486 PART 4 | SINCE WORLD WAR II
most signifi cant musical theater of the 1970s developed along a path indepen-
dent of rock and soul.
Of the composers of Broadway shows in this last category, the most impor-
tant and infl uential is Stephen Sondheim. A New Yorker by birth, Sondheim as
a youth found a surrogate father in Oscar Hammerstein II, who mentored him
in lyric writing through his teen years. Sondheim’s graduate studies in compo-
sition with Milton Babbitt focused not on his teacher’s recondite serialism but
on the techniques of the classic Broadway songwriters they both loved. Between
Hammerstein and Babbitt, Sondheim had as thorough and expert a training for
the creation of musical theater as one could hope for.
Sondheim’s fi rst big break came as lyricist for Bernstein’s West Side Story;
shortly afterward he wrote the lyrics for Jule Styne’s successful Gypsy. In 1962 he
achieved his fi rst Broadway hit as both composer and lyricist with A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to the Forum, a bawdy farce set in ancient Rome to give a new
twist to an old-fashioned form. But his artistic breakthrough occurred in the
early 1970s, with a series of musicals created with the producer and director Hal
Prince. Company (1970) abandoned traditional linear storytelling, relying instead
on a series of vignettes that developed the main character, a no-longer-young
bachelor whose married friends advise him to marry and settle down, though
their actions suggest he had better do the opposite. Follies (1971) used a similar
nonlinear format to illuminate the lives of two showbiz couples whose days in
the spotlight are long past. In these shows Sondheim perfected his technique
of writing songs for theater: while in the traditional integrated musical, songs
support the dialogue’s exposition, here the songs themselves are the principal
means of revealing plot and character.
With A Little Night Music (1973), based on Ingmar Bergman’s 1955 Swedish
fi lm comedy Smiles of a Summer Night, Sondheim and Prince, with librettist Hugh
W heeler, reverted to more traditional storytelling, though not to the traditionalK In this scene from Opera
Australia’s 2009 production
of Stephen Sondheim’s
1973 musical A Little Night
Music, Frederik (Robert
Grubb) describes his wife
for a less-than-enthralled
Désirée (Sigrid Thornton).A Little Night MusicStephen Sondheim172028_19_468-494_r3_sd.indd 486 23/01/13 11:05 AM