reharmonization of 70-1
167-8:
augmentation
of 72
169-70:
thrice-repeated
statement of
upward-fifth
motif
(73)
a
The
numbering
used in this article treats the movement's first bar in the
manuscript
-
a full 4/4 bar
consisting entirely
of rests save for a
single quaver
at the end
-
as a
?g
null bar
(as
in
Example
20, where the
original
bar 1 is reduced to a
pick-up).
oo
284 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
20.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 1-2.
Allegro (J
=
126)
Example
21.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 3-6.
$&. *$a.
to take the music
away
from the tonic. The effect is both dramatic and
sure-footed. Notice also the inversion ofthe main motif in the left hand
in bar
3,
as well as the
descending
fifths in bars 5 and
6,
yet
another
instance of Sondheim's
contrapuntal
bent.
The scalar transitional
figure
blossoms into a true
scale,
taking
us
into the tenor
register
of the
piano.
It is here that the music
presents
an ostinato
figure
in the
right
hand derived from the first theme
(see
c
in
Example 20)
while the left hand
provides
both fundament and
melody.
The movement
may
have started out
sounding vaguely
French,
but the
jagged
and insistent
rhythm
of the ostinato hammers
home the sonata's American roots.
Moreover,
both the ostinato and
the harmonies
-
suspended
chords and second-inversion
major
seventh or ninth chords
-
sound as
though they
were lifted wholesale
Example
22. Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 11-13.
3fc. -*
a
j
i n~Pl
JTBJ^BTCT
?e-
%6.
out of
'Company'
or The Miller's Son'
(A
Little
Night
Music), songs
that,
at the time of the
sonata,
were 20
years away.
Sondheim's voice
here is unmistakable
(Example 22).
The ostinato and its harmonic
components
are first
repeated
and
then
compressed,
and the
resulting
tension finds release in
3,fortissimo
whole-tone
sonority
that dissolves into the relative minor. The subse?
quent
theme that
emerges
at bar 20 sounds
peculiarly edgy;
while set
within the framework of two
4/4 bars,
the
melody
uses
long
and short
rhythms
in an
unpredictable,
almost erratic manner. It is a
finely
crafted and distinct second theme in the classic sonata
form,
but in fact
it is
only
a transitional theme which soon
gives way
to a
sequential
passage
built around
quartal
harmonies
(Example
23). Formally
the
transition both fulfils and thwarts the
expectations
of sonata
form;
har-
monically,
the
passage employs
some ofthe most Hindemithian sonori-
ties thus far encountered in this movement.
Whereas both the first theme and the transition are anchored in a
key
-
C
major
and A
minor,
respectively
-
the actual second theme is
anchored on a
pitch.
A brief introduction
(bars 28-9)
adumbrates the
theme in the
right
hand while the left hand descends from E to
A,
the
central
pitch
of this
episode.
At this
point (bars 30-1),
the second
theme is
presented
in full: an
undulating
theme notable for its use of
large
intervals with the
longer
notes
(d)
and scalar
figures
with the
semiquavers (e) (Example 24).
The Hindemith ofthe Third Sonata
-
particularly
the
scherzo,
with its mixture of tertian and
quartal writing
-
here
gives way
to Ravel. Notice the continued use of
counterpoint
in
the inner voices.
286 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
23.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 20-3.
_HHM^_???-??_-=___I_?M-i_n_M_l---M-
... -_=_--1_
._l| H | II nini || ?
%b. *%b. % sa>. *?, *
Sfo.
Example
24.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 28-31.
* $a.
Sondheim's skill in
manipulating
his musical motifs is on
display
throughout
this section. Two moments in
particular
deserve comment.
In an elaboration of the second
theme,
Sondheim
employed
a diminu-
tion of d as
accompaniment
to the
regular
form of d in bar
39,
which
is followed
by
a
syncopated
melisma derived from e in bar 40.
Quartal
harmonies and seventh chords vie for
prominence (Example 25).
Even
more artful is the
way
Sondheim
juxtaposed
the first and a diminution
Example
25. Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 39-40.
Example
26. Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 45-7.
of the second themes
-
in the left and
right
hands,
respectively
-
in the
transition back to the music that
opened
the movement
(Example
26).
As Table 4
shows,
the return to the first
group,
with its
transposition
of material and minor
rewriting
of
accompaniment figures,
remains
fairly
true to the
opening
of the movement. It is the four-bar codetta
to the
larger,
self-contained A section of the movement that stands out
for its stentorian
delivery
of the
opening
motif and its harmonic
sophistication
in
handling
dissonant sonorities as
pre-dominants
and
dominants
(Example
27).
Notice
yet again
the use of a
suspended
dominant
sonority
for the
penultimate
chord. It will be this
material,
almost doubled in
length,
that will close the movement and the sonata.
This
grand pause
mid-movement
signals
a
change
not
only
of
tempo
but also of texture and mood. While inner voices earlier
provided
traces of
contrapuntal
lines,
the central section of this movement is
saturated with
counterpoint,
so much so
that,
halfway through
the
section,
the music
pauses yet again,
this time to introduce an extended
fugal
treatment of the thematic material. Each half of this central
section also has its
particular
harmonic east: a
turgid
intermezzo that
moves from the minor to a luminescent
major
to
quartal harmony
and
then back to the minor
mode,
followed
by
the
fugato
-
so marked in
the score
-
that
begins
with the
quartal harmony
ofthe intermezzo and
heads towards free dissonance. Presented at a
pace slightly
slower than
what has come
before,
the two halves constitute a
lengthy binary
inter?
lude to the outer sections of the
movement,
an interlude too
large
for
a classic rondo and too distinct to be called a
development
section.
288 STEVESWAYNE
Example
27. Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 70-3.
f4#
ffg ii
?rrn-rrn
m
fff
__
pr; p
r-
m
W4
n
______ *RF^
^
__
'1 ?!?>-?-
>^^t
Nevertheless,
the basic musical material once
again
is derived from the
same three-note cell around which the entire sonata is
organized,
thus
making
it
developmental
at the same time as it is
original.
The coun?
terpoint
is awkward at
times,
especially
in the
fugato,
but the sense of
formal balance and musical contrast is
unerring
and remarkable for
someone who had not written
many
extended
compositions.
Example
28 tabulates the motivic
relationships
between the interlude
and the
openings
ofthe other three movements. For the first theme of
the first
movement,
the motif
appears
in its
original
form;
all other
motifs have been
transposed
to this
opening pitch
for the sake of
comparison.
