First, buy, rent, or check out of your local library Sondheim! The Birthday Concert, a 116-minute DVD issued in 2010 that contains several stunning performances of songs chosen from musicals composed wholly or partly by Stephen Sondheim on a March 2010 night celebrating his 80th birthday at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. Then buy or check out of the library Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes by Stephen Sondheim. It’s a coffeetable-size book without the dismissibility of a coffeetable book. It is fascinating and, to the surprise of no one who ever attended a Sondheim musical, well written. In it he offers this caveat: “Poetry doesn’t need music; lyrics do.”
That’s why I recommend Sondheim! The Birthday Concert. You’ll hear glorious music set to equally glorious lyrics. Together they form, within the milieu of musical theater, poetry. Sondheim, a brilliant wordsmith, is guided by this dictum: “Content dictates form; less is more; God is in the details—all in the service of clarity, without which nothing else matters.”
The compactness, concision, and other lexical mastery of “The Road You Didn’t Take,” a song from Follies, and “Move On,” a song from Sunday in the Park with George, provide a teaching tool of the highest order for any composer, lyricist, poet, or other writer.
Have these lyrics in your hands as you listen to and watch John McMartin, who was in the original Broadway production of Follies, perform that first song, which Sondheim describes as “a classroom example of subtextual writing” in Finishing the Hat. “I should add that the last two lines make me glow with self-satisfaction,” he adds. Why shouldn’t they? Every serious writer knows that feeling when it hits, when diction, syntax, and their interaction match the intent. There is no fat in these lyrics. None. And even without music, they unleash meanings and memories far beyond the spare or spartan. I wonder what Robert Frost, who died in 1963, eight years before Follies made its Broadway debut, would have thought of this song and its tip of a finished hat to his poem “The Road Not Taken”?
“The Road You Didn’t Take” by Stephen Sondheim (from Follies)
You're either a poet
Or you're a lover,
Or you're the famous
Benjamin Stone.
You take one road,
You try one door,
There isn't time for any more.
One’s life consists of either/or.
One has regrets,
Which one forgets,
And as the years go on,
The road you didn't take
Hardly comes to mind,
Does it?
The door you didn't try,
Where could it have led?
The choice you didn't make
Never was defined,
Was it?
Dreams you didn't dare
Are dead.
Were they ever there?
Who said?
I don't remember,
I don't remember
At all …
The books I'll never read
Wouldn't change a thing,
Would they?
The girls I'll never know
I'm too tired for.
The lives I'll never lead
Couldn't make me sing.
Could they?
Could they?
Could they?
Chances that you miss,
Ignore.
Ignorance is bliss—
What's more,
You won't remember,
You won't remember
At all,
Not at all …
You yearn for the women,
Long for the money,
Envy the famous
Benjamin Stones.
You take your road,
The decades fly,
The yearnings fade,
The longings die.
You learn to bid them all goodbye.
And oh, the peace,
The blessed peace ...
At last you come to know:
The roads you never take
Go through rocky ground,
Don't they?
The choices that you make
Aren't all that grim.
The worlds you never see
Still will be around,
Won't they?
The Ben I'll never be,
Who remembers him?
My all-time favorite Sondheim song is “Move On,” a duet of double-helix intricacy encased in simplicity, sung by Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters in the original Broadway production of Sunday in the Park with George, which earned Sondheim a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1985, a rare honor for a Broadway musical. The song is sung anew by Patinkin and Peters in Sondheim! The Birthday Concert. Sheer rapture, it distills what all artists long for and strive for. To my inner ear, this song represents Sondheim the wordsmith at his pinnacle. To watch Patinkin and Peters perform "Move On," click on this:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MCVsMSsIJU
"Move On” by Stephen Sondheim (from Sunday in the Park with George)
Stop worrying where you're going, move on.
If you can know where you're going, you've gone.
Just keep moving on.
I chose, and my world was shaken--so what?
The choice may have been mistaken,
But choosing was not.
You have to move on.
Look at what you want,
Not at where you are,
Not at what you'll be.
Look at all the things you've done for me:
Opened up my eyes
Taught me how to see
Notice every tree.
Understand the light.
Concentrate on now.
I want to move on …
I want to explore the light.
I want to know how to get through
Through to something new—
Something of my own.
Move on.
Move on.
Stop worrying if your vision is new.
Let others make that decision …
They usually do.
You keep moving on.
Look at what you want,
Not at what you are
Not at what you'll be
Look at all the things you gave to me.
See what's in my eyes,
And the color of my hair,
And the way it catches light.
And the care, and the feeling
And the light, moving on.
We've always belonged together.
We will always belong together.
Just keep moving on.
Anything you do,
Let it come from you,
Then it will be new.
Give us more to see.
Sondheim gives us more to hear.
