Sondheim's Piano SonataAuthor(s): Steve SwayneSource: Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Vol. 127, No. 2 (2002), pp. 258-304Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3840465 .
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Journai ofthe Royal Musical Association, 127 (2002) ? Royal Musical Association
Sondheim's Piano Sonata
STEVE SWAYNE
In the autumn of 1949, Stephen Sondheim enrolled in Music 103, the
first semester of the two-semester senior honours course in music at
Williams College (in northwestern Massachusetts). There were no
specific requirements for the course, according to the college prospec- tus for that year, other than regular consultation with the supervisor for music honours. In essence, Sondheim began a programme of inde?
pendent study with Robert Barrow, then the principal composition teacher at Williams who had been promoted to full professor that year.1 The 1956-7 college prospectus contains the first mention of the
requirements for the degree with Honors in Music. Barrow was chair
of the Music Department at the time.
In the senior year history candidates must submit a thesis; theory candi- dates a composition in one of the larger forms or a group of smaller works. In both cases the first semester of senior year is spent in preparation of the
writing of the thesis or composition, under supervision of one or more members of the department, meeting twice weekly. The work of the second semester consists largely of the actual writing of the thesis or composition.2
Seven years before these guidelines were issued, Sondheim elected to
write for Barrow a composition in three of the larger forms: a piano sonata that uses sonata, extended ternary and rondo forms in its com?
pleted movements.
The continuity between Sondheim's early musical vocabulary and his
mature musicals emerges more clearly in the light of the sonata.
Written when the winds of international musical fashion were begin?
ning to favour the Second Viennese School, the sonata generously
employs the vocabulary of Paul Hindemith, a composer whose influ?
ence on American composers has yet to be fully charted. What one
unexpectedly discovers from the sonata is not only how proficient Sondheim was in this vocabulary: one also discovers hitherto unsus-
pected concordances between the sonata, Sondheim's mature works, and the sound world and compositional aesthetics associated with Hindemith. Familiarity with Sondheim's sonata changes the way
I thank Stephen Sondheim for making his Williams College student reports available to me. I thank Linda Hall, archives assistant at Williams College, for her inestimable help in researching
1 Sondheim went on to enrol in Music 104 in spring semester 1950, completing Music 103, Music 104 and the Honors programme in Music successfully. Information about Robert Bar row in this article comes from papers and press releases contained in the Robert George Barrow file of the Williams College archives.
2 Williams College Bulletin (March 1956), 146.
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sondheim's piano sonata 259
scholars and musicians, classical and popular alike, must talk about the
music of Sondheim's maturity and enriches our discussion of musical
America in the middle of the twentieth century.
THE HISTORY OF THE SONATA (AND MUSIC AT WILLIAMS)
The scope of Sondheim's accomplishment is best understood in the
context of the emergence of the Department of Music at Williams.
Before 1927, Williams offered no academic courses in music. That year, the Department of the History of Art and Civilization (renamed the
Department of Fine Arts in 1930) offered the sole music course in the
Williams curriculum, a two-semester 'History and Appreciation of
Music'. The prospectuses give the impression that this was a stolid work-
list approach to the Great Men of Music: Semester I went from Pal-
estrina to Bach, Semester II from Bach to 'the present day'. In fact, the
description of the Fine Arts major, with its one music course, seems to
go out of its way to exclude serious mention of music:
The primary objective is to provide a sequence of courses which will
acquaint the student with the culture of the East and the West as it is
expressed and as it may be evaluated in terms of the fine arts throughout the course of civilization. The introductory course emphasizes the prin? ciples which form the basis for design and expression in the arts. The major is planned as a further analysis of these principles and as an introduction to the fundamental problems of art history and criticism through the study of significant achievements in architecture, sculpture, and painting.3
In the autumn of 1939, the 28-year-old Barrow arrived at Williams. He
had earned three degrees from Yale - BA (1932), B.Mus. (1933), Mus.M. (1934) - and was the recipient of the Ditson Fellowship for
Foreign Study in 1934. The award enabled him to study conducting with Sir Henry Wood and composition with 'the distinguished com?
posers Ralph Vaughan Williams and Paul Hindemith'. After his return
to the USA, he worked for four years as organist and director of the
choir school ofthe National Cathedral (Episcopal) in Washington, DC, before moving to Williamstown. Barrow's hands-on experience with
choral and organ music and his exposure to continental culture would
be matched the following year when Joaquin Nin-Culmell, a concert
pianist who studied at the Paris Conservatoire, joined the faculty. Barrow rose rapidly from assistant to full professor
- he held the rank
of associate professor for four years - in part because of his ambition
and in part because of the college's needs. In 1940, the Fine Arts
department was renamed Fine Arts and Music. That same year, the
course offerings in music grew sevenfold to five regular two-semester
courses and two year-long honours courses for juniors and seniors
offered by permission of instructor. Seven years later, the department was renamed again, from Fine Arts and Music to Art and Music. Finally,
3 This description appeared in the Williams College Bulletin from 1937 to 1946, with the exception of 1943 and 1944.
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260 STEVE SWAYNE
TABLE1
MUSIC THESES AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE, 1943-60
year author/composer title/composition length
1943 Charles Gorham Phillips The Jazz-Age Isolationists' 108 pp. (text) 1946 Edwin Stube Slow Movement for Organ 4 pp. (112 bars)a 1950 Stephen Sondheim Piano Sonata in C major, 1st 13+16 pp. (176 + 171 bars);
and 3rd movements 2nd-movement sketch (2 pp., 32 bars) catalogued in 2001
1951 William Farrar Wynn A Movement in Sonata Form 13 pp. (222 bars)a 1952 John Phillips Seven Pieces for Piano 5 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 4 pp.
(84 + 34 + 72 + 73 + 44 + 52 + 67 bars)a
1953 Alexander C. Post Sonata for Organ, 1st 13 pp. (194 bars)a movement
1954 John T. Overbeck 'The Bagatelle and Beethoven' 89 pp. (text) 1955 Donald Robert Munroe Two Three-Part Inventions 3 + 3 pp. (24 +36 bars)a
Paterson for Piano 1957 Robert Kelton Goss Two Three-Part Inventions 3 + 4 pp. (30 + 62 bars)a
for Pianoforte 1957 David Gregg Niven Two Three-Part Inventions 3 + 4 pp. (35 + 57 bars)a
for Pianoforte 1958 Ridgway M. Banks Sonata Form Movement for 17 pp. (96 bars)
Clarinet and Piano 1960 J. Edward Brash *
Regina by Marc Blitzstein: 51 pp. (text) An Approach to American Opera'
1960 Robert J. Stern Rondo-Sonata for String 11 pp. (184 bars) Quartet
a The author wishes to thank Ben Isecke of Williams College for his help in determining the total bar counts of these works.
by 1950 - the year Sondheim graduated - the Music Department was
completely separate from the Art Department. (In comparison, Yale
University appointed its first music instructor in 1855 and had elevated
music to the level of an academic subject by 1890.)4 The faculty and administration might have had the Music Depart?
ment on an even faster track but for the intervention of World War II.