An asterisk above a note
signifies
that it has been trans?
posed up
from its
original
octave. This motivic
economy
over the
course of a
composition
more than 300 bars
long clearly
demonstrates
that Sondheim's interest in
generating larger
musical structures from
smaller motivic kernels
pre-dates
his
postgraduate
studies with Milton
Babbitt.26 If
anything,
here Sondheim
appears
to have been fixated on
squeezing
as much musical
juice
out of his motif as
possible.
Of
particu?
lar note is
how,
for the second movement and the
intermezzo,
Sond?
heim
manipulated
the motif to
appear
in a minor
mode,
a feat made
manageable by leaving
the third
degree
of the scale out of the 'Ur-
version' of the motif.
The use of the minor mode in the intermezzo is
only
one reason the
ubiquitous
motif sounds fresh. In addition to the variations of
rhythm
and number of
notes,
Sondheim
continually
varied which notes of the
motif receive the main stress. The variation ofthe motif that
opens
this
third movement consists of two
amphibrachs;
in the
intermezzo,
the
motif
opens
with an iamb followed
by
an
anapaest (Example
29,
left
hand).
Here the
motif,
marked marcato and
appearing
in the tenor
register,
uses the
upward leap
of a fifth and then continues with a
second
upward leap
of a fourth
(a).
As the
accompaniment figure
shows,
it is this
secondary leap resolving stepwise
in the
opposite
26
See SBM, 22.
Example
28. Motivic
relationship
in Sondheim's Piano Sonata in C
major.
lst
movement,
1st theme
2nd movement
3rd
movement,
lst theme
| j
J J
J
f
J
3rd
movement,
intermezzo and
fugat<
?
$ j^'
* * *
y
j
p
n
^^
direction that receives the most
thorough
treatment. In the
right
hand,
the motif in diminution
continuously
folds back
upon
itself
(a).
The
tenor melodie idea moves
beyond
the motif to
incorporate
an ascend-
ing
scale that is reminiscent of the second theme of the third move?
ment
(e).
The dramatic
change
of character from the
opening
section
to the intermezzo
effectively
obscures the derivative nature of most of
the musical material in this central section.27
The
piano writing
for this intermezzo finds Sondheim at his most
Ravelian. The sound world of the Sonatine and
Jeux
d'eau lies
just
beyond
Sondheim's
harmonies,
which continue to emulate Hinde-
mith's Third Piano Sonata. The
texture, however,
is
vintage
Ravel,
down to the
cascading demisemiquaver arpeggios
that
appear
immedi?
ately
before the return of the main intermezzo idea. After the
melody
turns to the
major
mode,
the music
puckishly
dances around the
key-
board,
almost in echo of 'Ondine' from
Gaspard
de la nuit
(Example
30).
The notation is unusual not
only
for its three staves but also for
the
figuration
in the
right
hand in bar
91, which,
though
marked stac?
cato,
is
phrased throughout.
In the fastidiousness that marks most of
the
manuscript
-
witness the
superabundance
of
pedal markings
-
Sondheim wanted to make sure the reader would see the
shape
of the
line.
After a climax that sounds more forced than
inevitable,
the harmonic
rhythm
slows down and the texture thins out to make
way
for a
fugato
built on the same melodie idea as the intermezzo
(Example 31).
Throughout
the sonata and
especially
in the
intermezzo,
Sondheim
had demonstrated his interest and skill in
counterpoint,
and this
fugato
serves as the
capstone
of his
contrapuntal writing.
It nevertheless feels
like a miscalculation. It does little to
develop
the musical material
beyond
what the intermezzo has
already
done. It also
postpones
the
27
While it is most
likely
a
contrapuntal happenstance
rather than a deliberate derivation, the
alto voice in this
figure
could be construed as an
augmentation
of the d material in the second
theme of this movement.
290 STEVE SWAYNE
reprise
of the
opening
and threatens the architectural balance of the
emerging
sonata-rondo form. And
pianistically
it is one of the more
ungrateful
moments in the sonata.
Beyond
its obvious technical value
as an exercise in
fugal writing,
what
might
have been Sondheim's
(and
Barrow's)
aesthetic aim in
including
a
fugato
in the third movement?
Given Sondheim's admission that a
comparison
between his sonata
and the music of Hindemith is 'on the
nose',28
a
counterpart
of Sond?
heim's
fugato
can be found
yet again
in Hindemith's Third Piano
Sonata.
There,
the fourth movement is a boisterous double
fugue
whose
second
subject
is taken wholesale from a
fugato
section in the slow third
movement. In
addition,
the
subject
entries in the Hindemith
exposi-
tions do not follow the standard tonic-dominant-tonic
exposition
of a
Baroque fugue
but enter as
tonic-dominant-supertonic-tonic.
Simi-
larly,
Sondheim took his
subject
for the
fugato
from earlier in the sonata
(the intermezzo),
and the
fugal
answers enter at the subdominant and
the mediant. Another
telling
feature about Sondheim's
fugato
is that it
is the
only place
in the outer movements that has a
key signature
-
G
minor,
presumably
-
although
Sondheim
quickly goes
far afield from
any
tonal base.
(The
Hindemith uses no
key signatures
and is
tonally
free-ranging
but is in the
key
of
Bk)
Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata also
employs quartal
and
quintal
harmonies within its basic triadic framework. The climactic
passage
from the third movement of the Hindemith shown in
Example
32 is
clearly
rooted in
A,
but triads
yield
to more
complex
chords,
with some
that remain in a tertian universe and others that move into a
quartal
realm. One does not have to look far in the Hindemith to find other
similar
passages.
Hindemith's influence on Sondheim's sonata has been noted before.
Although
he had not seen the
sonata,
Banfield
presciendy
remarked
that it showed an indebtedness to
Hindemith,
surmising
that Barrow's
influence on Sondheim
-
and Hindemith's on Barrow
-
would echo
through
the sonata.29 And
although quartal harmony
has also been
attributed to Barrow's other
European
teacher,
Vaughan
Williams,
the
linear-contrapuntal writing
in much of the Sondheim resembles 'the
linear-contrapuntal
manner of the New
Objectivity (neue
Sach-
lichkeit)',
to use David
Neumeyer's description
of Hindemith's musical
language.30
Elsewhere
Neumeyer
referred to 'Hindemithian counter?
point
-
with its arched tension
curves,
crisp
formal
contours,
and
melodies and harmonies of seconds and
fourths',
features evident
28
Personal
correspondence,
19
January
2001.
