Blockbuster Movies Arthur`S Perfect Christmas ' title='2010 Blockbuster Movies Arthur`S Perfect Christmas ' />Stephen Sondheim Wikipedia. Stephen Sondheim. Stephen Joshua Sondheim s n d. March 22, 1930 is an American composer and lyricist known for more than a halfcentury of contributions to. Tensions on the Korean peninsula between North Korea and virtually every other country in the region continue to escalate in the wake of its possible detonation of a. KEY Unread Read Sticky Locked Announcement. Find your game forum. Newest Forum The Keeper of Antiques The Last Will. Sondheim in c. 1. Background information. Birth name. Stephen Joshua Sondheim. Born1. 93. 0 0. March 2. New York City, New York, U. S. Genres. Musical theatre. OccupationsYears active. Stephen Joshua Sondheim born March 2. American composer and lyricist known for more than a half century of contributions to musical theatre. Sondheim has received an Academy Award, eight Tony Awards more than any other composer,1 including a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2. Presidential Medal of Freedom. He has been described by Frank Rich of The New York Times as now the greatest and perhaps best known artist in the American musical theater. His best known works as composer and lyricist include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, Merrily We Roll Along, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins, and Passion. He also wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. Sondheim has also written film music, contributing Goodbye for Now to Warren Beattys 1. Reds. He wrote five songs for 1. Dick Tracy, including Sooner or Later I Always Get My Man by Madonna, which won the Academy Award for Best Song. The composer was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1. To celebrate his 8. Henry Millers Theatre was renamed the Stephen Sondheim Theatre on September 1. BBC Proms held a concert in his honor. Cameron Mackintosh has called Sondheim possibly the greatest lyricist ever. Early yearseditSondheim was born into a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Etta Janet Foxy, ne Fox 1. Herbert Sondheim 1. His father manufactured dresses designed by his mother. The composer grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and, after his parents divorced, on a farm near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. As the only child of well to do parents living in the San Remo on Central Park West, he was described in Meryle Secrests biography Stephen Sondheim A Life as an isolated, emotionally neglected child. When he lived in New York, Sondheim attended ECFS, the Ethical Culture Fieldston School known simply as Fieldston. He later attended the New York Military Academy and George School, a private Quaker preparatory school in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where he wrote his first musical, By George, and from which he graduated in 1. Sondheim spent several summers at Camp Androscoggin. He traces his interest in theatre to Very Warm for May, a Broadway musical he saw when he was nine. The curtain went up and revealed a piano, Sondheim recalled. A butler took a duster and brushed it up, tinkling the keys. I thought that was thrilling. When Sondheim was ten, his father already a distant figure left his mother for another woman Alicia, with whom he had two sons. Herbert sought custody of Stephen but was unsuccessful. Sondheim explained to biographer Secrest that he was what they call an institutionalized child, meaning one who has no contact with any kind of family. Youre in, though its luxurious, youre in an environment that supplies you with everything but human contact. No brothers and sisters, no parents, and yet plenty to eat, and friends to play with and a warm bed, you knowSondheim detested his mother,6 who was said to be psychologically abusive7 and projected her anger from her failed marriage on her son 8 When my father left her, she substituted me for him. And she used me the way she used him, to come on to and to berate, beat up on, you see. What she did for five years was treat me like dirt, but come on to me at the same time. She once wrote him a letter saying that the only regret she ever had was giving him birth. When his mother died in the spring of 1. Sondheim did not attend her funeral. Mentorship by Oscar Hammerstein IIeditWhen Sondheim was about ten years old around the time of his parents divorce, he became friends with James Hammerstein, son of lyricist and playwright Oscar Hammerstein II. The elder Hammerstein became Sondheims surrogate father, influencing him profoundly and developing his love of musical theatre. Sondheim met Hal Prince, who would direct many of his shows, at the opening of South Pacific, Hammersteins musical with Richard Rodgers. The comic musical he wrote at George School, By George, was a success among his peers and buoyed the young songwriters self esteem. When Sondheim asked Hammerstein to evaluate it as though he had no knowledge of its author, he said it was the worst thing he had ever seen But if you want to know why its terrible, Ill tell you. They spent the rest of the day going over the musical, and Sondheim later said, In that afternoon I learned more about songwriting and the musical theater than most people learn in a lifetime. Hammerstein designed a course of sorts for Sondheim on constructing a musical. He had the young composer write four musicals, each with one of the following conditions Based on a play he admired which became All That GlittersBased on a play he liked but thought flawed Sondheim chose Maxwell Andersons High Tor. Based on an existing novel or short story not previously dramatized, which became his unfinished version of Mary Poppins Bad Tuesday,1. Sherman BrothersAn original, which became Climb High. None of the assignment musicals was produced professionally. High Tor and Mary Poppins have never been produced The rights holder for the original High Tor refused permission, and Mary Poppins was unfinished. College and early careereditSondheim began attending Williams College, a liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts whose theatre program attracted him. His first teacher there was Robert Barrow . I thought he was wonderful because he was very dry. And Barrow made me realize that all my romantic views of art were nonsense. I had always thought an angel came down and sat on your shoulder and whispered in your ear dah dah dah DUM. Never occurred to me that art was something worked out. Download Star Wars: The Lost 1980`S Anime Movie Online. And suddenly it was skies opening up. As soon as you find out what a leading tone is, you think, Oh my God. What a diatonic scale is Oh my God The logic of it. And, of course, what that meant to me was Well, I can do that. Because you just dont know. You think its a talent, you think youre born with this thing. What Ive found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. Its just that some people get it developed and some dont. The composer told Meryle Secrest, I just wanted to study composition, theory, and harmony without the attendant musicology that comes in graduate school. But I knew I wanted to write for the theatre, so I wanted someone who did not disdain theatre music. Barrow suggested that Sondheim study with Milton Babbitt, who Sondheim described as a frustrated show composer with whom he formed a perfect combination. When he met Babbitt, he was working on a musical for Mary Martin based on the myth of Helen of Troy. Sondheim and Babbitt would meet once a week in New York City for four hours at the time, Babbitt was teaching at Princeton University. According to Sondheim, they spent the first hour dissecting Rodgers and Hart or George Gershwin or studying Babbitts favorites Buddy De. Sylva, Lew Brown and Ray Henderson. They then proceeded to other forms of music such as Mozarts Jupiter Symphony, critiquing them the same way. Babbitt and Sondheim, fascinated by mathematics, studied songs by a variety of composers especially Jerome Kern. Sondheim told Secrest that Kern had the ability to develop a single motif through tiny variations into a long and never boring line and his maximum development of the minimum of material. He said about Babbitt, I am his maverick, his one student who went into the popular arts with all his serious artillery.