In the 1943-4 and 1944-5 prospectuses we read: There will be no Fine
Arts and Music majors for the duration because of the limited course
offerings under war conditions/5 As a result the senior theses in music
during the 1940s are small in number and scattered. Sondheim's
sonata, in fact, was only the third senior thesis in music produced at
Williams, so there were few established departmental guidelines and
fewer precedents for him to follow at the time.
How exceptional was Sondheim's decision to write a sonata becomes
somewhat clearer when we look at the theses that followed Sondheim's
(see Table 1). On either side ofthe 1956-7 departmental guidelines, as many honours students chose to write a
* composition in one of the
4 See Allen Forte, 'Paul Hindemith's Contribution to Music Theory in the United States', Hindemithjahrbuch, 27 (1998), 62-79 (pp. 69-70).
5 Williams College Bulletin (December 1943), 94; (December 1944), 51.
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sondheim's piano sonata 261
larger forms' as opted to compose 'a group of smaller works'. But with
only one composition thesis preceding his own - Edwin Stube's rela-
tively short G minor organ voluntary - Sondheim's decision to write a
three-movement piano sonata was ambitious and idealistic. Perhaps his
struggle to complete the work is reflected in the more modest honours
compositions that were written after his own.
Beyond Sondheim's compositional difficulties lay practical ones as
well: he could not play the sonata. While his chosen instrument was the
piano, by the time he reached Williams he had abandoned whatever
aspirations he may have had to become a virtuoso.6 His preferred venue for performance at Williams was the theatre; he wrote shows for
the Adams Memorial Theatre and appeared in non-musical plays
during his years there.7 The technically demanding sonata lay beyond his considerable abilities.8 Certainly either Barrow or Nin-Culmell
could have premiered the sonata, had Sondheim set his sights on a
performance beyond whatever passable account he himself could give for anyone who would listen.
Sondheim, however, did not have performance in mind. Nor did he
seem to see beyond the narrow confines of the assignment at hand.
Unlike nearly all the other students whose composition theses are listed
in Table 1, he worked on music paper rather than reproducible vellum
and submitted his manuscript (presumably his only copy) to the
college. A piano sonata - a genre with two centuries of history and a
host of associations adhering to it - gave Sondheim an opportunity to
show his skill in controlling his musical language over a long expanse of time without the benefit of words. In many respects, and in contrast
to the musicals he composed and eagerly performed at Williams, the
sonata was more of an academic musical exercise than an expressive artistic pronouncement.
The mystery surrounding the sonata's second movement can also
lead to a cursory view of the entire work. Until November 2000, the
Williams College archives had only the first and third movements of
Sondheim's sonata in its collection. When in September 2000 I asked
Sondheim about the missing second movement, he responded by
sending a two-page sketch for it with instructions that it be shared with
the Williams archives. (That sketch, marked 'unfinished', is now on file
at the archives.) In a separate letter, Sondheim stated: T can't find the
6 Sondheim: 'I liked playing the piano part of the first movement of the Rachmaninoff C minor [concerto, op. 18], which I played in high school, toured, and gave recitals in Pennsyl? vania.' He also played Chopin's Polonaise-Fantasy and Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, the latter 'entirely for my own pleasure'. Personal correspondence, 20 November 2001.
7 Not until the 1967-8 Bulletin did the following appear: 'It is expected that music majors will participate in at least one department sponsored performance group during their junior and senior years' (p. 153). New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner may reminisce about singing with Sondheim in the Williams College Glee Club, but Sondheim declares that he never sang in the Glee Club, nor was he required to participate in any organized music ensemble while he was a music major at Williams.
8 Sondheim: 'As for the Piano Sonata ... it's never been performed. And of course I knew how difficult it was -1 was writing theoretically rather than practically.' Personal correspondence, 19 January 2001.
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262 STEVE SWAYNE
complete second movement, even though I'm almost certain I finished
it -1 doubt Bob Barrow would have let me get away with an incomplete thesis.' But Linda Hall, archives assistant at Williams College, assever-
ated that there is no record of the archives' having received the second
movement and that it is unlikely that it has been misfiled or lost.9
Even without a second movement, Sondheim's thesis dwarfs nearly all the others in its immediate vicinity in extent and scope. The other
theory students may have expanded their single movements into multi-
movement works at a later time; in their cases, one sonata movement
apparently satisfied Barrow. In contrast, Sondheim produced at least
two and maybe all three movements while he was a senior, with all the
pressures every graduand knows - and then some. (In his last year he
was composing what would have been his third Williams musical - High
Tor - but the project had to be abandoned when Maxwell Anderson
would not give Sondheim permission to adapt his play.) And where one
of the completed movements rather slavishly adheres to sonata form, another charts its course with almost reckless abandon.
The sonata continues to occupy a shadowy netherworld in Sond?
heim's biography and creative persona. It has never been performed in public. It is not scheduled for publication. It is never discussed as an
influential work. It may be close to being forgotten. However, with the
recent premiere of another early instrumental work - the Concertino
for Two Pianos, orchestrated for chamber orchestra with piano obbli-
gato by Jonathan Sheffer10 - it is time to reassess the sonata for what it
reveals about Sondheim's development as a composer.
THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE SONATA
The physical manuscript exhibits numerous fascinating features. For
example, the two outer movements are separately bound, a curious
decision that may be explained in part by the omission (and expec- tation?) of the second movement. The bindings themselves differ in a
number of small details that, when taken together, suggest that the two
movements may have been bound at different times and by different
individuals.
One can also see that Sondheim took greater care in planning and
writing the third movement than the first. The manuscript of the first
movement consists of five four-page folios, with each folio consisting of
a front page, interior verso and recto pages, and a rear page. One folio
serves as a wrapper; Sondheim used die front page as a tide page and
enclosed within this folio the remaining four folios. (He has continued
9 Personal correspondence with Sondheim, 19 January 2001, and with Linda Hall, 2 February 2001.
10 See my review of the composition and Sheffer's arrangement, 'The Concertino: When the Music Got Lost', Sondheim Review, 8/1 (summer 2001), 33. In his programme notes Sheffer mistak- enly identified the Concertino as Sondheim's senior thesis. More recently (12 April 2002), the presenter of a US National Public Radio broadcast introduced a recording of Sheffer's perform? ance with the statement that 'when [Sondheim] was in college, he wrote a sonata for two pianos as his senior thesis'.