29
SBM, 19. Banfield refers to the
piece
as a three-movement sonata,
giving
the
impression
of
a
completed
work rather than a
projected conception.
30
Alain
Frogley, 'Vaughan
Williams, Ralph',
The New Grove
Dictionary ofMusk
and Musicians
(2nd edn, online
version),
accessed 12 March
2001; David
Neumeyer,
The Music
of
Paul Hindemith
(New Haven, CT, 1986),
4. Not
everyone
shared Hindemith's enthusiasm for Kurth's notion of
linear
counterpoint; Schoenberg
dismissed it as 'nonsense' and 'imitation-imitation'. See Arnold
Schoenberg,
'Linear
Counterpoint'
and 'Linear
Counterpoint:
Linear
Polyphony', Style
and Idea:
Selected
Writings of
Arnold
Schoenberg (Berkeley, 1975),
289-97.
Example
29.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 74-5.
Meno mosso
(J
=
104)
Example
30.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 90-1.
intrrtfyrTffrfPf
tE
r-rf-?*-*?
w
staccato
=F*
%e-
=*t=* s
e
*$fc. %%b.
Example
31.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 100-4.
100
Fugato
rit. a
tempo
?
-
*
v
'lUJJ%j
^ m p f _~._ m rT" TT
m
J
J i
sempre legato
i v
P \^=*
T
f
f
f
P
^J^f-CJ/H/
?
292 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
32.
Hindemitii,
Piano Sonata no.
3,
third
movement,
bars
134-42.
tv s i 0 ? ~f _* ~tii *v i
^
i
rirr' T
?
throughout
the Sondheim.31 And the use of
'counterpoint-sonata
form' in both Sondheim's sonata and Hindemith's Third Sonata makes
the Hindemith connection even
stronger.32
Indeed,
this
modelling
after Hindemith
-
and,
to a lesser
degree,
Prokofiev- also
helps
to contextualize Leonard Bernstein's criticism of
Sondheim's deliberate
'wrong-note' writing
in A
Funny Thing Happened
on the
Way
to the Forum
(1962)
.33 Some 12
years
before
Forum,
Sondheim
unashamedly engaged
in such
'wrong-note' writing.
The
passage
shown
in
Example
33
clearly begins
and ends in G minor
-
and note the
allusion to the
opening
of the third movement at bar 115
-
but the
harmonic
language
between the tonic cadences makes no concession
to Tin Pan
Alley concepts
of
tonality.
Sondheim did not increase the
dissonance in his
Broadway
music in
comparison
with other
composers,
as Bernstein accused.
Rather,
it
appears
that Sondheim
may
have cir-
cumscribed his own adventurous
language
in order to make his Broad?
way
music more
readily
accessible. Because of his
compositional
exemplars,
Sondheim's
'wrong-note' writing
had been a
part
of his
musical
vocabulary
from his Williams
days
forward.
As Table 4
shows,
the
recapitulation
of the
opening
section is
fairly
straightforward.
The most notable variants are the
change
in
accompaniment
for the second theme and the
complete
elimination
of a final statement of the
opening
material,
a characteristic more in
keeping
with a
recapitulation
of a sonata movement. Yet another
formal
novelty
is the return of material from the intermezzo in the
coda,
a feature also found in the first movement.
With its eclectic mix of
forms,
harmonic
language, counterpoint
and
texture,
the third movement in
particular provides
evidence of a
31
David
Neumeyer,
'Hindemith and his American Critics: A Postmodern
View', Hindemith-
Jahrbuch,
27
(1998),
218-34
(p. 229).
32
See
Joseph
Dorfman,
'Counterpoint-Sonata Form', Hindemith-Jahrbuch,
19
(1990), 55-67,
where Dorfman discusses,
among
other
pieces,
Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata: 'the intro?
duction of
counterpoint
into all sections of the sonata movement
-
exposition, development
and
recapitulation
-
in effect created a new and
unique
structure, which we shall call
counterpoint-
sonataform'
(p. 55).
33
Sondheim: *You
might
be interested to know. . . that I
played
the score of Forum for
Lenny
and he criticized it because of its
having "arbitrary" wrong
notes, by
which he meant
(among
other
things)
the tritones. You
might
also be interested to know that his use of the tritone
throughout
West Side
Story
hadn't occurred to him until I
pointed
it out.' Personal
correspondence,
19
January
2001.
Example
33.
Sondheim,
Piano Sonata in C
major,
third
movement,
bars 111-15.
in
jt^j^
iE==5?
31
BP
S^
m Li r *2T
^m
^m
m
115
J4h^
Lr dim.
poco
a
poco
- - -
S m n
S
^f
capable
musical craftsman whose
imagination rarely
outran his
abilities. It also looks forward to the music in the
professional
shows
much more
profoundly
than the Williams shows do. One can
easily
see,
from the
strength
of this
sonata,
why
Sondheim was awarded the
Hutchinson Memorial
Scholarship
to
study
with Babbitt.34
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SONATA
If this sonata
gives
such clear indication of Sondheim's talent and the
direction his music would
take,
then
why
has it
languished
for over 50
years?
The main reason is that it is housed in the Williams
College
archives.
34
'In
memory
of her son, the late Hubbard Hutchinson '17, Mrs Eva Hutchinson, of
Columbus, Ohio,
provided
in her will for an annual
scholarship
of
$3,000,
to be awarded to that
member of the
graduating
class at Williams "most talented in creative work in
music,
writing,
or
painting".
The
award, which will be known as the Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial
Scholarship,
is
nearly
twice the amount of
any previous
Williams
scholarship
and ranks with the
highest
in the
United States. The winner of this
award,
who will be chosen
by
a committee
consisting
ofthe head
of the fine arts
department,
a member of the
English department,
and the
faculty
member in
charge
of music, will receive the
grant
for the two
years following
his
graduation,
with no restric-
tions
upon
its use. "He shall be
entirely
free to
study, travel,
or
loaf, as he
may
see
fit,"
the terms
of the award state. In
addition, he
may apply
for a
year's
renewal at the end of two
years,
which
may
be
granted
at the discretion ofthe
college
authorities.' 'New
Scholarships',
Williams Alumni
Review, 32/3
(February 1940),
76-7. The 1951
college prospectus
lists Sondheim as the
recipient
of the 1950
scholarship.
