Sondheim on Music by Mark Eden Horowitz

Sondheim on Music by Mark Eden Horowitz

Author:Mark Eden Horowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781538125519
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2019-01-27T16:00:00+00:00


MH: When you do write for character, do you find that you write more complex textures in the accompaniment, the more complex the character is—somebody like Ben or Giorgio, as opposed to a Petra or Anne?

SS: No, it’s just that the moods vary according to what the scene is. In the case of Ben: there’s the glib Ben; and then there’s the heartbroken Ben; and then there’s the regretful Ben; and then there’s the bitter Ben. When you have scenes that have that color, you can put that color in the music. So you don’t use a light-hearted waltz when he’s bitter—unless you’re—

MH: —doing “Could I Leave You?”

SS: Yes, which is not his song. I just said “light-hearted waltz,” out of the blue. Obviously, one of the reasons he sings “The Road You Didn’t Take” the way he does, is that he’s trying to be charming. But he’s actually falling into the pattern. As opposed to singing it contemplatively, he could sing it contemplatively: “Oh, it’s interesting, you grow older, and these things pass you by.” You could write that kind of song, but the kind of feverishness that’s in that song is, it seems to me, very important for the character of Ben. That’s something I’m good at and that I’m sensitive to—musical dramatization, musical playwriting.

MH: You’ve commented that the Witch in Into the Woods is the one character in that show who doesn’t lie. Would you do anything musically to reflect that?

SS: No, that’s all in the lyric; I wouldn’t know how to do that. What I wanted was to make her always either very fierce or very tender.

MH: Here’s what I assume is a long-line sketch for “Green Finch and Linnet Bird,” but it struck me that this long-line is virtually the melody of the song, which is unlike other sketches of yours I’ve seen. [Note: When later asked about the meaning of the fermatas in this example, Sondheim said that “they signify echoes, not the main note.” See example 6.6.]

SS: Wow, right. Well, the other long-lines haven’t been worked out in such detail. Look how many notes there are in this line. Nothing you’ve shown me so far has this many. But you see, that is exactly what Milton Babbitt and I did with the Mozart 39th. He was showing me the long-line structures of the 39th and how it reflected itself in the shorter sections, and even in the little melodic motifs. That’s what holds the piece together. That’s exactly what happened here: in working out the long-line, and working out the melody, they came together, so that they reflect each other. So, in fact, the melody is the long-line. This is a very good synthesis. And my guess is, if you really took apart the other long-lines I had—the ones we’ve been going over, which are sort of shorthand—if you really examined the melodic structure, you would find that they do echo what’s going on; it’s just that I haven’t put the details into the long-line sketch.



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