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sondheim's piano SONATA 263
to use the folio-as-wrapper method of organizing his manuscripts.) The
movement itself is written from folio to folio, giving the manuscript the
following layout:
folio 1 - wrapper: tide page on front page; empty interior verso page
folio 2-pp. 1-4 ofMS
folio 3-pp. 5-8ofMS
folio 4-pp. 9-12 ofMS
folio 5 - p. 13 of MS on front page; all other pages empty
folio 1 - wrapper: empty interior recto and rear pages
This arrangement of consecutive foliation results in six blank manu?
script pages, a relatively inefficient use of paper for a 13-page manu?
script with a title page. Another indication within the manuscript itself further suggests that
the transcription of the first movement from sketch to fair copy was not
completely plotted out in advance. On page 3 a piece of paper has been
pasted over the first system. The differences between the original
manuscript and the palimpsest are shown in Table 2.
Comparison of these features of the first-movement manuscript with
those found in the third movement reveals that in the latter, rather than using consecutive foliation, Sondheim interleaved his folios in the
following manner (page numbers correspond to front, interior verso, interior recto, and rear pages of each folio):
folio 1 - pp. 1, 2, 15 and 16 of MS
folio 2 - pp. 3, 4, 13 and 14 of MS
folio 3 - pp. 5, 6, 11 and 12 of MS
folio 4-pp. 7-10 ofMS
This manner of foliation allowed the binder to staple the folios
together at the centre (i.e. between pages 8 and 9), whereas the
arrangement of the folios in the first movement required that the
binder sew the folios together along the edges of the gathered folios. An unusual feature in the foliation of the third movement is found on
page 9 ofthe manuscript, where Sondheim used three staves to a system while maintaining an empty staff after each system, with the result that
there are only three systems on this page instead of the typical four.
Nowhere later in the manuscript does Sondheim appear to have tried
to make up for this lost system by squeezing in extra bars - in fact, the
final page has only three systems of regular grand staff writing on it.
Another interesting aspect of this movement is that Sondheim uses two
different types of manuscript paper. Folios 1 and 2 are from The Music
House (an establishment in the neighbouring town of North Adams); the paper for folios 3 and 4 was made for 'G. Schirmer' and is slighdy smaller and a litde more yellowed than the Music House paper. Where the first-movement manuscript is a model of waste, the third is a model of efficiency.
The two-page sketch of the second movement stands apart from the
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264 STEVE SWAYNE
TABLE2
SONDHEIM, PIANO SONATA IN C MAJOR, FIRST MOVEMENT COMPARISON OF MANUSCRIPT AND PALIMPSEST
MSp. 3, first system (bar no.)
first bar (28) second bar (29)
third bar (palimpsest only) (30)
subsequent bar (31)
original manuscript
identical in both versions 3/4 bar: beat 1 identical in both versions; beats 2 and 3 identical with 2/4 bar in palimpsest
identical in both versions
palimpsest
3/4 bar: new material for beats 2 and 3
2/4 bar: identical with beats 2 and 3 of second bar in original
completed movements in a variety of ways.11 Although both pages are
written on the same Music House paper on which most of the sonata
appears, the layout is unusual. The folios from the Music House have
distinctive footers on the front page and the interior recto but not on
the interior verso or rear pages. The first page of the sketch has no
footer, thus making it either an interior verso or a rear page. It is also
clearly marked, like the companion first pages of the two completed movements, with a roman numeral indicating which movement this is.
The second page is written on the front page of a folio that is turned
upside down. Given that an opened and inverted folio would put the
front page on the left-hand side of a two-page layout, the two pages of
the sketch are written either on opposite sides of the same piece of
paper (i.e. interior verso and front) or on two different pieces of manu?
script paper. In either case, the sketch was provisional, as other factors
demonstrate.
The manuscript is written in pencil rather than pen, and the musical
and expressive details that fill the completed movements - dynamics,
phrase and pedal markings, time-signature changes - are almost non-
existent here. In a few instances, the absence of time-signature changes leads to confusion as to how to realize the sketch: did Sondheim mean
to move from 3/4 to 6/4, or are the notes supposed to be semiquavers rather than quavers? And the sketch breaks off mid-idea in this
predominandy 3/4 sketch with a hovering authentic cadence within an
unmarked 7/8 bar that has no closing barline - a fitting caesura for this
enigmatic movement (Example l).12
11 This description of the sketch is based on an observation ofa photocopy of the sketch and corroboration from Sondheim.
12 I acknowledge the cooperation of the copyright-holder in allowing me to quote, here and in Examples 3-6, 8, 10, 11, 13-18, 20-7, 29-31 and 33, from the piano sonata by Stephen Sondheim. Copyright ? (renewed) by Rilting Music, Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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SONDHEIM S PIANO SONATA 265
Example 1. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, second movement, bar 32.
Example 2. Suspended dominant chords.
G7sus4 F/G Dmin7/G
THE MUSIC OF THE SONATA
The 7/8 bar also serves as a useful introduction to the musical language that Sondheim used in the sonata. While there are gestures to tradition
throughout - cadential motion, sequential patterns, primary and
secondary materials - Sondheim employed them within a decidedly
contemporary musical language. Unadorned triads are difficult to find
in the sonata, appearing most noticeably (and almost as non sequiturs) at the close of the completed movements. Ninth, eleventh and thir-
teenth chords abound. The dominant chord in particular often takes
on a specific colouration. In lead-sheet parlance and with C as tonic, Sondheim tended to use G7sus4, F/G and Dm7/G chords for the domi?
nant function in the sonata. Example 2 shows these three chords next
to one another, with a fourth chord showing how they can also be
derived from rearranging superimposed fourths, a device that will
become important in the third movement. The 7/8 bar also has a pre-
ponderance of flats, including a double flat; in this it is representative of the sonata as a whole, which has no double sharps but has an abun?
dance of flats and double flats along with naturals (cautionary and
necessary) to cancel them out.