294 STEVE SWAYNE
Northwestern Massachusetts is both rural and
remote,
and the
material for the Sondheim scholar at Williams is
sparse.
Yearbooks and
student
handbooks,
stories in the student
newspaper,
and articles and
columns
penned by
Sondheim for student
magazines
make
up
the
body
of research material at
Williams,
and these have not as
yet
been
gathered together.
In
fact,
the Williams collection
pales
in
comparison
with the
holdings
of three other collections. Sondheim
gave
the bulk
of his
pre-1965 papers
to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater
Research at the
University
of
Wisconsin;
certain artefacts
(such
as the
script
for the unfinished 1952 musical Climb
High
that contains Oscar
Hammerstein IFs
annotations)
are available for research
only
there in
Madison. Sondheim has
promised
the bulk ofthe
remaining papers
to
the US
Library
of
Congress,
to which he has
already given
his sizeable
LP collection. And he has been
uncommonly generous
to scholars
by
granting
access to
manuscripts
that are
currently
in his
possession
and
kept
in his Manhattan townhouse. Other than the
piano
sonata, then,
there has been little reason for a Sondheim scholar to travel to
Williams,
and in fact few scholars have done so.
This lack of
investigation
has in turn led writers to
speculate
about
the sonata and its
importance
in Sondheim's
development, usually
with
the result of
ignoring
the ramifications that
emerge
from the work.
Banfield,
for
example,
failed to discuss to what
degree
Hindemith shad-
owed Sondheim after the
sonata,
as
though
Sondheim
might
have
mimicked Hindemith and Barrow while in
college only
to
outgrow
them on
graduation. Similarly,
not
having
examined the
sonata,
com-
mentators have
emphasized
the
seemingly unlikely apprenticeship
that
Sondheim had with Babbitt.35 Because of the
proximity
of his first
pro?
fessional
musical,
the 1954
Saturday Night,
to his lessons with Babbitt
(autumn
1950 to
spring
1952),
Sondheim's musical traits
-
motivic
development,
attention to musical structure and 'the
long
line',
piquant harmony
-
are traced back to Babbitt and not further back to
his
years
at Williams.
Sondheim himself has inhibited
scholarly
work on the sonata
through
his reluctance to allow the sonata to
gain
wider distribution.
Not
only
has he
rejected
all
requests
to
publish
the
sonata,
but he has
also
kept
a
tight
rein on the
proliferation
of
copies
ofthe
manuscript.36
Given its
proximity
to the
unpublished college
shows
-
Phinney's
Rainbow
(1948)
and All That Glitters
(1949)
-
the sonata has
generally
been viewed as a student
work,
and hence an immature one.
Lastly,
its
incompleteness suggests
some dissatisfaction with the work on
35
See
Anthony Tommasini, 'Finding
Still More Life in a "Dead" Idiom'
[profile
of Milton
Babbitt],
New York Times
(16
October
1996),
H39 and
passim, Meryle Secrest,
Stephen
Sondheim: A
Life (New York, 1998), 85-7; SBM, 20-6;
Craig Zadan,
Sondheim & Co.
(2nd edn,
updated,
New
York, 1989),
6-7.
36
In December 1997,1
contacted the archivists at Williams
College
and asked for a
photocopy
of the sonata. I was informed that all theses
required
the
permission
of the author for
photo-
copying
and that the archivist would be in touch with me. The
following
month,
I received a letter
from
Stephen Sondheim,
dated 20
January 1998,
informing
me of his decision not to
permit
a
photocopy
of the sonata to be sent to me. When I was
finally
able to view the sonata at Williams
in
September
2000, it had a3"x5" card
appended
to it: *Note:
Stephen
Sondheim has refused
requests
to
duplicate
his thesis and
presumably
will continue to do so. See 1/22/98
correspon?
dence in "Theses" folder.'
Sondheim's
part, although many
of the
compositions
he
began
between 1949 and 1962
-
including stage pieces
-
were left
incomplete
for a
variety
of reasons.
But for all its
inaccessibility
and
neglect,
the sonata is far from
insignificant.
Sondheim's earliest extended
composition
demonstrates
a musical
dexterity
that is
exceptional
for a
20-year-old composer
and
hints at
greater accomplishments
in the future. The musical
language
of the sonata
already
contains the sonic hallmarks that are character-
istic of the mature Sondheim. And the work
provides
the clearest evi?
dence so far available of whom Sondheim chose as musical mentors
and how those choices reverberate in the later musicals.
As a chronicle of Sondheim's musical
development
while he was at
Williams,
the sonata does not stand alone. The class
history
in the 1950
Williams
yearbook unexpectedly
details Sondheim's
compositional
maturation. One reads of a
growing dismay
on the
part
ofthe unnamed
author as Sondheim becomes more and more serious in his
pursuits.
For his
sophomore year,
Sondheim
composed
the
parodistic Phinney
ys
Rainbow,
an
oblique
reference to Burton Lane's Finian's Rainbow
(1947)
-
still on
Broadway
at the time Sondheim wrote
Phinney's
Rainbow- and a direct reference to Williams's
president, James Phinney
Baxter III. The author
singled
out Sondheim for that
sophomore
(and
somewhat
sophomoric) production:
'One of our
boys,
Steve
Sondheim,
wrote
Phinney's
Rainbow,
which was
brought
to the AMT
stage
over
Spring Houseparties.
We were sure he was a
genius.'37
If the author held this
opinion,
he seemed less sure
by
the time of
Sondheim's
junior-year
musical. 'That
spring
[of 1949]
we
enjoyed
All
That Glitters and had
quite
a sober
spring
house
party,
or we should
say
proper.'38 Perhaps
the astute reader knew that Sondheim was the
genius
behind All That
Glitters,
but the author doesn't bother to
identify
him,
even
though
the 1949
yearbook
referred to the musical as a
'resounding
success'.39 The reviewer for the Williams
Record,
though,
was as sober as the writer for the Gul
In
general
the
songs
were second-rate ...
Phinney's
Rainbow made no
attempt
to be Serious
Art;
it was satirical
throughout,
and even
poked
fun
at its love interest. Sondheim's new
music,
on the other
hand,
seeks to mix
parody
and social
significance,
to combine a
straight
romantic love affair
with
biting
satire. To me it seems an unstable
compound,
and I believe that
the
play
would have been better had it stuck to
parody.40
37
1950 Gul
(College Yearbook),
35. 'Much
praise
went to co-authors Steve Sondheim and
T. S. Horton for an
extremely
successful and
entertaining production.'
