As a composer and a lyricist, and a genre unto himself, Sondheim challenges his audiences. His greatest hits aren't tunes you can hum; they're reflections on roads we didn't take, and wishes gone wrong, relationships so frayed and fractured there's nothing left to do but 'Send in the Clowns.' Yet Stephen's music is so beautiful, his lyrics so precise, that even as he exposes the imperfections of everyday life, he transcends them. We transcend them. Put simply, Stephen reinvented the American musical. He's loomed large over more than six decades in the theatre. And with revivals from Broadway to the big screen, he is still here, 'pulling us up short, and giving us support for being alive.'
That's a succinct and true evaluation of Sondheim's 60 years' of creating musicals. In those few sentences, Obama (and his staff writers) pull together references from (in order): Merrily We Roll Along, Follies, Into the Woods, A Little Night Music, more Follies, and Company. Ah, what a President!
Belated congratulations, Mr. Sondheim.
[For a curated list of links to dozens of posts related to Sondheim, his work, and work of his friends and rivals, see my Stephen Sondheim page]
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