Table 3 provides an overview of the first movement. A cursory glance at the number of bars in each main division of the movement shows that the development section is the largest of the three. The table does
not reveal another factor that makes the development still lengthier than the other sections. The base metre for the movement is 4/4. The
development has a greater proportion of bars that are metrically larger than 4/4, and the other sections have a greater proportion of bars that
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TABLE 3 g 0>
SONDHEIM, PIANO SONATA IN C MAJOR, FIRST MOVEMENT
(numbers are those of bars; * = in inversion; d = in diminution)
exposition (1-61) development (62-128) recapitulation and coda (129-76)
first-theme group (1-30) 1-11: 1st theme (= motif) in varied
guises (aand a1) 12-18: heraldic triplet idea (T) that
slackens
19-22: agitated transitional material derived from a; notable for
arpeggios at end of each bar 23-4: a6- in cadential 6-4 position 25-6: cascade of figuration derived
from a 27-30: furioso dissonant passage; a* in
accompaniment; slackens at end to lead to:
second-theme group (31-61) 31-8: 2nd theme (in A minor), 1st
statement (b)
39-48: 2nd theme, 2nd statement
(developed); leads to climax (47-8)
(47-8): ascending tetrachord
first-theme group (129-52) 129-39:: 1-11
140-3 (1st beat) :: 12-15 (1st beat); voicing of the final chord different between 2 versions
143-5: quieter reflection on material from 19-22
[no cognate for 23-4] 146-7:: 25-6
148-52: reiteration and transposition of
27-30; builds at end to lead to:
second-theme group (153-69) 153-60: similar to 31-8; at same pitch
level (i.e. no transposition), but now in C major (cf. 2nd-theme
recapitulation in 1st movement of Ravel's Quartet)
161-6: compression of ideas from 39-57; ?j much more agitated than jg exposition c?
167-9: tetrachord (from 47-8) thrice |
repeated in diminution ?
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49-57: 2nd theme, 3rd statement, in
augmentation and piano 58-61: codetta built around T; music
comes to a near stop
TABLE 3 continued
section 1 (62-6): based on 1-11 section 2 (67-80): combination of a
(accompaniment and ostinato) and T
(melodic interest) section 3 (81-3): a'as dramatic
interruption section 4 (84-8): similar to 2nd half of
section 2 section 5 (89-94): extension of section 3 section 6 (95-101): agitato derived from
19-22 section 7 (102-13): short introduction
from ad, then contrapuntal combination of a and b, b becomes more prominent at section end
section 8 (114-24): impassioned statement pib fragments; metre
effectively switches to 12/8; ad in
accompaniment
section 9 (125-8): transition to
recapitulation built on ostinato use of ad
o z o
I
coda (170-6) ostinato built on a6, used extensively
along with tetrachord diminution; final dominant identical with dominant used to begin the
recapitulation
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268 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 3. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars
1-4.
Allegro moderato (J = 138)
a
are metrically smaller than 4/4. From the description of the discrete
sections within the development itself, one can further see that the
development section is far from trenchant. Indeed, because of the
nature of Sondheim's musical material, the concept of development becomes problematic, as the opening of the sonata demonstrates
(Example 3). The first phrase of the sonata encapsulates the procedures that Sond?
heim used throughout the sonata. The harmonic language makes a nod
to convention, with a bass line that clearly traces a I-IV-V-I progression. The chords, however, are all substitutes for the expected chords: the
opening tonic has an added ninth, is missing the third, and has an
accented fourth that may, in fact, redefine the function of the chord; the subdominant is a chromatically inflected ninth chord; the dominant
is a suspended chord. Only the closing tonic resembles a classic C major chord, and even it is bent by an appoggiatura in the alto voice. These
alternative harmonies arise from Sondheim's linear writing: no fewer than four voices make up the contrapuntal fabric. The phrase marks and
pedal marks leave litde to the whim of the performer, and in the outer
movements Sondheim was precise in his markings. The motivic aspects of the opening warrant separate discussion. The
three-note motif that opens the piece - the ascending perfect fifth fol-
lowed by the descending second - immediately folds back on itself and
is repeated a fourth higher. It is then answered by a modified inversion
of the same idea in the alto register. The rest of the sonata will give
ample evidence that Sondheim chose this three-note gesture for its
protean quality. In the first movement alone it will be used extensively as melody, figuration and accompaniment, in its original form, in inver? sion and in diminution. The motif will also provide the kernel from
which the principal melodies are derived for the other two movements. In other words, Sondheim chose his basic musical material so as to
develop it immediately and continuously. Such motivic concentration embodies Sondheim's beliefs of the
time, reflected in his contemporaneous senior analysis paper on
Copland, in which he cited as 'one of Copland's greatest virtues' the
manner in which the older composer thoroughly utilized his musical
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sondheim's piano sonata 269
Example 4. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars
9-13.
_Ji__ ,f___ -1?v \t*M i- _______jjm_u_.
__ 3 "
a m
=_
t
A a
r
#^##
3&. * r r
materials in his Music for the Theatre.13 Here, in the sonata, Sondheim
plotted out a piece almost as long as Copland's but one that uses a
smaller nucleus than did Music for the Theatre.1* By writing the sonata in
the way he did, Sondheim subjected his philosophy about the import? ance of effective motivic construction to an extreme test, i.e. how to
compose three distinct movements based on the same three-note motif
without succumbing to repetition or triviality. While he was not entirely successful in making the motif interesting
- the first movement in
particular has its longueurs - Sondheim here set out on a composi?
tional path to which he would return in Sweeney Todd (1979) and the
musicals that followed, works noted for their motivic construction.15
After this confident and assertive opening, the second phrase varies
the motif/first-group material rhythmically and directionally. Sond?
heim's repeated use of mirrored statements ofthe motif further under-
scores his interest in counterpoint at this juncture in his compositional
development. An awkward transition from a highly inflected F minor to
a stark E minor also brings in a new thematic idea, notable for the
heraldic repetition of the E and the triplets that follow (bar 12). These
two gestures, sometimes presented in tandem, sometimes separated, will
recur at pivotal moments throughout the movement (Example 4). The
motif temporarily recedes in the background as the new idea briefly
13 Stephen Sondheim, 'Notes and Comment on Aaron Copland with Special Reference to his Suite, Music for the Theatre' (unpublished paper, 1950), 5. This paper is now housed at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research at the University of Wisconsin (hereafter 'Wisconsin'). See also Steve Swayne, 'Music for the Theatre, the Young Copland, and the Younger Sondheim', American Music, 20/1 (spring 2002), 80-101.
14 For an analysis and history of Music for the Theatre, see Larry Starr, The Voice of Solitary Contemplation: Copland's Music for the Theatre Viewed as a Journey of Self-Discovery', American Music (forthcoming), and Howard Pollack, Aaron Copland: The Life and Work ofan Uncommon Man (Urbana and Chicago, 2000), 128-34.
15 The best and most widely available analysis of Sweeney Todd is found in Joseph P. Swain, The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey (Oxford, 1990), 319-54. Sondheim had engaged in motivic writing prior to Sweeney Todd, as can be clearly seen in Anyone Can Whistle (1964). But when asked whether he was a 'motivic-oriented composer, one who builds a melody and an entire score out of small and motivic components', Sondheim responded: T started to put my toe in the water .. . with Pacific Overtures. Then, it sprang full flower in Sweeney.' See Steven Robert Swayne, 'Hearing Sondheim's Voices' (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1999), 344; pp. 331-49 reproduce the author's 1998 interview with Stephen Sondheim.