1948 Gul
(College
Yearbook), 122.
38
1950 Gul
(College Yearbook),
35.
39
'The
sophomores..
. came out with the news that
they
were
sponsoring
a dance on the week-
end of March 19.. .. This was the same week-end that
Cap
8c Bells was
presenting
its second
production
of the
year,
All That Glitters, a musical written
by
Steve Sondheim. Both the dance and
the musical were
resounding successes,
and as
everyone expected,
there was a
slight
snowfall.,
1949 Gul
(College Yearbook),
73.
40
Edwin N.
Perrin,
'AU That Glitters Shiner for
Cap
and
Bells, Cast',
Williams Record
(23
March
1949),
4.1 thank W.
Anthony Sheppard
at Williams
College
for
making
me aware of this review.
296 STEVE SWAYNE
What was
perceived
as an unstable
compound
at Williams would
become standard fare for the mature Sondheim.
Sondheim's
senior-year project
-
High
Tor
-
had to be shelved
because Maxwell Anderson would not
grant
Sondheim the
rights
to set
his
play
to music.41
Strangely,
there is no mention of Sondheim or
High
Tbrin the events ofthe senior
year, although
in at least one other
place
in the 1950
yearbook
the aborted musical is
mentioned,
suggesting
that the
campus community
was well aware of Sondheim's work on
yet
another musical.42 A student
revue,
Where To From
Here,
was substituted
for
High
Tor;
Sondheim contributed one
song,
the melancholic 'No
Sad
Songs
for
Me',
to the show.43
By
that
time,
the author seems to have
grown
cool towards
Sondheim;
no further mention of him is made in
the class
history.
The student who was hailed as a
genius
as a
sopho-
more is voted the second most
original
student on
campus by
the end
of his senior
year.44
It
appears
that the
genius may
have become a bit
too serious
-
or
perhaps
too
prickly
-
for his fellow students.
It
appears,
too,
that the music for these
productions
became increas?
ingly sophisticated
and less accessible.45
Certainly
the
sonata,
with its
extended
tonality
and free use of non-harmonic
notes,
furthers this
trend towards
greater
musical abstraction and
complexity.
It is a
forward-looking
work,
not
merely
an academic
exercise,
in which the
increasing contrapuntal
and harmonic
complexity
of the later shows is
foreshadowed.
A
particular syntactical
feature of the sonata's harmonic
language
is
the
preponderance
of
suspended
dominant
chords,
which
presages
a
trait that one
repeatedly
discovers in Sondheim's shows. Authentic
cadences both in the sonata and in later Sondheim often use such sus?
pended
and unresolved dominants. The
song 'Lovely'
from A
Funny
Thing Happened
on the
Way
to the Forum
provides
a fine
example
of such
cadences. A duet between the two
young
lovers,
Philia and
Hero,
'Lovely' opens
with an instrumental
introduction,
after which Philia
sings
her
verse,
and then Hero
reprises
her music with his verse.
Example
3446 is extracted from Hero's verse. In all three cases
-
the
introduction and the two
sung
verses
-
the 'normal' dominant is
41
Secrest,
Stephen
Sondheim, 79.
42
The AMT Committee felt we
ought
to
get
familiar with the classics
by going
to see their
Agamemnon,
and Steve Sondheim was
supervising
a
group
of amateurs in the
production
of
another Masse
musical, following
Maxwell Anderson's axe of his HIGH TOR
adaptation.'
1950
Gul
(College Yearbook),
90.
43
'Cap
and Bells
sponsored
and
enginered [sic]
Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, William
Saroyan's My
Hearts in the
Highlands,
and a student written musical, while the AMT Committee
launched the season with Faust
(Part I)
in connection with the world wide celebration of Goethe's
two hundredth
birthday.'
1950 Gul
(College Yearbook),
127. See also Secrest,
Stephen
Sondheim,
82-3.
44
In the 1950 Gul, Sondheim received votes from his
peers
in a number of
categories:
Most
Versatile, 22
(3rd place);
Most
Brilliant,
14
(6th);
Most
Likely
to Succeed, 29
(4th);
Done Most
for Williams,
4
(last);
Most
Original,
32
(2nd).
45
See SBM, 16-19,
for discussion of the music of
Phinney
s
Rainbow,
All That Glitters and
High
Tor.
46
'Lovely',
music and
lyrics by Stephen
Sondheim. ? 1962
(renewed)
Burthen Music
Company,
Inc.
(ASCAP).
All
rights
administered
by Chappell
& Co.
(ASCAP).
All
rights
reserved.
Used
by permission.
Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc, Miami,
FL 33014.
Example
34.
'Lovely' (A Funny Thing Happened
on the
Way
to the
Forum),
bars 63-80.
Win
-
some Sweet and warm and win
-
some,
Ra-di-ant as
m
TTTT
X
1
v
&
*
4 J
?
*
r
*
t
jJ_J
TTTT
X
^^ ^ ^^
^
mou
-
sand _
ships
_ Would have to die of shame.. And I'm
withheld until the final authentic cadence
(not
shown in the
example).
Notice how the tenor
line,
counterpoint
to the
melody, provides
the
'normal' dominant on
nearly every
third beat of
every
odd-numbered
bar. This use ofthe
suspended
dominant
appears
not
only
in the sonata
298 STEVE SWAYNE
but also in so
many
of Sondheim's
non-pastiche songs
that it becomes
difficult to
single
out
examples
in the mature Sondheim. The tide
number to the musical
Company
(1970)
and
'Sorry-Grateful'
from the
same musical
employ
this
suspended
dominant,
as do the tide numbers
oiMerrily
WeRoll
Along
(1981)
and Into the Woods
(1987).
In the
sonata,
these
suspended
dominants come from the same harmonic realm as
does the
quartal harmony,
which in turn finds resonance in Hinde?
mith's harmonic
language (cf. Example
2).
The
omnipresence
of this
harmonic feature
suggests
a far
greater
reach for the musical
language
contained in the sonata than has heretofore been
proposed.
