Stephen Joshua Sondheim (natural March 22, 1930) is an American musical theater lyricist and composer.

Early life
Sondheim was natural to the Jewish family in New York City and grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and later on the domestic around Pennsylvania. An merely baby of easily-to-well-situated parents sleep in the high-rise flat in Central Park West, Sondheim's childhood hequally been described as isolated & emotionally neglected. His parents, Herbert & Janet "Foxy" Sondheim, were non-religious Jews, though Foxy experienced grown higher withwithin an Orthodox personal; Sondheim experienced there is no formal religious education or even association, did non have the Bar Mitzvah, & reportedly did non placed foot in a tabernacle until he was Seventeen. He graduated from either Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts in 1950.

Whenever Stephen was ten years old, his father Herbert -- universally the somewhat distant figure -- abandoned him & his mother, the traumatic event which would use at times major repercussions in two his personal life & his public act. Under a laws of the day, Sondheim's mother retained to the full custody, which was mayhap unlucky for her boy; Foxy Sondheim was egotistical, emotionally abusive, & the hypochondriac. Fallowing the departure of her married man, she became sexually predatory towards her boy as a substitute for even his absentminded father: she would suggestively lower her blouse or spread her legs ahead of him, she would lounge all about & inattentively ask him to produce her drinks, she would hang on to his h& and stare at him through the totality of a Broadway indicate. Numbers of stand speculated that it was this early acute love/hate relationship by using his monstrous mother that would re-emerge inside several of Sondheim's late works, which typically handle love & commitment when claustrophobic & suffocative, virtually all notably around his musical Company. Perchance too following of his relationship by owning his mother, Sondheim would turn into known for rendering words & music to the series of heavy, manipulative, somewhat unstable female characters, including Mamma Rose within Gypsy, Mrs. Lovett inside Sweeney Todd, and a Witch around Into the Woods, all of whom come obsessional just about keeping the hang in to on their kid or even lover.

Career
At just about a age of 10, about a instance of his parents' divorcement, Sondheim became friends using Jimmy Hammerstein. Jemmy's father was a easily-known lyrist & dramatist Oscar Hammerstein II. Hammerstein became something of a foster father to Sondheim, when the young human (for visible reasons) attempted to avoid personal as far as possible. To say that Hammerstearound was an influence in Sondheim is to produce the gross understatement; whenever Oscar experienced been the geologist, Sondheim found late in life, he probably would own turn into a single as well. When you took senior high school, Sondheim got a risk to write & understand performed a ludicrous musical comedy he wrote according to the goings-in of his school, entitled By George. It was a major popular profits among his peers, & it inflated the immature songster's ego substantially; he took it to Hammerstein, & asked him to evaluate it when though he got there is no noesis of its creator. A next day Sondheim come back. Hammerstein despised it. "But if you want to know why it's terrible," Hammerstein consoled a young human, "I'll tell you."

So began one of the best known apprenticeships in the musical theater theatre, when Hammerstein designed the sort of course for Sondheim to require, on the construction of a musical. This step by step training centered around quaternity assignments, which Sondheim was to write. These were:

the musical comedy according to a play he admired (which became Everthing That Glitters) the musical comedy according to a play he thought was blemished (which became High Tor) A musical theater according to an existent novel or even short story non antecedently dramatized (which became a bare Mary Poppins) An original musical comedy (which became Climb High)

None one "assignment" musical theater were produced professionally. High Tor & Mary Poppins stand never been produced the least bit, because the rights holders for the original works refused to grant permission for a musical comedy to exist as mass produced -- besides, Mary Poppins was never potentially finished.

Sondheim went in to survey composition by having a composer Milton Babbitt, though he would not allow this noted unkeyed composer to teach him a twelve-12-tone music, perchance deciding there was there is no place for it around contemporary musical theatre. Around 1954, he wrote both music & lyrics for Saturday Night, which was never produced on Broadway & was shelved until the 1997 production at London's Bridewell Theatre.

At a age of Xxv, Sondheim wrote a lyrics to West Side Story, accompanying Leonard Bernstein's music and Arthur Laurents's book. Within 1959 he wrote the lyrics to the musical Gypsy, with music by Jule Styne and a book over again by Laurents. Eventually inside 1962 Sondheim saw a musical theater for which he wrote two a music & lyrics, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, open on Broadway. His next musical theater, Anyone Can Whistle, was the fiscal failure, though it has developed the cult ensuing & is presently existence revived around a series of high-profile concerts. He donned his lyricist-for-hire hat for 1 endure indicate, Do I Hear a Waltz?, with music by Richard Rodgers -- the of these task he claims he regrets doing -- & since so has devoted himself to each composing & writing lyrics for the series of critically acclaimed musical theater.

