Stephen Sondheim
18 quotes
Biography
Stephen Joshua Sondheim was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical.
"Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos."
"The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service."
"One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music."
"I'm a lazy writer. My idea of heaven is not writing. On the other hand, I'm obviously compulsive about it."
"Plays also, but musicals particularly—the last collaborator is your audience. So you got to wait until the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. And when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you've written. And things that seem to work well, work in the sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece, suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional, or a little overlong, or a little overweight, or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping in front of an audience."
"Without question, Steve is the best Broadway lyricist, past or present."
"All the best performers bring to their role something more, something different than what the author put on paper. That's what makes theatre live. That's why it persists."
"I'm interested in the theater because I'm interested in communication with audiences. Otherwise I would be in concert music."
"Musicals are, by nature, theatrical, meaning poetic, meaning having to move the audience's imagination and create a suspension of disbelief, by which I mean there's no fourth wall."
"In the Rodgers and Hammerstein generation, popular hits came out of shows and movies."
"I prefer neurotic people. I like to hear rumblings beneath the surface."
"If I cannot fly, let me sing."
"Music blows lyrics up very quickly, and suddenly they become more than art. They become pompous and they become self-conscious ... I firmly believe that lyrics have to breathe and give the audience's ear a chance to understand what's going on. Particularly in the theater, where you not only have the music, but you've got costume, story, acting, orchestra. There's a lot to take in."
"The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them."
"Musical comedies aren't written they are re-written."
"Over a period of time it's been driven home to me that I'm not going to be the most popular writer in the world so I'm always happy when anything in any way is accepted."
"One of the hardest things about writing lyrics is to make the lyrics sit on the music in such a way that you're not aware there was a writer there."
"I'm very opinionated about movie musicals when they're adapted from live shows. You'll sit still for a three-minute song in a theater. But in movies, a glance from someone's eyes will tell you the whole story in a few seconds."