It is not
only
the harmonic
language
of the sonata that extends
beyond
the confines of Williams. The linear
counterpoint
that suffuses
the work informs later Sondheim as well. The tenor voice in
Example
34 is but one
example,
and the instances mentioned in the
preceding
paragraph
also involve considerable
contrapuntal writing.
Hindemith
again
seems like a
logical point
for such
counterpoint,
but another
influence
upon
Sondheim needs to be examined.
In his unfinished
novel,
Bequest,
written while he was at
Williams,
Sondheim's
protagonist, pianist-composer
Edward
Gold,
is referred to
as 'Mr Rachmaninoff \47
And,
as
recendy
as
1998,
Sondheim referred
to Rachmaninov as 'one of
my
favorites'.48 But this
lifelong
love of
Rachmaninov seems to find litde oudet in Sondheim's music. The
long-
breathed melodies that are a Rachmaninov trademark are rare in Sond?
heim's
work,
and the
sumptuous
harmonies are also absent for the
most
part.
Thus it is all the more curious that Sondheim should have
said of Rachmaninov
(and
other
composers),
'the
way
the tune sticks
in
your
head has less to do with melodic line than what did
they
do har-
monically
underneath'.49
Yet Rachmaninov was also a master
contrapuntist,
whose works are
overrun with
complex
inner voices that
play
with and
against
the
melody
and
harmony.
While the melodies
routinely
draw
comment,
very
often these melodies are
accompanied by
extended counter-
melodies,
with the result that Rachmaninov's harmonies are often
arrived at
through
linear means.
Undoubtedly,
Rachmaninov's
appreciation
of and skill in
counterpoint
are traceable to his
years
at
the Moscow
Conservatory
and to his
teacher,
Sergey Taneyev,
who
taught counterpoint
there and who wrote a treatise on
counterpoint.50
But Rachmaninov was attuned to
counterpoint throughout
his life. In
a 1909
interview,
'Modernism is Rachmaninoff's
Bane',
he decried
Elektra and
praised
Die
Meistersinger,
in
part
because of the
ways
in which
counterpoint
is handled: 'To what end all this
polyphonic
wilderness
[in Elektra]
when the result is
incomprehensible?
... How
infinitely
more effective is the
counterpoint
at the close of the second act
[of
47
Stephen
Sondheim,
Bequest (unfinished novel),
10
(at Wisconsin).
48
Swayne, 'Hearing
Sondheim's Voices', 345.
49
Ibid.
50
Sergey
Ivanovich
Taneyev, Podvizhnoy kontrapunkt strogogo pis'ma
[Convertible
counterpoint
in the strict
style] (Leipzig
and Moscow, 1909;
Eng.
trans., 1962).
Meistersinger]
than all that of Salome and Elektra.'51 In a sketch for an
unnamed
piece, contrapuntal
issues concerned Rachmaninov from the
start.52 And the noted Rachmaninov scholar David F. B. Cannata
argued
that
contrapuntal writing
'was crucial to the tonal coherence of
Rachmaninoff's
symphonic
structures'.53 It is the
activity
of the inner
voices that
gives
Rachmaninov's music its rich
texture;
they
are the
'harmonically
underneath' musical matter that Sondheim so
readily
imitates in his own work that sounds
nothing
like Rachmaninov.
Here,
then,
an
important
connection exists between
Hindemith,
Rachmani?
nov and Sondheim. In the
sonata,
Sondheim
engages
in musical
ges-
tures that at times show a
greater
indebtedness to one
composer
than
another.
(See Example
8 for a more Rachmaninovian
imitation.)
But
in his commitment to
counterpoint,
Sondheim imitates both Hinde?
mith and
Rachmaninov,
using
harmonic
language
that,
in the
main,
is
beholden to neither
composer.
In
addition,
Sondheim's use of the term martellato resembles Rach-
maninov's
usage.
In the final bars of the latter's Second Piano Con-
certo,
the music is marked 'Risoluto' and contains an additional
marking
for the solo
instrument,
with its
triplet figuration
(and melody
in the
thumbs,
as it
were),
of martellato. Sondheim
played
the
first,
not
the
third,
movement of the
concerto,54
yet
where the term
appears
in
his own first movement it
accompanies triplet figuration,
and in the
third movement it
signals
the sonata's
peroration.
Given that some of
Sondheim's
figuration
cannot
easily
be 'hammered out'
-
see
Example
15 with its slurs
-
one wonders if Sondheim
fully
understood the term.
He
probably appropriated
the
widely
known but
rarely
used term from
a score he
knew,
and this unusual notation in Rachmaninov would
seem the likeliest source.55
The
sonata, then,
provides
evidence of the influence of
Ravel,
Satie
and
Rachmaninov,
composers
who have
already
been linked to Sond?
heim,
and Prokofiev and
Hindemith,
composers
not
usually
associated
with Sondheim. Hindemith's
presence
in fact is such a
pronounced
factor in this
early
work that it is difficult to
imagine
that Sondheim
could have
completely jettisoned
Hindemith's sound world in
forging
his own. When asked what he was
listening
to at the time he wrote the
Concertino
-
a work that followed the sonata
by
mere months
-
Sond?
heim
remarked,
T'd
say
I was in
my
Hindemith
phase, especially
"The
Four
Temperaments".'56
How
long
did this
phase
last?
51
As
quoted
in David Francis Buder Cannata, 'Rachmaninoff's
Changing
View of
Symphonic
Structure'
(Ph.D. dissertation, New York
University, 1993),
33.
52
Ibid.,
51.
53
Ibid., 97; see also 98,101,104, 191 and 198-201.
54
See above, note 6.
55
Rachmaninov also used the term marteUato in the Variations on a Theme
of Chopin, op.
22
(see
Variation
10),
and in the third movement of the revised version of the Fourth Concerto, op.
40
(see
four bars before
Figure
47, where the term is
spelt martelato).
This information comes
courtesy
of David F. B. Cannata, who added that 'the term is indeed unusual' in Rachmaninov
(private correspondence).
56
Anthony Tommasini,
'A Ldttie Classical Music from Sondheim's Youth'
[review
of the
Concertino], New York Times
(17 May 2001),
B5. For more on Sondheim's choice of The Four
Temperaments
as a
significant
work, see Steve
Swayne,
'Sondheim's "Hindemith Phase"',
unpub?
lished
paper
delivered at the annual
meeting
of the
Society
of American
Music, Lexington,
Kentucky,
7 March 2002.
300 STEVE SWAYNE
Example
35. 'Witch's Lament'
{Into
the
Woods),
bars 1-6.
