Never Going to Th Park Again

Bernadette Peters leans forrard to discuss the recording of the "Sun in the Park with George" anthology with Stephen Sondheim and producer Thomas Z. Shepard in June 1984. Marty Reichenthal/Associated Press hide caption

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Marty Reichenthal/Associated Press

Bernadette Peters leans forward to discuss the recording of the "Lord's day in the Park with George" album with Stephen Sondheim and producer Thomas Z. Shepard in June 1984.

Marty Reichenthal/Associated Press

On the solar day of Stephen Sondheim's death, creating a list of his songs you will never stop playing is to invite an argument — and I do.

Sondheim died at 91, and I encourage you to read every obit, every snippet of historical context. I can offer just the fact that, almost e'er, on some level, there is Sondheim music in my head; it takes about nothing to nudge it from sleep and get it tripping beyond my lips as I practise the dishes or drive my car.

I wasn't so much a Sweeney Todd person — information technology freaked me out. I was very much a Visitor person. I watched a VHS tape of Into The Woods when I was babysitting in high school, and I never stopped loving it. A dear friend took me to Follies. I sent another friend a prune from Sunday In The Park With George after he had a professional disappointment.

I invite you to hear mine, simply to love yours, however you first heard them.

one. "Getting Married Today," from Company

I don't call up why, merely one 24-hour interval dorsum when we all still worked in-person at the NPR offices, Ari Shapiro came by my desk-bound when I wasn't in that location and left me a note. It said: I came up here to rattle off the lyrics to "I'm Not Getting Married" for y'all from memory, and y'all decided to exist gone. What, I ask you, could exist more important than this? - Gauge (which is as well the last give-and-take of another Sondheim song. Know which 1?)

"Getting Married Today" is a song in which a woman expresses her extraordinary worry on her wedding ceremony day, repeatedly declaring that in fact, she will not get married after all. (Before irresolute her mind in the end.) It is a song that is also a sporting event, because — as this note suggests — the barrage of rapid-fire lyrics entitles yous to bragging rights. Just lest you think that ways it is simply patter, when Beth Howland is blasting her way through it like a champ during the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Original Cast Album: Company, Sondheim says to her, "I don't desire to upset you, but I'd love to have the tune."

ii. "No One Is Alone," Into The Forest

This innocuous title belongs to a song that is, as it sounds similar it should be, nearly the fact that we are rarely as isolated as we feel. Simply because Sondheim is Sondheim, information technology appears in a moment of deep grief, and information technology casts this fact equally part condolement and part warning. You are not alone, information technology says, considering people will be there with you, to love you. And you lot are non alone, it says, so be mindful of the consequences of your actions. "You movement just a finger/say the slightest word/something's bound to linger — exist heard."

three. "Move On," Sunday In The Park With George

A vision of a woman appears to a frustrated artist and urges him to continue with his art. Information technology would be and so easy for this vocal to collapse into a pep talk, but 1 of Sondheim's many gifts was his understanding of cosmos itself — which is part of why he makes such a delightful character in the just-released Tick Tick ... Boom.

George does not just need encouragement, he needs to be told that there is no certainty in trying to build dazzler, and that an creative person continues anyway. A soaring duet that originally brought together Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, two Sondheim muses, it speaks with specificity to artistic insecurity: "End worrying if your vision is new/let others make that determination, they usually do."

4. "Beingness Alive," Company

A lot of the Sondheim true-blue encounter themselves equally devotees of 1 show above all others: they are a Sweeney Todd person, a Sunday person, a Follies person. I am, more than than anything, a Company person.

The story of Bobby, a man surrounded by couples and terribly skeptical nigh marriage, ends with this climactic admission that what is terrifying near intimacy is the same thing that is precious about information technology. "Someone to need y'all too much/someone to know you too well/someone to pull you upward short/to put y'all through hell." Although it does have a span, this song mostly repeats and builds every bit Bobby is urged on past his friends — unlike a lot of Sondheim songs that weave and change. Along the mode, it delivers little stunners like "someone to crowd you lot with love." And most that bridge? "Make me dislocated/mock me with praise/permit me be used/vary my days"? It's an peculiarly constructive combination of a big, big moment in a song and a superficially mundane sentiment similar "vary my days."

