Stephen Sondheim: A Life
by Meryle Secrest
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Description
In the first full-scale life of the most important composer-lyricist at work in musical theatre today, Meryle Secrest, the biographer of Frank Lloyd Wright and Leonard Bernstein, draws on her extended conversations with Stephen Sondheim as well as on her interviews with his friends, family, collaborators, and lovers to bring us not only the artist--as a master of modernist compositional style--but also the private man. Beginning with his early childhood on New York's prosperous Upper West show more Side, Secrest describes how Sondheim was taught to play the piano by his father, a successful dress manufacturer and amateur musician. She writes about Sondheim's early ambition to become a concert pianist, about the effect on him of his parents' divorce when he was ten, about his years in military and private schools. She writes about his feelings of loneliness and abandonment, about the refuge he found in the home of Oscar and Dorothy Hammerstein, and his determination to become just like Oscar. Secrest describes the years when Sondheim was struggling to gain a foothold in the theatre, his attempts at scriptwriting (in his early twenties in Rome on the set of Beat the Devil with Bogart and Huston, and later in Hollywood as a co-writer with George Oppenheimer for the TV series Topper), living the Hollywood life. Here is Sondheim's ascent to the peaks of the Broadway musical, from his chance meeting with play- wright Arthur Laurents, which led to his first success-- as co-lyricist with Leonard Bernstein on West Side Story--to his collaboration with Laurents on Gypsy, to his first full Broadway score, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And Secrest writes about his first big success as composer, lyricist, writer in the 1960s with Company, an innovative and sophisticated musical that examined marriage à la mode. It was the start of an almost-twenty-year collaboration with producer and director Hal Prince that resulted in such shows as Follies, Pacific Overtures, Sweeney Todd, and A Little Night Music. We see Sondheim at work with composers, producers, directors, co-writers, actors, the greats of his time and ours, among them Leonard Bernstein, Ethel Merman, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein, Jerome Robbins, Zero Mostel, Bernadette Peters, and Lee Remick (with whom it was said he was in love, and she with him), as Secrest vividly re-creates the energy, the passion, the despair, the excitement, the genius, that went into the making of show after Sondheim show. A biography that is sure to become the standard work on Sondheim's life and art. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Very thorough and informative biography, but I would love to see an update to cover the last decade or so of his life.
I love Stephen Sondheim and found the facts interesting, but most of the book was very dry. I read tons of biographies and this is one of the worst I've read. There are dozens of biographies on Sondheim. Pick another.
A gift from Lujean Kreisner
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Author Information
20 Works 1,346 Members
Meryle Secrest was born and educated in Bath, England, and now lives in Washington, D.C. She has written biographies of Romaine Brooks, Bernard Berenson, Kenneth Clark, and Salvador Dali, among others
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- People/Characters
- Stephen Sondheim
Classifications
- Genres
- Music, Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction
- DDC/MDS
- 782.14092 — Arts & recreation Music Vocal Music, Singing Operas and related dramatic vocal forms; concert versions Musicals modified standard subdivisions
- LCC
- ML410 .S6872 .S43 — Music Literature on music Literature on music History and criticism Biography
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 284
- Popularity
- 113,039
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.75)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
