Stephen Sondheim has been pretty hot in his 80^th year. His book, Finishing the Hat, became available in time for the holidays and I have finally had the chance to read and enjoy.  It is a demanding text.  What is it? The subtitle tells us:  Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes.

There is an irony in this collection. As Sondheim himself recognizes in his introduction, lyrics are somewhat diminished without the music to which they were written and outside the shows in which the songs are embedded.  My reading of the book bears this out. I very much enjoyed reading about the shows with which I am most familiar, such as Gypsy, …Forum, A Little Night Music, and of course, Sweeney Todd. I was much less engaged by the lyrics from Do I Hear a Waltz?, The Frogs, and Pacific Overtures.  True Sondheim devotees (who are grinding their teeth at how I can have the audacity to write about this book without having seen and memorized all the shows) might appreciate more than I the exhaustive notes about alternate lyrics in different productions as well as the lyrics of the many songs that were cut. I would be surprised, however, if even the devotees much appreciate the many, many pages of lyrics in Sondheim’s handwriting. Yes, you can see changes made to familiar lyrics, and graphologists might enjoy psychoanalyzing Sondheim’s handwriting, but there is enough of it to feel like padding.  And a book this big doesn’t need padding.

The principles Sondheim comments on are laid out early on in the book:  “less is more,” “content dictates form,” and “god is in the details.” I don’t feel guilty about disclosing these principles here because they won’t do a reader much good without the commentary (and, after all, anyone who handles the book in a store sees these principles repeated as graphics on the inside covers and endpapers). The most cogent “teaching” aspect of this book lies in the way in which Sondheim explains these principles, again and again, in the context of discussions of his and others’ work. Another Sondheim theme is his disdain for any kind of rhyme that isn’t “perfect.” Agree or not, Sondheim explains his positions clearly and engagingly. And while budding lyricists must account for only a minute portion of its readership, this book is required reading for them.

As a more casual Sondheim fan, I am most interested in the heresies, grudges, whines and anecdotes. There are nuggets of all of these, and some are surprising. One prominent heresy is that Sondheim has much criticism for his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein—and where would Sondheim be without Hammerstein, who was his next door neighbor and surrogate father? Another is his antipathy for the self-consciously clever lyrics of Noel Coward. Some of the grudges give me a particularly sour feeling. He takes aim at both critics of musicals (most of whom are “ignoramuses”) and academics in general. True, he has a beef with Robert Brustein, formerly of Yale Rep, but please, Mr. S., we’re not all bad. (For Brustein’s side of the story, check out Brustein’s blog. Scroll down to “Frozen Revenge.”)

That Brustein is among the living is an exception worth noting in this book, since Sondheim chooses not to offer criticism of people who are still alive or even those who are too recently deceased. I understand this choice, but it also saddens me. Sondheim is the current master of musical comedy composition and lyric writing, and he is a link to the past. This book shows what he learned to emulate and what he learned to avoid from the masters that preceded him, but I would also love to know what he thinks are the strengths and weaknesses of his contemporaries such as Harnick, Ebb, Comden and Green, and even some of the younger lyricists who work today. One can only hope that, for the good of the future of the musical comedy, Sondheim has a less public way of offering guidance to those who will follow him.

As I said, this is a demanding text and it will take some time to fully digest—academic ignoramus that I am, I may never get it all—but I anticipate coming back to this book from time to time. And I look forward to volume 2.

“Broadway Fred” appears every Wednesday.

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