Schoch: "How Sondheim Can Change Your Life"

*The song "Some People" begins on a low note--a famously difficult way to start a song. Schoch suggests that this is because Rose is digging something up from the depths of her soul.

*Schoch and I have slightly different readings of "Send in the Clowns." Schoch sees this as an honest statement; Desiree is baring her soul. But I see this as a performance--a kind of lie. Desiree is comparing her humiliation to a moment of disaster in a misconceived play, but of course Desiree's suffering is much, much more important than one bad night at the theater. I think Desiree's real pain is mostly kept just beneath the surface. I'm not sure who is "right" here.

*I never knew this, but there is a reason the rhymes toward the end of "Passion" seem too "neat." Fosca is dictating a fake letter; Giorgio is writing the letter. Fosca uses rhymes that are too tidy; in this way, Sondheim emphasizes the artifice, the discomfort, in the scene.

For now I'm seeing love

Like none I've ever known.

A love as pure as breath--

As permanent as death--

Implacable as stone.

*In the original "Follies," John McMartin was so persuasive, audience members thought that McMartin--rather than his character, Ben--was "slipping." When Ben "forgot his lines," McMartin really did seem to "forget his lines."

*I always assumed that the Balladeer, in "Assassins," was meant to be the voice of Sondheim. This bothered me, because the Balladeer's glibness--a killing doesn't change America's story, since "the story's pretty strong"--seemed in tension with Sondheim's philosophical depth. But Schoch suggests that the Balladeer is just one fictional voice in a crowd; Sondheim is representing multiple points of view, and not necessarily his own.

What a fun book this is! And unexpected. Beautiful writing.

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