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270 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 5. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars
22-5.
M rppjy
M Jp JjJS
_?
___4J /Nj y_ =____
a i s: t ip m
*r=rr
$fi>.
turns lyrical. The triplet gesture is used in a sequence, after which the
music becomes more agitated with the presence, for the first time, of
semiquavers. This transitional music is loosely derived from the motif -
especially as it appeared in the first bar - and itself will reappear later
with its distinctive auxiliary-note figure and the concluding arpeggio. The music is clearly building up tension on its way to the next signifi? cant structural signpost; even the motif definitely returns, but in diminu-
tion, in keeping with the rush towards the second thematic group. The
music erupts in a cascade of figuration both derived from the motif and
reminiscent ofthe heraldic/triplet idea, with its E-B bass (Example 5). Yet another transitional passage, this one marked/wnoso and with the
motif diminution now in the left hand as an accompaniment figure, leads to the second subject, in the relative minor (Example 6). Its
resemblance to the comparable theme in the first movement of the
Ravel Quartet is more than incidental (Example 7). Both themes
initially appear in the relative minor. Both prominendy feature the
9-8-7-6 tetrachord, first in descending motion and then in an ascend-
ing answer (bars 56 and 58 of the Ravel melody). Both themes share
the same rhythmic contour, with Sondheim's rhythm being an aug- mentation of Ravel's. These are all suggestive but not conclusive. Alook
at Sondheim's recapitulation, however, provides the telltale evidence
that he had the Ravel in mind when he was composing his sonata.
Ravel's theme is notable for the manner in which it is recapitulated in
the tonic major without a shift of the pitch classes; the tetrachord thus
becomes 7-6-5-4. Sondheim's theme reappears in precisely the same
way (Example 8). (One might further posit that Sondheim's three-note
motif is derived from the first three notes of the Ravel melody, though this would be far more difficult to prove.)
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SONDHEIM'S piano sonata 271
Example 6. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars
30-5.
Ravel is not the only modern musician lurking behind Sondheim's
second theme. The sinuous accompaniment of Example 6 resembles
the piano writing of Prokofiev. Sondheim not only knew but may have
also played some ofthe Visions fugitives, op. 22, prior to his matricula-
tion to Williams (see Example 9).16 Sondheim's texture is more
involved than that of the Visions fugitives and more closely resembles
passages from Prokofiev's piano sonatas, although Sondheim said he
was not familiar with Prokofiev's sonatas at the time he was writing his
own sonata.17 Despite this unfamiliarity, the third statement of Sond? heim's second theme, in augmentation and marked piano, looks and
sounds like a page lifted straight out of one of Prokofiev's nine piano sonatas (Example 10).
In addition, Sondheim used the term martellato at bars 199 and 125 in the development and a third time at bar 170 in the coda. (It also
appears in the coda ofthe third movement at bar 165.) One associates
16 Sondheim: T never studied Prokofiev's piano sonatas and I didn't become familiar with them until after college. The only Prokofiev pieces I might have been in contact with as part of my piano playing career [was] when I was 15-16 years old. I have a memory of the Visions Fugitives, but that [and] the Love for Three Oranges "March," which I played on the piano, are the only Prokofiev I think I ever came into immediate contact with.' Personal correspondence, 21 March 2001. In this context, 'study' suggests preparation for public performance. 17 See note 16. The similarities between Sondheim's second theme (first movement) and the second theme of Prokofiev's one-movement Sonata no. 3 in A minor, op. 28, are particularly suggestive. In the Prokofiev, the tenor line traces a descending-ascending tetrachord, 8-7-6-5 of the C major sonority in the first bar but 9-8-7-6 of the D minor sonority in the third bar. Like the Ravel and the Sondheim, the Prokofiev presents the second theme in the relative key (here, C major) and recapitulates it in the tonic key without shifting the pitch classes.
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272 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 7. Ravel, Quartet in F major, first movement, second theme.
pp tresexpr.
ri 55 I ? itl f~h fn _ ___
vlns | 1,2 &-T u U' U'
* __i
_c__ tresexpr. ^ m
f rrr rr
j. JI2
vlc
55
pizz.l *=T r r
l n? n i-?-rm
L-Jf L?J*
Jr -A-JJ2
*==f=f
Example 8. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars
152-7.
# %*. *$&.
/5ff ^?^jtg: a
fiEMM i___b
%b.
'hammered out' piano not with Ravel (or with Sondheim, for that
matter) but with Prokofiev and his percussive piano style. At this time
Sondheim was also playing the transcription of the March from The
Love for Three Oranges, whose opening, with its two bars of repeated
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sondheim's piano sonata 273
Example 9. Prokofiev, Visions fugitives, op. 22 no. 3 (Allegretto), bars
1-4.
|t*j j i I j h
fflp n
ffl^^
s rj^*^ r^*^
i i-Qb-Q
^^ r p
Example 10. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars 49-53.
52 i)
iglg 11 fl
rg
s s
^TO-^
notes, has a martellatoiike character to it. Prokofiev, however, never
used the term martellato in his piano music,18 so Sondheim evidendy encountered it elsewhere, as will be seen below.
Whereas Sondheim's indebtedness to Ravel has been and continues
to be explored, the connections between Sondheim and Prokofiev are
virtually uncharted. In his study Sondheim's Broadway Musicals, Stephen
18 Although Prokofiev did not use the term marteUato, there is percussive writing in the Visions fugitives, especially nos. 14 and 19. The term marteUato appears three times in Gyorgy Sandor's edition of Prokofiev's Third Sonata - twice in the development and once in the coda - but this edition did not appear until 1966, and earlier versions of the sonata do not use the term.
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274 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 11. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars 67-72.
