DECEMBER 16 • 2021 | 53

S

tephen Sondheim,
the Jewish lyricist
and composer who
redefined the American
musical through a
monumental canon of
influential and innovative
theatrical works, died Nov.
26, 2021, at 91.
Sondheim’s stunning debut
came writing the lyrics to
Leonard Bernstein’s score for
West Side Story in 1957, at age
27. Sondheim was born to
Jewish parents in New York
City but raised without any
formal Jewish background, to
the extent that he once said
Bernstein had to explain to
him how to pronounce the
words “Yom Kippur.”
Sondheim’s other well-
known musicals include Into
the Woods, Sweeney Todd: The
Demon Barber of Fleet Street,
Follies, A Little Night Music
and Sunday in the Park with
George. Many of them were

not smash hits immediately,
as he avoided traditional
Broadway formulas that
would immediately draw
audiences. Instead, he
crafted musicals that dealt
with subjects that had
not received treatments
on mainstream stages:
loneliness, despair and the
artistic temperament.
There was the young man
who is terrified of emotional
commitment in Company
(1970); the family torn apart
by emotional dishonesty in
A Little Night Music (1973);
the vicious serial killer in
Sweeney Todd (1979); and
the artist in the midst of
conceiving a masterpiece
in Sunday in the Park with
George (1984). Into the Woods,
a mashup of characters from
multiple fairy tales, won
several Tony Awards in 1987.
Revivals staged years after
often did better than original

runs, but he is often cited
as one of the 20th century’s
most influential theater
writers.
Sondheim — who did
not entertain a romantic
partnership until he was
60 — also often wrote about
loneliness and whether
the capacity to create a
long-term relationship
was possible. “Send In the
Clowns,” a signature song
from A Little Night Music that
Frank Sinatra recorded a
popular version of, remains
a famous lamentation about
bad timing when it comes to
love.
“Isn’t it rich?” sings the
character Desiree. “Are we a
pair? Me here at last on the
ground, You in mid-air?”
Sondheim hated when
his fans and biographers
attempted to examine his
life to understand his music,
but it was an irresistible
enterprise. Born into a
wealthy family in New York
that ran a dressmaking
company, his father left
him and his mother when
Sondheim was 10 years old,
and his mother heaped on
him hateful scorn, once
telling him that her greatest
regret was that he was born
at all.
He found mentorship
and a father figure in his
teen years in a family
friend, Oscar Hammerstein
II, the lyricist of Jewish
descent who had heralded
an earlier revolution in the

American musical, leading
its transition in the 1920s
from lighthearted reviews
to novelistic treatments of
major issues.
Hammerstein plotted
out a four-step training for
Sondheim while he was still
in high school: Adapt a good
play into a musical, adapt a
flawed play into a musical,
adapt a musical from another
literary form, write your own
musical.
Sondheim stuck
assiduously to the course
and at 22 began auditioning
songs around New York.
A producer, Lemuel Ayers,
commissioned Sondheim
to write songs for a musical
he was producing, but
Ayers died before it could
be staged. Sondheim’s skills
nonetheless became known
in Broadway circles and at
age 25, he was asked to come
on board and write the lyrics
for a musical Bernstein was
planning based on Romeo and
Juliet. That became West Side
Story.
Sondheim earned
multiple honors besides
his many Tony’s, including
the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 2015.
He settled into a
comfortable elder statesman
status late in life, traveling
into New York this year to
see revivals of his musicals,
and living with his husband,
Jeffrey Romley, whom he
married in 2017 and who
survives him.

Stephen Sondheim, songwriter/lyricist, listening
to music in the recording control room during the
original cast recording of the Broadway musical
Into the Woods, New York, 1987.

Theater Legend
Steven Sondheim
Dies

RON KAMPEAS JTA

PHOTO BY OLIVER MORRIS/GETTY IMAGES