Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments,… (original 2010; edition 2010)

Yep, that about covers it. Lyrics from Saturday Night to Merrily We Roll Along, though really I’m only in it for Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the cast recording of Angela Lansbury & George Hearn so familiar to me that I can tell when that production diverged from the lyrics he puts down in the book. The man hates critics and grumps that musicals are the only art form reviewed by illiterates; at least, he says, visual art is usually reviewed by failed visual artists. For me, the interest was mostly in the musicals and not in his extensive commentary. ( )

Normally I don't make a habit of reading song lyrics. Yeah, with a rock record I'll sometimes sit down with the liner notes and read along, but mostly I'll refer to the lyric only if I can't suss out what's being sung. This book is the exception for two reasons: 1) These aren't rock lyrics. Sondheim is a great writer in this form. Literate and witty, these are songs meant to tell stories. Although they're meant to be coupled with music, they're good enough to be taken on their own. 2) This isn't just a collection of lyrics. The lyrics serve as springboards to discussions of the creative process and creative outcomes. Sondheim, at age 80, is clear-eyed about his work. When he tells us what worked, what didn't, and why, his arguments are irrefutable enough that this reader can only nod his head in agreement.

Sondheim, in propounding his philosophy of lyric writing, also places some of the greats of previous generations under the lens and offers his opinions on their bodies of work. Even his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein, gets the treatment. ("Oh What a Beautiful Morning" --good! "Climb Every Mountain --bad!) The reader will learn the terminology used by insiders. Now I'll always know when I'm hearing a "list song", for example.

Sondheim's core principles are that content dictates form, less is more, and...er...a few others that I've forgotten. He also believes in rhyming. Not approximate rhyming, but "true" or exact rhyming. Not just as a creative restriction. The importance of rhyming, he tells us, is to reinforce what the ear has just heard. As someone who sometimes struggles to keep up with the words in theater songs, I agree wholeheartedly. One should not assume from this that Sondheim's lyrics are all "moon, June and spoon". They're creative as hell. Open the book to any random page and you'll see what I mean. Here, I'll do it right now: elixir/nick, sir -- gamut/dammit -- barbari[ans]/hairy.

The grudges and whines listed in the title are just the author being self-deprecating. But there are heresies. For example, he hates the time honored tradition of a group of people singing a single thought in unison. He shies away from doing this unless to highlight the fact that people are acting or thinking without individuality. And there are anecdotes. Some very funny ones are told, especially about Ethel Merman and Hermione Gingold. I don't think I'll ever be able to see Gingold on screen again without laughing inappropriately.

There are thirteen shows covered here, up to 1981's "Merrily We Roll Along". There is a sequel promised, yet these shows represent about 2/3 of Sondheim's output. So why a book of such length? Why not save more material for the sequel? I thought this until I read the section on "Merrily We Roll Along". Sondheim was 50 when he wrote that show, and its subject was a successful songwriter of a similar age, from a vantage point of financial and critical success juxtaposed with frayed and failed relationships. The story is told backward in time, ending with the promising start of lasting friendships and a career on the rise. Happier times. Although Sondheim rejects the notion that creative artists' characters reflect their own personalities, he confesses some autobiographical feelings expressed in "Merrily" (at east in so far as it portrays a young songwriter trying to get "the suits" to appreciate his good work), there couldn't be a more poignant place at which to end this book. ( )

Fantastic! Thrilled to read about his collaboration on West Side Story especially his critical assessment of the lyrics. The discussion of true rhyme and writing lyrics is fascinating. ( )

This is a treasure trove of a book. Partly a memoir, partly a meditation on the art of songwriting, partly a book of lyrics, it charts roughly the first half of Stephen Sondheim’s career as the composer and lyricist of Broadway musicals.

Of course Sondheim’s lyrics are some of the best that have ever been written for the musical stage—perhaps the very best—and they are a delight whether you are just reading them, listening and reading simultaneously, or singing along. However, most Sondheim nuts such as myself will already be familiar with 90% of the lyrics in this collection. The real draw of the book for me lay in the “attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines, and anecdotes,” to quote the subtitle. Sondheim turns out to be a brilliant prose writer as well, by turns funny, wry, and insightful. I laughed at many of his asides, such as his befuddlement about Jerome Robbins’s plans to use Ethel Merman in a ballet sequence, which was how Gypsy was supposed to end. A moment later my breath caught as he described how, the ballet idea falling through, he and Robbins created “Rose’s Turn” at the last minute in a kind of euphoric haze. And however amusing I found some of his comments about the lyrics of his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein—what is with all of those bird images, anyway?—I also think that he has a better handle on who Hammerstein was as an artist than anyone else. Sondheim argues that Hammerstein was at once a traditionalist and an experimenter. The same could be said of Sondheim himself, although both his traditionalism and his experiments are of a different brand than Oscar’s.

I look forward to eventually reading Part II of his collected lyrics/memoirs, Look, I Made a Hat. ( )

Thoroughly enjoyed this compendium of lyrics, anecdotes, pictures, incidents and (as usual for musical theatre productions) incipient insanity. Truly fascinating, although the better one knows the shows, the more one can appreciate the stories. I played in pit orchestras for productions of West Side Story, Company and Sweeney Todd; there is no doubt that haviing the music in one's head makes it easier, at least for me, to read and appreciate the lyrics! All in all delightful and a must for afficiandos of musical theatre. ( )