Wk 11 — Artist OTW — Student Choice

Artist: Stephen Sondheim
Media: composer and lyricist
Biography: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0814227/bio ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Instagram: realsondheim

In this paragraph, you can provide a little background information on the artist. What are their interests? What ideas does their work explore?

Stephen Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930 in New York City. He attended George school in Newton then went on to attend Williams College for music. Stephen Sondheim interests relied in lyrics and music, where he won a Hutchinson prize to study music for 2 years. His specialities helped him become one of the co authors for a scripted television series “Topper”. He then eventually moved on a year later to then had wrote all the music and lyric for “Saturday Night”. Stephen continued to make a name for himself after ultimately scripting music and lyrics for many others showings that were broadcasted on television.

For this section describe the work

The music Stephen had a hand in crafting was very unique because he made music for films that had women lead roles that had to be sung. He had a keen skill for developing well scripted music that exposed emotion in films that allowed for the audience to be entertained. “Not a Day goes” by was one of his most memorable work considering the pain that goes along with the song. Stephen composed many music that genre revolved around opera sounding music that were utilized in theatre musical acts. His skill not only made people feel embraced but also emotional pain or hurt due to how the artist sang his lyrics.

Content Analysis

Stephen claims to have made several songs by his garden in his house which kind of brings him his inspiration. Stephen also says he learned the piano because he wanted to imitate someone he looked up to Oscar hammerstein. He said that led him two write a show with two classmates that was named “Bye George”. Stephen talks about how he loves ravel trio with harmony and tunes, he also likes rite of spring which gave him motivation to write gypsy one of his shows. He talks about how he loves the creation of romantic music and that led him to create several different musical pieces for shows that had women lead roles. Stephen expresses he loves conversational songs, and he even said he mostly would write his music from inspiration of certain people he thought about.

Synthesis

I personally would say that this type of genre of music isn’t really my favorite but I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t give an open ear to it. Also from looking in to his background I’m surprised how his relationship with his mother wasn’t good even considering he was the only child. I can see how he fell in love with theatre music from growing up on it, for me I can say majority music I kind of grew up on was rap, r&b and pop music. Taste wise from listening in closely on his interviews and top rated music I wouldn’t say conversational music is something I would be interested in. But I can honestly see the significance in the theater music considering the emotions it evokes in people as they watch the play be enacted.