Rubato
/
yt
j
j
j
j
>
^
jj,
j
This is the world I meant. Could-n't
you
lis
-
ten?_
m
s_r
_____
S_i
f
/J 3
J
JQ
JJ.
3
J
1
J
In
tempo (J
=
100)
-EEEfe
Could-n't
youstay con-tent,_
safe_ be-hind
walls,
=fc
pp
=_=d ii
As
?4e
TTTT
IlllI
?
mp
^
(b?
could not?
/Lv
mp
n^
fi^m.
r
r
r
r
Space
does not
permit
a full discussion of Hindemithian echoes in
the mature Sondheim. But
by way
of
example,
the central sections of
T Know
Things
Now' and 'On the
Steps
ofthe Palace'
(Into
the
Woods)
bear sonic traces of Hindemith. The
opening
ofthe 'Witch's
Lament',
also from Into the Woods
(Example
35),57
has a distant
relationship
with
the
opening
ofthe third movement of Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata
(Example 36).
Note in
particular
the move from one chord to another
by
means of linear
counterpoint
as well as the
presence
of
pedal
notes
in each
example.
In
drawing
this
comparison,
I am not
suggesting
that
57
'Witch's Lament', music and
lyrics by Stephen
Sondheim. ? 1998
Rilting
Music Inc. All
rights
administered
by
WB Music
Corp.
All
rights
reserved. Used
by permission.
Example
36.
Hindemith,
Piano Sonata no.
3,
third
movement,
bars
1-8.
Mafiig
schnell
(J
=
etwa
84)
frra ?j
J7i
,q.
g>P?gi u
r THr
r^m
Sondheim
consciously
borrowed from the Hindemith in
writing
his
song.
Rather,
I wish to show how Sondheim transmuted Hindemith's
language
into a musical
language
that is both
distinctly
Sondheim's and
yet
remains traceable to Hindemith.58
One
composer conspicuously
absent from the sonata is
Copland.
In
his article on Sondheim in The New Grove
Dictionary of Opera,
Banfield
made a claim he was to
repeat
in his later book: 'Sondheim's musical
language,
in which
melody
and
harmony
are
closely argued,
retains
strong
affinities with Ravel and
Copland,
while
making sophisticated
use of
jazz
and dance
idioms;
it is
intensely personal,
often
bittersweet,
in its
expression.'59
Sondheim, however,
has stated that
'Copland
hasn't
particularly
influenced me. He's influenced
every
American
writer. But. ..
Copland
doesn't influence me
particularly'.60
The sonata
supports
Sondheim's assertion that
Copland's
influence
on his musical
language
is minimal. The metrical east of the move?
ments does not resemble the metrical shifts so often found in
Copland's
music. The thickness of the harmonies runs counter to the
58
In
speaking
of influences on
Hindemith,
Forte
mentions, among others, 'August
Halm
and,
perhaps
more
important,
Ernst Kurth, whose
psychological approach
-
as well as his notion of
"linear
counterpoint"
-
was
very
influential
upon
Hindemith's
generation' (p. 64).
And of
Hindemith, Aaron
Copland
said: 'He wrote a kind of linear
counterpoint
that infused new life
into ancient
contrapuntal procedures.'
Aaron
Copland,
Our New Music:
Leading Composers inEurope
and America
(New York, 1941), 111,
as
quoted
in
Neumeyer, Hindemith-Jahrbuch,
27
(1998),
227.
59
Stephen Banfield, 'Sondheim, Stephen (Joshua)',
The New Grove
Dictionary of Opera (London,
1992), 450-2
(p. 451).
In
discussing 'Pretty
Litde Picture' from A
Funny ThingHappened
on the
Way
to the Forum, Banfield wrote: 'This
song
is close to Milhaud's
style,
itself
only
a few
steps away
from
that of one of Sondheim's
primary
mentors, Copland' (SBM, 106).
60
Swayne, 'Hearing
Sondheim's Voices', 331.
302 STEVE SWAYNE
leanness of texture
usually
associated with
Copland.
Even the act of
employing
traditional forms as
scaffolding
differs from
Copland's
characteristic slow-fast-slow alternation in
large-scale compositions.
Elsewhere I have written about Sondheim's motivic
development
as the
most
likely
connection that exists between his
writing
and
Copland's,61
and indeed this sonata bests
Copland
in
generating
reams of musical
material from the humblest of motifs. One would
expect
that this
early
work would
clearly
show the
springs
from which Sondheim imbibed to
create his own musical
language. Copland's spring, Appalachian
or
otherwise,
is
notably dry
here.
Thus the sonata
presents
a
challenge
to the
way musicologists
tell the
story
of the
emergence
of Sondheim's music. In terms of
mentors,
Ravel
remains;
Copland
is absent. Rachmaninov
reappears,
as does
Satie. Hindemith and Prokofiev now enter into the account much more
prominendy
than before.
(And
to those critics who
complain
about the
unhummability
of Sondheim's
music,
it can be noted that it is also hard
to hum Hindemith or
Prokofiev.)
Add to this
melange George
Gersh-
win and Harold Arlen
-
composers
Sondheim mentions elsewhere as
seminal influences
-
and one
begins
to understand the musical lan?
guage
Sondheim has created and
why
he is considered sui
generis
in the
realm of the American musical theatre.
Moreover,
the similarities between mature Sondheim
songs
and the
sonata are evidence that his musical voice was
fairly
well established
by
the time he
graduated
from Williams. When I asked Sondheim
specific?
ally
about Climb
High,
the
apprentice
musical he was
writing
when he
was
studying
with
Babbitt,
he answered:
I
probably
showed
[Babbitt]
songs
from Climb
High (1952),
because I was
writing
it at the
time,
but I don't remember
doing
so,
and
certainly
the work
was
independent
of
any
work I did with him. It had
nothing
to do with him.
I did not write
anything studying
with Milton. We
analyzed,
is all we did
-
analyzed
and
talked,
analyzed
and talked.62
And Babbitt himself corroborated Sondheim's recollection ofthe inde-
pendence
of Sondheim's musical
language
from the lessons when he
wrote:
He never worked on
any
of his shows with
me,
but I saw
many
of the
songs,
including
the celebrated Tm In Love With A
Boy' [from
Climb
High].
I
thought
them to be
very accomplished
and
knowing..
