Roots, Sondhelm-style

Swayne explores the influences of Sondheim's musical genius

riting a book of musical analysis for the general public is risky business. Do you patronize your readers by breathlessly declaring, as Martin Gottfried did in his chatty coffee-table book Sandheim (1993). that "a song is made up of music and lyrics"? Or do you resort to academic jargon in the manner of Stephen Banfield in his massive Sondheim 's Broadway Musicals (1993), which virtually requires a master's degree in musicology? Steven Swayne has found the middle way in Hcne Sondheim Found His Sound (University of Michigan Press, 2005) with his examination of the primary influences on Sondheim's music, offering academic references in a manner that even a musical neophyte can appreciate. An associate professor of music at Dartmouth College, Swayne devotes the first part of his book to Sondheim's collegiate beginnings, writing the famous "apprentice" musicals under Oscar Hammerstein IPs mentoring while studying music at Williams College under Robert Barrow. Sondheim, Swayne asserts, "learned how to write music mainly from Barrow. He learned how to create a character mainly from Hammerstein. He learned how to structure a scene mainly from film." Swayne cites Hammerstein's no-nonsense mentoring about Sondheim's post-college musical, Climb High: "I want you to say, 'Can I interest an audience in this to the extent that I am interested in it?'" Swayne adds that Hammerstein "presented Sondheim with three main characteristics of solid writing. 'I know that the smallest kind of story can be made to be earthshaking if the characters are examined closely enough, and if the choice of incident is ingenious enough, and if the narrative of the incident is told with enough depth and human observation.' That Sondheim met these three conditions in all his mature shows reveals the extent of his indebtedness to Hammerstein's tutelage." Swayne also examines the impact Harold Arlen's composing had on Sondheim's songwriting. Sondheim told Swayne that Arlen's "harmonic structures and his harmonies are, to me, endlessly rich, inventive and fascinating, and I never tire of his music." Swayne contends that "What Can "Vbu Lose?" from Dick Tracy (which he analyzes in detail) echoes Arlen's harmonics and song structure. Swayne's book also studies Sondheim's movie influences, particularly the films of Alain Resnais, whose Stavisky was scored by Sondheim. Swayne observes, "When the complexities of the Sondheim musicals of the seventies and beyond are bracketed by the French New Wave on one side and by Sondheim's own comments about the nom-elle vague on the other, the influence of the French New Wave upon Sondheim virtually establishes

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itself. Sondheim trafficked in a popular medium and yet brought it to an intellectual severity, a politique d'auteur and even a manner of visualization that resemble Resnais' films in particular." The book's 69-page centerpiece of the book is Swayne's masterful dissection of "Putting It Together" from Sunday in the Park isAth George: "What better song, then, in which to examine Sondheim's amalgamations and his 'bit by bit' manner of construction than the song that most closely scrutinizes the art of making art?" It's a wonderful section, with copious musical quotations displaying the parallels between "Putting It Together" and its first-act antecedents "The Day Off" and "Finishing the Hat." Swayne analyzes the song's cinematic techniques. " [A] look at the vocal score quickly reveals the song's structural complexity and similarity to a composite cinematic scene," where 17 different characters engage in conversation with musical equivalents of freezeframe cuts and camera pans. Swayne concludes that the song "is unapologetically collaborative, and it shows what can result from successful collaboration. On this level, it is at the vanguard of musical theater writing." For all the examination of the composing influences, Swayne offers little insight into Sondheim's lyric-writing influences. It would have been useful to compare and contrast Sondheim's early lyrics with those of Hammerstein, Frank Loesser and Dorothy Fields. And while we're treated to snippets of Sondheim-written dialogue from his collegiate work, Swayne does not study the mature scripts for The Last of Sheila or Getting Away With Murder. Svvayne closes his "Sondheim the Tunesmith" chapter with a Sondhcimesque verse: "It's no sin that Berlin Sondheim only pastiches/Like Porter, his forte's in the words he unleashes ..." His verse comes off as too clever by half. These minor flaws aside, Swayne has put together a well-researched, coherent look at where it all began for Sondheim. For trivia buffs. Swayne lists the English and drama courses Sondheim took at Williams, as well as a cross-section of the composers in Sondheim's mammoth record collection (Chopin, Hindemith and Prokofiev are each d represented). Hem- Sondheim Found Hit could become a standard text for iotmdbna lege musical theatre courses and sfandd eufcfafc Svvayne as a prominent theatre I ies of "What Can You Lost Together" are so on the i he would bring his; an entire Sondheim score. I

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The Sondheim Review 49