Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber: The New Musical (The Great Songwriters)

465 Pages·2001·31.76 MB·English

by  Stephen Citron

SONDHEIM AND LLOYD-WEBBER
THE GREAT SONGWRITERS SERIES
Noel and Cole: The Sophisticates
The Wordsmiths: Oscar Hammerstein 2nd and Alan Jay Lerner
Sondheim and Lloyd-Webber: The New Musical
Other Books by Stephen Citron
Play It Again, Sam—By Ear (A Piano Method)
The Paderewski Memoirs (Editor)
The Inn and Us (with Anne Edwards)
Songwriting: A Complete Guide to the Craft
The Musical: From the Inside Out
SONDHEIM AND
LLOYD-WEBBER
The New Musical
STEPHEN CITRON
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2001
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires
Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul
Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai
Nairobi Paris Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Wars;
and associated companies in
Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 2001 by Stephen Citron
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available
ISBN 0-19-509601-0
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 42
Primed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For
THOMAS Z. SHEPARD
whose music and recordings
have enriched the lives
of so many,
and whose enduring friendship
is my own special dividend
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Acknowledgments
EW WILL DISAGREE that in the latter half of the twentieth century
F
the direction of musical theater in the United States and England was
steered by Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd-Webber. To each of
these colossi my most profound thanks for reading through the manuscript and
making suggestions for change or accuracy. Don Black, who has worked on many
projects with Andrew Lloyd-Webber, is a superb lyricist and a dear friend who
has also been most helpful. Thanks too to other creative musical experts who
have contributed ideas and information—Charles Strouse, Jerry Bock, Richard
Maltby Jr., Jerry Herman—and to those who have worked with Stephen Sond-
heim—the late Flora Roberts and Paul McKibbins, who cleared rights at Rilting
Music, and David Robinson, Paul's opposite member at The Really Useful
Group.
For an informative interview on workshopping a musical I thank composer-
lyricist Susan Burkenhead, and for their discussions of orchestration and or-
chestral balance my thanks go to Luther Henderson, Mark Dorrell, Don Pippin,
Jonathan Tunick, and Paul Gemigniani. My thanks also go to Julia McKenzie,
a superb Mrs. Lovett in the Royal National Theater's Sweeney Todd, who gave
me a most interesting take on interpreting the role. Thanks to Sally Ann Howes,
who made the role of Desiree her own in the New York City Opera's production
of A Little Night Music and also gave me insight into my personal favorite Sond-
heim musical.
My gratitude to Louise Gold, who gave me an interesting interview on the
London revisions to Assassins; to Myra Sands, who brought insight into her role
in Jesus Christ Superstar and shared her thoughts with me; and to Susanna Fel-
lowes, who did the same after starring in Lloyd-Webber's Aspects of Love. Thanks
to David Kernan, Ned Sherrin, and Millicent Martin, each of whom told me
about his or her involvement with the creation of Side by Side by Sondheim.
I came to know Michael Kerker, who runs the ASCAP Workshop, through
my longtime friend Madeline Gilford, whose encyclopedic knowledge of what's
the news on the Rialto is truly astounding. Michael put me in touch with many
of the young writers who we both felt will be steering musicals in the future. I
interviewed several and thank Douglas Bernstein, Dennis Markell, Brad Ross,
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
and Joe Keenan for sharing their candid ideas and playing me their fresh and
original scores.
Sheridan Morley and Ruth Leon are both splendid chroniclers of the theater
in general and musicals in particular. For their treasured friendship and for the
interviews with musical personalities they shared with me, I am grateful.
For an informative interview concerning Andrew Lloyd-Webber's extensive