Sondheim's function is virtually all notable for his utilise of complex polyphony in a vocal parts, like the chorus of 5 minor characters world health organization work as a rather "Greek Chorus" inside A Little Night Music. He too displays the taste for angular harmonies & intricate melodies remindful of his hero, Bach (he once claimed that he listens to there is no a single else). To aficionados, Sondheim's musical sophistication is considered to exist as greater than that of numbers of of his musical theater peers, & his lyrics come also famous for their ambiguity ("Send In The Clowns"), wit ("Buddy's Blues") and urbanity ("The Little Things You Do Together"); he employs various literary techniques and devices that make his writing more akin to poetry than Tin Pan Alley.

Indeed, within 1968 and 1969, Sondheim published an astonishingly ingenious series of word puzzles within New York magazine. Which are actually periodically inadequately known as mere crosswords; in fact, a form & construction of a puzzles wwhen when as originative & diabolical as the clues.

Regarded by a bit of when a anti-Andrew Lloyd Webber (though Lloyd Webber composed the distinctly Sondheimesque Tell Me On A Sunday), Sondheim is nevertheless there is no alien to popular too when critical profits. Inside 1985, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Sunday in the Park with George, one of a couple of days that the musical comedy has taken the award.

He come out when gay around 2000. http://www.nndb.com/people/325/000023256/

Major works
Unless otherwise noted, music & lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. West Side Story (1957) (lyrics by Sondheim; music by Leonard Bernstein; book by Arthur Laurents) Gypsy (1959) (lyrics by Sondheim; music by Jule Styne; book by Arthur Laurents) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) (book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart) Anyone Can Whistle (1964) (book by Arthur Laurents) Do I Hear a Waltz? (1965) (lyrics by Sondheim; music by Richard Rodgers; book by Arthur Laurents) Company (1970) (book by George Furth) Follies (1971) (book by James Goldman) A Little Night Music (1973) (book by Hugh Wheeler) Pacific Overtures (1976) (book by John Weidman) Sweeney Todd (1979) (book by Hugh Wheeler) Merrily We Roll Along (1981) (book by George Furth) Sunday in the Park with George (1984) (book by James Lapine) Into the Woods (1987) (book by James Lapine) Assassins (1990) (book by John Weidman) Passion (1994) (book by James Lapine) Saturday Night (1997, though composed in 1954) (book by Julius Epstein and Philip Epstein) Bounce (book by John Weidman) (Abandoned working titles were Wise Guys & Gold!; played at a Goodman Theatre, Chicago, Illinois, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 2003) The Frogs (2004) (revised book by Nathan Lane), from Burt Shevelove's 1974 book. Contains septenary freshly songs)

Minor works
Stage
By George (1945), a musical Sondheim wrote at age Fifteen lampooning the denizens of George School, which he attended at the period. ''Phinney's Rainbow (1948), a musical irony in college life that Sondheim wrote at age Xviii lampooning the denizens of Williams College, which he attended at the period. Completely That Glitters (1948), based on Mendicant in Horseback by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. Climb High (1951), an original musical all about the university student moving to New York City to become an actor. Additional lyrics for the 1974 revival of Candide. The Frogs'' (1974), a musical version of Aristophanes' comedy with the book by Burt Shevelove. Performed in the Yale University swimming pool. Receiving Away By owning Execution (1996), the "comedy thriller" (non-musical play), co-written by having George Furth.

Film / TV
Topper (circa 1953), a non-musical television comedy series for which Sondheim write on x episodes. Evening Primrose (1966), the processed-for-TV musical theater all about a secret society of humans sleep in department stores & a romance between Ellthe, the emporium denizen, and Charles, a poet world health organization decides to sleep in the department store fallowing renouncing the world. A Previous of Sheila (1973), a nonmusical film mystery written by using Anthony Perkins. "The Madam's Song", as well known as "I Never Do Anything Twice", for the film The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976). The score for Alain Resnais's film Stavisky... (1974). Music for the film Reds starring Warren Beatty (1981). Five songs for Warren Beatty's film Dick Tracy (1990), including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", which won a Academy Award for Best Song.