The Broadway composer and author Stephen Sondheim, who is considered a musical titan, is dead. He has become world-famous for his texts on “West Side Story” and works such as “Company” and “Merrily We Roll Along”.
Sondheim died at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut, the United States reported New York Times citing his lawyer and friend Richard Pappas. Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving with friends the day before, it was said.
Several Broadway productions in which he was responsible as both composer and lyricist have won Tony Awards for best musical. Including “Passion”, “Sweeney Todd” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum”. His play “Sunday in the Park with George” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. “One of the brightest lights on Broadway is dark tonight,” tweeted New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. He called Sondheim a “legend”.
Sondheim set the standards
Sondheim did not become as popular as Andrew Lloyd Webber. But he set the standards for the contemporary American musical. With “Send in the Clowns,” the 1973 Tony winner, and “A Little Night Music,” he created classics. Interpretations by Judy Collins and Frank Sinatra became hits.
Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, the son of the clothing manufacturer Herbert Sondheim and its chief designer Janet Fox. They lived in Central Park in Manhattan until their parents divorced when he was 10 years old. As a teenager, Sondheim made friends with Jamie Hammerstein. He found a lifelong mentor in Jamie’s father, Oscar. Oscar Hammerstein’s principles of lyrical writing would later become very important to Sondheim, even when he rebelled against it.
Trained as a composer, he received his first Broadway commission in 1957 as a copywriter for the “West Side Story” for which Leonard Bernstein composed the music. Two years later he worked with the composer Jule Styne on “Gypsy” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/. “Every now and then someone comes by who fundamentally changes an entire art form,” said actor Hugh Jackman. “Stephen Sondheim was one of them.” Film and Broadway star Idina Menzel said: “We will spend our lives making you proud”. Sondheim was 91 years old.