"illin Wrigi
marcato
Banfield writes about the Trokofiev-like polytonality' of There's Some?
thing About a War' (cut from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum) and the 'uncharacteristically discursive' harmonic scheme of
'Green Finch and Linnet Bird' from Sweeney Todd which 'could almost
have been written by Prokofiev or Berkeley'.19 But the links between
Sondheim and Prokofiev clearly run deeper than a harmonic similarity here and there. Prokofiev's linear writing and acerbic harmonies must
have delighted Sondheim, whose own work is suffused with involved
linear writing and non-conventional harmonizations. And Sondheim's
predilection for ostinati and vamps finds a cognate in Prokofiev's
motoric rhythms. The passage from the development of Sondheim's
sonata shown in Example 11 demonstrates his ability yet again to put his three-note motif through its paces, the result being a sound not far
removed from the mechanistic writing for which Prokofiev is famed
(note the presence of the heraldic/triplet idea). Motoric ostinati are to be found in nearly every mature Sondheim
show. To pickjust one from a score full of examples, Sunday in the Park
with George (1984) uses an ostinato which accompanies the painter
Georges Seurat when he is engaged in painting in his pointillistic manner and which recurs elsewhere in the musical (Example 12); this
particular example comes from 'Color and Light'.20 The similarity between this ostinato and a passage in the development of the sonata, written 34 years earlier, is striking (Example 13), and in each case the
sound world of Prokofiev is in the near distance. (Notice again the use
19 Stephen Banfield, Sondheim's Broadway Musicals (Ann Arbor, 1993) (hereafter SBM), 99 and 292.
20 'Color and Light', music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim ? 1984 Rilting Music, Inc. All rights administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Warner Bros. Publi? cations U.S. Inc, Miami, FL 33014.
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SONDHEIM'S PIANO SONATA 275
Example 12. 'Color and Light' (Sunday in the Park with George), bars
172-5.
Example 13. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars 86-9.
of the motif in the left hand.) Considering Sondheim's penchant towards pastiche, other parallels between his music and the music of
Prokofiev are waiting to be drawn. The linearity of multiple voices, the
texture of the piano accompaniments, the dissonant tonal harmonies, and the deployment of motoric ostinati in the works of both composers
suggest that further exploration of the connections is warranted.
Two other passages from the first movement deserve mention. In his
musicals, Sondheim is noted for layering one melody on top of the
other, typically in ensemble numbers and often before a climactic
reprise of the main musical idea of the ensemble (e.g. Tt's a Hit!' in
Merrily We Roll Along, Tlease, Hello' in Pacific Overtures, the trio from
'Soon' in A Little Night Music, the 'Johanna' quartet in Sweeney Todd, and others). In the sonata we find an early example of this quodlibet- like aspect of Sondheim's style, as Sondheim in the development section cleverly interleaved the first and second themes (Example 14). Here again, the piano writing bears an uncanny resemblance to
Prokofiev's, although the marriage of first and second themes can be
found in the first movement of Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata in Bt
(1936), another sonata that Sondheim's sonata - especially the third
movement - brings to mind.
The second passage of note is found in the coda of this first move?
ment, where Sondheim recapitulated material that appears only in the
development section. The figuration from the final section of the
development, once again built from the three-note motif, winds down
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276 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 14. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars 106-12.
uo
-i *? m i=a m
i Ltijt p T
=f cresc. poco a poco
U *f ?y \-rif dt
i 'frn'Tn ^
wm m T-^ Sfi>. * 5a. * %b.
Example 15. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars 125-9.
rit. molto 125
<t) H; ?J\rJ-J/ zi ?*? w7 z" ?*" ~w7 ~L ~*^w7 zr ? w7 z "?*" "J"/N JJDQt p
martellato mp
dim. poco a poco
njTTf 1^ ijjjJ JT^ $&. # 3a.
Jgju i^
ta^
tempo pnmo
IS
*/
to a dominant chord with a flattened fifth (Example 15).21 Sondheim
repeated the figuration and the altered dominant at the end of this
movement (Example 16). The third movement similarly contains
material from the central section of the movement that returns in the
21 Note how Sondheim demarcated the development and the recapitulation with a double barline; the same demarcation separates the exposition from the development.
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SONDHEIM'S PIANO SONATA 277
Example 16. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, first movement, bars 168-70.
coda, giving us two examples in this sonata of a technique Sondheim
will use in his maturity: the delayed presentation of important and
recurring musical material.
In discussing the manuscripts of the completed movements, one
could summarize the differences between the two manuscripts as one
of excess (first movement) versus efficiency (third movement). Musi-
cally, the first movement contains a surfeit of material, not only in the
development but in the other sections as well. As Table 3 shows, tran?
sitional material from the exposition proves to be almost as significant in the development as do the two main themes. The second theme in
particular is fragmented in the development to the point of being
nearly unrecognizable. Some of the transitions are jarring, and some
of the passage-work sounds contrived. Given the numerous short-
comings in the first movement, one might sympathize with Sondheim's
decision to leave the sonata unrevised and unpublished. This is a far cry, however, from saying that the first movement is
atrocious. The music may be out of balance at certain points, but the
skill revealed in the sonata is considerable. In addition to the element
of craft, one gets from the first movement a sense of passion and
engagement, as ideas build to dramatic (and generally effective) musical climaxes. The music is both deeply heartfelt and calculated to
an almost unnatural degree. In Sondheim's case, at this early stage in
his career, these two aspects of composition are not as separable as they
might be with other composers at a comparable level of musical matur?
ity (Chopin springs to mind). Here in the first movement, the calcu-
lations are in general too close to the surface and thus make the
passions sound less mature. Sondheim would grow in his ability to
handle large-scale musico-dramatic structures;22 the third movement
already provides an illustration of how Sondheim learnt to hide some
of his calculations more skilfully. But before I turn to that completed movement, there is more to say about the second movement.
22 See Banfield's discussion of 'Someone in a Tree' (SBM, 267-71), where he speaks of Sondheim's 'additive' and 'permutationaT techniques in this song and, by implication, Sondheim's other extended songs (see p. 358 for other examples).
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278 STEVE SWAYNE
The sketch of the second movement contains 32 bars of continuous
music before it breaks off inconclusively. There are, however, numer-
ous instances of erasures and second thoughts throughout the sketch.
No dynamic marks are provided, and there is only one expression mark
(a marc. at bar 27) as well as a few phrase marks and one ritard followed
by a Tempo Primo. The manuscripts of the other two movements, in
contrast, are full of dynamics, pedal markings and other expressive indications. In this sketch, Sondheim had not completely settled on
how this portion of the second movement should sound, let alone how
it might continue.