collection of pre-Raphaelite paintings I am indebted to Jason Rosenfeld, the
Tate Gallery's lecturer and authority on the subject.
Certainly a book of this scope needs a great deal of technical assistance, and
I am fortunate enough to have had a double measure—my publisher and editor
Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson in London, who believed in this series from the
outset, and his counterpart in New York, Sheldon Meyer, editor emeritus of
Oxford University Press, who stood behind the book even when its publication
was delayed. Both men have read and reread the manuscript, always offering
helpful suggestions, and to them goes my deep thanks. Others at OUP who were
helpful are Andrew Albanese, Woody Gilmartin, Susan Day, Penelope Ander-
son, and Charles Sterne. Joellyn Ausanka goes far beyond her official title of
production editor, as she has that rare combination of talents: an eagle's eye for
spotting inconsistencies in the text, a superb sense of grammar, and, best of all,
a fine-tuned musical background. She went over the manuscript twice: before
Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd-Webber commented on the text as well
as after. For her collaboration, a deep bow. At the New Milford Library, Carl
DiMillia facilitated my research, and at the Library of Congress, Elizabeth Au-
man, Ray White, Mark Horowitz, Charles Sens, Stephen Soderberg, and Walter
Zvonchenko did the same. Marty Jacobs at the Museum of the City of New
York gets my thanks for his help with the pictures.
David Van Eysen talked to me about Westminster School, where Andrew
Lloyd-Webber spent his early years, and Gouverneur Cadwallader, Lawrence
Nusbaum, Barbara Obarski, Kingdon Swain, and Lt. Col. Calvin Fenton gave
me much help in researching Stephen Sondheim's school years.
David LeVine, former Executive Director of The Dramatists Guild, gave me
much advice about musicals during his time there when Stephen Sondheim was
also an officer. Mitchell Douglas is a literary agent by profession and a man of
the theater by inclination. Besides supplying me with rare Sondheim and Lloyd-
Webber recordings and videos, he gave me new insights into musicals in general.
Thomas Z. Shepard is not only the book's dedicatee, but a dear friend and a
superb musician who is responsible for the finest cast albums of musicals of the
century. Because he has produced albums devoted to both the protagonists of
this book, his formal and informal interviews were full of information and ideas.
I should also like to thank the following for their help in various capacities.
They are listed below in alphabetical order:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix
Dr. Leo Altschul, Milton Babbitt, Christine Baranski, Marion Bell, David
Brown, Lila Burkeman, Sally Carr, Andrea Chapin, Irene Clark, Bert Fink, Joan
Fisher, Ian Marshall Fisher, Margaret Gardner, Susan Granger, Benny Green,
James Hammerstein, William Hammerstein, Roberta Hansen, Sheldon Harnick,
Kitty Carlisle Hart, Jim Henney, Mary Vann Hughes, Evan Hunter, Maurice
Keller, Louise Kerz, William Kinsolving, Larry Kramer, Arthur Laurents, Richard
Lawrence, Jerome Lawrence, Julian Lloyd Webber, Alice Hammerstein Mathias,
Delphine Marcus, Elizabeth Markowitz, Ruth Mitchell, Dick Moore, Tarquin
Olivier, Robert Osborne, Jane Powell, Dory Previn, Hal Prince, Douglas Rae,
Rex Reed, Chita Rivera, Paul Salsini, Jonathan Schwartz, Robert Shanks, Rose
Tobias Shaw, Leonard Soloway, Faith Stewart-Gordon, Mark Steyn, Jerry Stiller,
Haila Stoddard, Dr. Joseph Sumo, K. T. Sullivan, Ion Trewin, Simon Trewin,
Rick Ulfick, Caroline Underwood, and Betty Walberg.
To my son, Alexander Citron, a fine musician who becomes more of a col-
league with each passing year, many thanks for preparing the voluminous musical
and lyrical examples in this text.
Finally, and most important, to my wife, Anne Edwards, who has always taken
time away from the book she was working on to listen to a Sondheim or Lloyd-
Webber gem I had excitedly just discovered or to read and reread my latest
chapter and make cogent and constructive suggestions, my deep gratitude and
deepest abiding love.
Beverly Hills, California S. C.
March 2001