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| Sondheim's Broadway Musicals (The Michigan American Music Series) |  | Author: Stephen 0 Banfield
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Category: Book
List Price: $57.50
Buy Used: $10.99
You Save: $46.51 (81%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 2187830
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 472
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.3
ISBN: 0472102230
Dewey Decimal Number: 782.14092
EAN: 9780472102235
ASIN: 0472102230
Publication Date: February 1, 1994
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: AN EX-LIBRARY BOOK WITH USUAL LIBRARY MARKINGS-GOOD READING COPY!!!
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
With thirteen Broadway musicals to his credit, Stephen Sondheim's career in the musical theater has outdistanced those of most of his contemporaries. Each of his shows has presented new challenges to audiences, and each has cast fresh perspectives on the nature and potential of the American musical, as well as probing deeply, often painfully, into the nature of our culture.
Sondheim's Broadway Musicals is the first book to take an in-depth look at Sondheim's work. Stephen Banfield examines each of Sondheim's musicals for Broadway, from West Side Story and Gypsy to the 1987 musical Into the Woods, and includes A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, Anyone Can Whistle, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Merrily We Roll Along, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday in the Park with George. Banfield also discusses Sondheim's other work, such as the 1991 show Assassins and his music for the 1990 film Dick Tracy--for which "Sooner or Later" won him an Academy Award for Best Song.
"Banfield seems almost to hear Sondheim's music with Sondheim's ears. This extremely valuable work discusses Sondheim's early training and subsequent career, his general compositional concerns, and his style. The meat of the book is a musical-dramatic analysis of his musicals . . . . For each musical, Banfield places the work and its components in a historical and typological text. He also treats in welcome detail the musical profile or universe of each show: Sondheim's use of generative intervals or interval complexes as source material, motifs that reappear in various guises in various songs, the sound world that defines the musical's emotional mind. The book will be as useful to those who are cool to Sondheim's work as to his fans." --Choice
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Scholarly Sondheim August 16, 2007
This is an excellent publication, but very dense, and designed for the musicologist rather than just the fan. This covers Sondheim's works up to and including "Into The Woods".
Banfield is not "starry eyed" about Sondheim, and is, at times, critical of his 'borrowings' from other composers. He also insists on placing all his citations within the body of the text, rather than as footnotes or as an appendix at the end of the book. This makes for a very disjointed reading experience.
Worth a visit, but quite a plod through it's technicalities.
 Not a book for everyone but one of the best out there March 13, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is wonderful in that Banfield has created a series of dissertations on the composition of each of Sondheim's most important works. Those of you who have extensive music theory background will find this book to be golden. Banfield uses musical exceprts and analyzes these small musical moments in regard to how they support the character or the situation and even foreshadowing at hand. I am reminded of a Bach sacred work in which the work is scored in such a way that the printed page creates a picture of the crucifix, yet at the same time depicts a remarkable musical moment. This is the sort of detail and craft that Sondheim uses. Sondheim is a man who is writing many years before his time. The politics and unions of New York Theatre have jaded him, but at any given moment one of Sondheim's works is being produced in revival and being understood far more so than the original production. "Merrily we Roll Along" is a brilliant work that has yet to be completely understood by the public, though "Sweeney Todd" is finally begining to be seen as the major work it is: one of the most important pieces of theatre to have been created so far. "Passion" was recognized as best musical at the Tony awards though never did a road production. "Passion" is brillaintly written so that there is no applause break, no intermission and the audience is not permitted a single moment from start to intense ending where he may slip back into the "real world." In this way, "Passion" moves more like a film, so that the audience, once caught into the magic, is not permitted even an instant of coming back to the surface, making the intensity of this work even more powerful. Sondheim's inteligence and insistence that our fast food nation use its mind to experience an evening of brilliance that often hits very close to home is both part of his brilliance and part of what causes critics to shy away. (We now laugh at the foolish critics who criticized the brilliant second act of "Sunday in The Park With George." Stephen Banfield's "Sondheim's Broadway Musical" gives us a book that is not only fun to read, but allows us to understand the work better. Before staging any Sondheim work yourself you must read this book and if you teach music theory, musical theatre or acting, then this is a book that must be included in the curriculum. For me? I read it both for the professional need as well as the intellectual stimulation. This is not a souvenier book but rather a brilliant study for those who are very serious about music, lyrics and the creation of character, life and art on the stage. Sondheim is an international treasure and we have the very unusual experience of living as contemporarys with a man who will be placed in history beside Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Banfield's book will begin to show you why.
A Scholarly Investigation into Sondheim's Musical Methods August 14, 2006
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is not a book for the casual Sondheim fan. Be warned, unless you have a fair degree of musical sophistication -- and this involves music theory and musicology -- this is not the book for you. But for those who do understand such arcane things as harmonic (including Schenkerian) analysis, or how a typical Broadway tune is constructed, or, to use Banfield's favorite term, the diegetic uses of music, this 1993 book is a gold mine. The emphasis throughout is on the music, not on dramatic construction or the lyrics themselves; they are noted but not dwelt on.
Banfield gives us some historical and biographical background, with a fair discussion of Sondheim's pre-Broadway career (including some tidbits about the collaboration with Bernstein on 'West Side Story'), an overview of the compositional process, detailed exegesis of each of Sondheim's works from 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum' through 'Into the Woods.' There are many scholarly references and a voluminous bibliography as well as a slightly light-weight index. One is disappointed that the book stops in the early 1990s. Perhaps Banfield will update it one day.
This is definitely a book for serious students of Sondheim's work. It is a densely written text that definitely repays close study.
Scott Morrison
Impressive, arrogant, unclear... June 20, 2002
6 out of 12 found this review helpful
Despite the wealth of information which is hidden in this book, the professorial writing style makes it very difficult to unearth. The average sentence runs on for 7 full-length lines, and is annoyingly interrupted by literary name-dropping (Sondheim 1980) disguised as references and countless "the former" and "the latter"s. Many opinions are arrogantly offered with no clear examples, which is sadly typical of the "professor" mentality. I'm ashamed that my own college music lit professor is the editor of the series, and didn't ask the author to rewrite the book in a style meant to communicate rather than pontificate.
Dense material, but worth the work April 13, 2002
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a Sondheim afficionado and serious music student, I adored this book and the insights it gave into the techincal aspects of Sondheim's compositions. As Banfield says in the introduction, too often the music isn't given the serious consideration compositionally that it deserves. Just a warning though, the book is really just about the music, there is fairly little discussion of the dramatic or theatrical aspects of Sondheim's work. That being said, this is an amazingly intelligent, in depth, and scholarly treatment of Sondheim purely as a composer.
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