Marked 'Andante', the music has a key signature of five flats. This is
something ofa curiosity, as the opening bass line undulates between Et
and At and the first real cadence at bars 11 and 12 moves from a Dt
suspended chord to a Gt major ninth chord. The movement has a
texture akin to a Satie gymnopedie. a 3/4 time signature; a bass line of
one note per bar; a tenor-register chord that enters on beat 2; the four-
bar introduction before the sinuous melody line appears (Example 17). The combination of these musical details suggests that Et Dorian
could be the mode Sondheim has chosen. Before this mode is con?
firmed, however, the music begins to use sharps and flats in equal measure and in a decidedly un-gymnopedie fashion. The harmonic
rhythm here speeds up as Sondheim employed his standard suspended- chord substitution for the dominant chord in a cadential formula. In
fact, two cadences a semitone apart chime back and forth. The disso-
nant bell-like notes on beat 3 will later coalesce into the first three bars
of the opening melody, now in D Dorian and in the upper register of
the piano (Example 18). After this melodie fragment, die music grows more agitated with an eruption of semiquavers that incorporates the
suspended-chord cadential formula. A slackening of tempo, a return
to quaver motion, and a 4/4 bar lead to a third statement of the
melody, this time with its first four bars in the bass. The writing here is
contrapuntally conceived, with four independent voices, though the
impression is one of stasis. After a one-bar passage of ascending semi?
quavers, Example 1 occurs, and the sketch ends.
It is difficult to imagine in what direction the movement would have
gone from this point forward. A few months later, Sondheim encoun?
tered difficulties with another slow movement, that of his Concertino
for Two Pianos (c. autumn 1950). In preparing it for its premiere nearly 50 years later, Sondheim made a few small cuts in the first movement
and extensive cuts in the 'endless' second movement.23 One could
posit that the second movement of the earlier sonata is also (and
literally) endless because, at this time in his writing career, Sondheim
found it difficult to control his musical material when it unfolds at a
more languorous rate. Indeed, a cursory overview of his mature songs turns up scant few where the melody unwinds in a plaintive arioso (e.g. sections of 'There Is No Other Way' in Pacific Overtures, Anthony's
'Johanna' in Sweeney Todd). More frequently, his ballads incorporate
23 Personal correspondence, 19 January 2001.
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SONDHEIM'S piano sonata 279
Example 17. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, second movement, bars 1-8.
Andante
Example 18. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, second movement, bars 13-18.
13
2P_=? fejg? ?*m ?_S
Sva,
i m m* ^^^a ^m^
rf
tU l LdX l **%
m E
S=S m ^m
r=rf ?
more active melody lines that come to rest on longer notes (e.g. 'Send
in the Clowns' in A Little Night Music, 'Good Thing Going' in Merrily We
Roll Along, 'No One is Alone' in Into the Woods, 'What Can you Lose?' in Dick Tracy, T Read' in Passion).
But the second movement does sound strikingly like another Sond?
heim song, one that was written for the musical-in-progress The Girls
Upstairs (begun in 1965), withdrawn, and then reincorporated in the
overture of the renamed Follies (1971). 'All Things Bright and Beauti?
ful' is also in 3/4, has a gymnopedie-like accompaniment and a long- breathed melody, and contains chains of suspended chords that slip from one to the other by semitone motion. The song is also noteworthy for the number of expression marks Sondheim employed here, includ?
ing the unusual designation colla voce, making the song look like the
outer movements ofthe sonata in its expressive exactitude. The resem?
blance between the two works is so extraordinary, in fact, that a rework-
ing of the song could easily serve as a central section for a slow
movement east in ternary form, even though a distance of 16 years sep- arates the sonata from the song (Example 19) ,24
24 For the USA and Canada: 'All Things Bright and Beautiful'. Words and music by Stephen Sondheim. Copyright ? 1971 by Range Road Music Inc, Quartet Music Inc. and Rilting Music, Inc. Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Herald Square Music Inc. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
For the world excluding the USA and Canada: 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' - Stephen Sondheim. ? 1971 Range Road Music Inc, Quartet Music Inc, Rilting Music, Inc. and Burthen Music Company, Inc All rights administered by Herald Square Music Inc. Copyright renewed. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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280 STEVE SWAYNE
The third movement, like the first, shows Sondheim's concern for
traditional forms and architectural balance even as it gives greater evi?
dence of motivic and structural creativity. Cast in a large ternary form
(ABA'), the movement combines elements of sonata and rondo form
without being a Beethovenian sonata-rondo (as in the final movement
of the Second Symphony). Where the first A section is itself cast in
ternary form, suggesting a rondo for the whole movement, the second
A' section is binary in form, in keeping with the recapitulation of a
sonata. The central B section - more a respite from, rather than a result
of, the outer sections - gives free rein to Sondheim's contrapuntal skills
and culminates in a fugato. Table 4 provides a schematic overview of
the third movement.
The workmanlike three notes of the main motif once again serve as
the basis for a large proportion of the musical material in this move?
ment (see Example 20) ,25 As in the first movement, the music opens with the upward leap of a perfect fifth followed by the descent of a
major second; once again, the basic rhythm is short-short-long (marked a). But a number of alterations make the motif sound new. It
now begins on the fifth scale degree instead of the tonic, starts with a
quaver pickup to the first bar instead of on beat 2, and is accompanied
by independent voices instead of being anticipated by an emphatic chord. Together with the slighdy slower tempo, these changes provide a contrast to the declamatory nature of the first movement's opening and combine here to give the motif a yearning quality (for example, the melodic appoggiatura of the right hand resolves on the tonic after
the downbeat). Moreover, after the motif has been stated, the music continues with
variants of it. The bass voice immediately echoes the first two notes of
the soprano - a truncation ofthe motif-with its arpeggiated fifths. The
soprano presents no fewer than three variants ofthe motif in quick suc- cession: the original; a variant that features a downward fourth instead
of the upward fifth; a five-note elision of these first two (the centre of
which is marked r, compare b in Example 3); and a fragment that con?
tains only the upward fifth. At the same time, the alto contrarily answers
the soprano with inversions ofthe stepwise-moving section ofthe motif, sometimes following the soprano, sometimes coming in with the
soprano, and sometimes anticipating the activity of the soprano. Sond? heim could have added 'giocoso' to his tempo marking, as the voices
play with each other, taking turns as they expand their independent but related musical ideas. The counterpoint that opened the first move?
ment clearly established a hierarchy where the top voice reigned. Here, the clear three-voice writing of the first two bars provides a clue from the very beginning of the movement that the activity in the inner and lower voices will prove to be as important as what is occurring in the
soprano.
25 See Table 4, note a, for an explanation of the bar-numbering in this movement.
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SONDHEIM S PIANO SONATA 281
Example 19. 'All Things Bright and Beautiful', bars 65-77.
65 a tempo, poco rubato poco rit
All
^ l=? ?
things
j?
Bright and beau - ti - ful,
*
H ^m colla voce f
mm ^^ i *=$ a fg %. f
5o5. ̂a/..
tfS a tempo =tbt t uTjf f j?
Ev- 'ry-thing for - ev - er, ask Ev-'ry-thing for-
H,n? ii. ?rf3 n W r ^=&g
fT
d&L ZKC5!
UP- d?F
4^r r
i
^ 4
ry day..