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5. "Ship In The Clowns," A Little Night Music

I will die on this loma: Few songs have gotten as unfair a deal as "Send In The Clowns." At some point, the combination of the fact that it was a pop hit for Judy Collins and the fact that it has "clowns" in the title started people down the road of thinking it was a corny easy-listening melody, when it's really — like so much of Sondheim — quietly, memorably devastating. Seek out ane of the performances from Dame Judi Dench, who brings out the tragedy in this story of 2 people who fear that they have missed their moment. The clowns are about absurdity, foolishness, and the images are, over and over, devastating: "Me here at terminal on the basis/you in mid-air."

vi. "Could I Leave You?" Follies

Upwardly there at #1, when Ari'southward note pointed out that "guess" is the concluding line in another Sondheim song, he was talking almost "Could I Get out You?" Follies is a great i if yous like your musicals ... well, furious, both in terms of anger and, at times, in terms of frenetic energy.

This detail number allows a woman a moment to finally tell her hubby how much she does not honey him, simply perhaps because so much of Follies is nearly the phase, it begins equally a much more conventional love song thematically reminiscent, of course, of "If Ever I Would Leave Yous" from Camelot. Information technology does not stop in the aforementioned emotional place, let us say.

seven. "Side past Side by Side/What Would Nosotros Practice Without You?" Visitor

Well, I told you I love Company. And one of the things I particularly love about information technology is that while Bobby ultimately seems to see the value of marriage through the eyes of his friends, his friends are not spared in their handling of their "extra" single friend.

Sondheim always hides a pocketknife in a cupcake, so of grade yous become Bobby singing this very cheery "ports in a storm/comfy and cozy" business nearly how close they all are, and so they join in and sing virtually how much they beloved him, and soon nosotros make it at: "Who is a flirt, but never a threat/Reminds us of our birthdays which we always forget?" Bobby is praised for helping with dishes, never lament, listening to them complain, keeping their secrets from each other — his friends are drafting off his singleness even as they fret nigh information technology and try to change him.

8. "Ever After," Into The Woods

The genius of Into The Woods is that the first deed is like a regular fairy tale with happy endings, and the second act complicates them all: people become unfaithful and get killed and finish loving each other in the same way. "Always Subsequently" is the bridge between these sections, coming correct at the finish of the first human action, and if you don't pay also much attention to information technology, it actually does seem to be a conclusion of sorts. In fact, it is explicit on this betoken: "Journeying over, all is mended, and it's not simply for today/just tomorrow and extended, ever after."

Unfortunately, you begin to sense that something is not quite right. But what I honey about it is partly that Sondheim had a way of writing these absolutely devilish, almost tossed-off melodies that I recollect of as Bernadettes — as in, "I'm pretty sure only Bernadette Peters can sing that exactly right." And "Ever After" has a bunch of them, mixed with playful rhyming that came to mind when I kickoff saw Hamilton. "I was perfect," the witch sings, "I had everything merely beauty, I had power, and a daughter like a flower in a tower."

ix. "Jet Vocal," Due west Side Story

I know, I know — he only wrote the lyrics. Leonard Bernstein wrote the music. And I know sometimes he'due south talked virtually not even liking the lyrics. But long earlier I was ready for the emotional notes of Company or the second human activity of Into The Woods, I listened to the cast album of Westward Side Story at abode endlessly, incessantly.

Apparently, every bit a small child, I was not prepared for the themes of resentment and intimacy that populate his other piece of work, but murder, I processed merely fine. I volition ever credit my attachment to musical theater in general to those cast albums I listened to equally a little kid, long earlier I knew annihilation about composers — this i, Annie, A Chorus Line (obviously those themes were also fine?). And while I will never stop affectionate the tragedy and the reach of some of these from an adult perspective, this was kid music for me.

ten. "Finishing The Hat," Sunday In The Park With George

How non to stop with Sondheim's own song about the ability and cost of creation? He called his two coffee-tabular array books of lyrics Finishing The Hat and Look, I Made A Hat. In that location are some amazing videos of Sondheim teaching immature musicians that aired on television set many years ago, and seeing the fashion he would correct a breath or the finest point of pronunciation — gently, kindly, merely resolutely -- drives home how serious he was about what he made.

"Finishing the Hat" is a song that showcases some of his favorite moves, including that picayune bauble that repeats when George sings "win-dow." Merely more than than annihilation, I think of this song as the work of a writer who was incredibly imposing and incredibly exacting, and saw creativity as something wholly arresting, whether it was the creation of a vocal or a painting or a lid.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/2021/11/26/1059409700/stephen-sondheim-10-favorite-songs