. . Steve
was,
and
is,
a
singular
creator,
and I would be
proud
of him if I
thought
it was relevant
or
proper
to be
'proud'
of one's students. But I am
delighted by
his success
and
enormously impressed by
his
achievement,
whether I made
any
contri-
bution to it or not.63
It thus
appears
that Sondheim's lessons with Babbitt
polished
an
already
considerable
gift
more than
they taught
the
young composer
skills and
concepts
that he did not learn while at Williams.
61
See above, note 13.
62
Personal
correspondence,
21 March 2001.
6S
Personal
correspondence,
12
June
2001.
Unlike some ofthe student
composers
who followed him at
Williams,
Sondheim
provided
no dedication for the sonata. A look at these later
dedications,
though,
shows how
important
and
imposing
a
figure
was
Robert
Barrow,
the Yale
graduate
and
disciple
of Hindemith.
To Professor Robert
Barrow,
for his
patience
and assistance above and
beyond
the call of
duty throughout my college
career, and,
most of
all,
for
his
stealthy masterminding
of these 'artworks'.
To Robert
Barrow,
through
whose
painstaking
assistance,
fatherly
concern,
and
gentle prodding,
four
years
at Williams were made much more fruitful
and
rewarding.
The
composer
would like to
acknowledge
the invaluable assistance of
Professor Robert Barrow without whose constant instruction and
sugges?
tions this
composition
would have been
impossible.64
If Sondheim
neglected
to mention Barrow back in
1950,
he made
up
for it in the 1973 cover
story
for Newsweek
magazine.
Fresh from his
success at
having
three
Tony-winning
musicals
running simultaneously
on
Broadway-
the first
composer
in the
history
of
Broadway
to achieve
such a feat
-
Sondheim made it clear how much he owed his
principal
composition
teacher. 'Before
Barrow,
I waited for all the tunes to come
into
my
head. But he took all the romance out ofthe music. 'You learn
the
technique,"
he
said,
"and then
you put
the notes down on
paper
and that's what music is!" I adored it.'65 The sonata
gives ample
evi?
dence that Sondheim learnt the
technique
and that Barrow was indeed
a formidable teacher whose Hindemithian shadow fell on Sondheim
well
beyond
1973.
And
now,
outside its
importance
to
musicologists,
what fate awaits
Sondheim's
piano
sonata? One can
only hope
that Sondheim will
relent and allow the sonata to see the
light
of
day.
As the work of a
young composer,
it remains a
profound
testament of Sondheim's talent
and
compares favourably
with
juvenile
and unfinished works
by
other
composers.
Mendelssohn's four-movement E
major piano
sonata,
for
example,
written when that
composer
was
17,
has entered and
remained in the
repertory. Perhaps
Sondheim will
yet
discover the
completed
second movement
among
his
manuscripts; perhaps
he or
another
enterprising composer
will realize the sketch.66 If
not,
unfin?
ished
piano
sonatas
by
Schubert and
Janacek grace
concert
pro-
grammes
from time to time. Given Sondheim's
popularity,
there is
every
reason to
expect
that the sonata would find a welcome
among
pianists.
64
See Table 1. The comments are taken from the
composition
theses of Robert Kelton
Goss,
David
Gregg
Niven
(both
class of
1957)
and Robert
J.
Stern
(class
of
1960), respectively.
65
Charles Michener and others, 'Words and Music
-
by Sondheim', Newsweek, 81/17 (23 April
1973),
61.
66
For the time
being,
Sondheim is
maintaining
his stand not to
publish
the sonata. T fear the
lost second movement will never be found and,
despite your ingenuity
in
filling
it
out,
it's
simply
not what I would have written. Please
forgive
me.' Personal
correspondence,
26
June
2001.
304 STEVE SWAYNE
In
many respects,
Sondheim's C
major
sonata resembles another C
major
work
by
another adolescent
composer.
Like
Sondheim,
Georges
Bizet was destined to write for the
stage. By
the
age
of 17 he had
already
spent
seven
years
as a student at the Paris Conservatoire. In
1855,
he
had earned some
money by arranging
Gounod's First
Symphony
in D
major
for
piano
four
hands;
Gounod was
among
Bizet's teachers at the
Conservatoire. What Bizet learnt from the Gounod he
poured
into his
own four-movement
Symphony
in C
major,
a work destined to remain
unperformed
and
unpublished
until some 80
years
after its creation
and some 60
years
after Bizet's death. There
are,
to be
sure,
some mis-
calculations in the
symphony;
the
fugato
at the centre of the second
movement sounds
strained,
for
example.
But such a miscalculation is
easily forgiven
when
put
next to the
prophetic
oboe
melody
of that
same movement. Winton Dean wrote that
'[t]he
Symphony
shows
more than
promise;
it stands on its own feet as a work of
precocious
genius'.67
Sondheim
spent
far less time than Bizet
studying
music and
spent
it
in a far less
disciplined
environment than the Conservatoire. In the
sonata,
one can
clearly
see the
fingerprints
of his teacher and his
musical influences. All the
same,
in the sonata Sondheim turned out a
work of
precocious genius.
Let us all
hope
that we will not have to wait
until 2030 for this work to enter our
repertory.
ABSTRACT
Stephen
Sondheim
composed
a three-movement
piano
sonata for his thesis in
music at Williams
College
and submitted the two outer movements
upon
graduation.
Sondheim has since been
unwilling
to
publish
or disseminate the
work,
and a
college stipulation
has
prevented reproduction
of the thesis. The
sonata shows the influences on Sondheim's
emerging
musical
style
-
predomi-
nandy
Ravel,
Rachmaninov
(influences previously
established
by scholars),
Prokofiev and Hindemith
(influences
less well
established)
-
and demon-
strates that his
compositional language
was
significandy developed by
the time
of his
graduation.
Similarities abound between the sonata and the mature
musicals ofthe 1970s and
beyond.
In addition to
providing examples
from the
completed
movements
-
a feat made
possible by
Sondheim's decision to
grant
limited
permission
to
reproduce
the sonata
-
the article examines a
two-page
sketch for the second
movement,
a
manuscript
that had remained in Sond?
heim's sole
possession
until October 2000.
67
Winton Dean, 'Bizet,
Georges',
The New Grove
Dictionary of
Music and Musicians
(London,
1980), ii, 749-63
(p. 751).

Sondheim Piano Sonata Analysis

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Sondheim's Piano Sonata

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