*=k S
ff^ *-Bf
*Wfr^ &m u ^M^
r
After a scalar gesture that will later figure prominently as a tran-
sitional figure (bar 3, right hand), the main idea returns (Example 21).
Only two bars separate the two statements of the main idea, but Sond?
heim ingeniously varied the pitches ofthe idea at its repeat. The return
is so emphatic, in fact, that the alteration could pass unnoticed. But this
is no slavish imitation. Where the leap of a perfect fifth opened the
motif before, now it is a major sixth, and the other intervals ofthe motif
now outline a C major pentatonic scale as the accompaniment begins
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TABLE 4 ?g
SONDHEIM, PIANO SONATA IN C MAJOR, THIRD MOVEMENT
(numbers are those of bars)a
A (1-73) B (74-118) A' (119-70)
ternary (ABAr) with codetta A (1-27): first-theme group
1-10:1st theme, repeat of 1st theme and extension
11-19: sequence of lst-theme rhythm; ostinato accompaniment; climax and relaxation at 18-19
20-7: transition theme B (28-51): second-theme group
28-38: introduction, 2nd theme and extension
39-42: sequence of 2nd-theme
fragments
43-8: transition built up of juxtaposed and combined elements from A and B
49-51: transition derived primarily from rhythm of 1 and melodie line of lst half of 2
binary (CD)
C (74-100): intermezzo 74-9: main idea derived from 1
80-4: development of 2nd half of 74 85-?: reiteration of main idea 89-95: lyrical expansion of main idea
fragment
binary (AB') with coda A (119-45): verbatim restatement of 1-27
119-28:: 1-10
129-37:: 11-19
138-45 :: 20-7 B' (146-60): second-theme group
146-56: 2nd theme and extension, but with different accompaniment from that in 28-38
157-60 :: 39-42
coda (161-70) 161-2: transition material similar to
43-4
163-4: recapitulation of 80-4
i I
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TABLE 4 continued ? o
96-100: augmentation, climax and ?? relaxation based on main idea g
D (101-18): fugato ?
101-2: subject derived from 74 g 103-6: answer, fifth below; countersubject ?
includes motif of upward leap followed co
by scalar descent; 2 bars free counterpoint 2 107-15: answer, tenth below; countersubject H
motif present; 7 bars free counterpoint; hint of Aat 115
116-18: subject, 2 octaves below; continuation of A; 1-bar transition
A' (52-67): recapitulation of first-theme
group 52-60: 1st theme, repeat of 1st theme
and extension; 52-6 :: 1-5; equivalent of 6 missing; 57-60 similar to 7-10, with different
accompaniment at 7/57 61-9: sequence of lst-theme rhythm;
ostinato accompaniment; 68-9 similar to 18?19
codetta (70-3) 70-1: development of material in 49-51 72: climactic augmentation and re-
harmonization of 1st half of 2 73: emphatic statement of upward-fifth
motif (2nd half of 2)
165-6: reharmonization of 70-1 167-8: augmentation of 72
169-70: thrice-repeated statement of
upward-fifth motif (73)
a The numbering used in this article treats the movement's first bar in the manuscript - a full 4/4 bar consisting entirely of rests save for a single quaver at the end - as a ?g null bar (as in Example 20, where the original bar 1 is reduced to a pick-up). oo
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284 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 20. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 1-2.
Allegro (J = 126)
Example 21. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 3-6.
$&. *$a.
to take the music away from the tonic. The effect is both dramatic and
sure-footed. Notice also the inversion ofthe main motif in the left hand
in bar 3, as well as the descending fifths in bars 5 and 6, yet another instance of Sondheim's contrapuntal bent.
The scalar transitional figure blossoms into a true scale, taking us
into the tenor register of the piano. It is here that the music presents an ostinato figure in the right hand derived from the first theme (see c in Example 20) while the left hand provides both fundament and
melody. The movement may have started out sounding vaguely French, but the jagged and insistent rhythm of the ostinato hammers
home the sonata's American roots. Moreover, both the ostinato and the harmonies -
suspended chords and second-inversion major seventh or ninth chords - sound as though they were lifted wholesale
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SONDHEIM'S PIANO SONATA 285
Example 22. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 11-13.
3fc. -*
a j
i n~Pl
JTBJ^BTCT
?e- %6.
out of 'Company' or The Miller's Son' (A Little Night Music), songs that, at the time of the sonata, were 20 years away. Sondheim's voice
here is unmistakable (Example 22). The ostinato and its harmonic components are first repeated and
then compressed, and the resulting tension finds release in 3,fortissimo whole-tone sonority that dissolves into the relative minor. The subse?
quent theme that emerges at bar 20 sounds peculiarly edgy; while set
within the framework of two 4/4 bars, the melody uses long and short
rhythms in an unpredictable, almost erratic manner. It is a finely crafted and distinct second theme in the classic sonata form, but in fact
it is only a transitional theme which soon gives way to a sequential
passage built around quartal harmonies (Example 23). Formally the
transition both fulfils and thwarts the expectations of sonata form; har-
monically, the passage employs some ofthe most Hindemithian sonori-
ties thus far encountered in this movement.
Whereas both the first theme and the transition are anchored in a
key - C major and A minor, respectively
- the actual second theme is
anchored on a pitch. A brief introduction (bars 28-9) adumbrates the
theme in the right hand while the left hand descends from E to A, the
central pitch of this episode. At this point (bars 30-1), the second
theme is presented in full: an undulating theme notable for its use of
large intervals with the longer notes (d) and scalar figures with the
semiquavers (e) (Example 24). The Hindemith ofthe Third Sonata -
particularly the scherzo, with its mixture of tertian and quartal writing - here gives way to Ravel. Notice the continued use of counterpoint in
the inner voices.
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286 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 23. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 20-3.
_HHM^_???-??_-=___I_?M-i_n_M_l---M- ... -_=_--1_ ._l| H | II nini || ?
%b. *%b. % sa>. *?, *
Sfo.
Example 24. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 28-31.
* $a.
Sondheim's skill in manipulating his musical motifs is on display
throughout this section. Two moments in particular deserve comment. In an elaboration of the second theme, Sondheim employed a diminu-
tion of d as accompaniment to the regular form of d in bar 39, which
is followed by a syncopated melisma derived from e in bar 40. Quartal harmonies and seventh chords vie for prominence (Example 25). Even
more artful is the way Sondheim juxtaposed the first and a diminution
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sondheim's piano sonata 287
Example 25. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 39-40.
Example 26. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 45-7.
of the second themes - in the left and right hands, respectively - in the
transition back to the music that opened the movement (Example 26). As Table 4 shows, the return to the first group, with its transposition
of material and minor rewriting of accompaniment figures, remains
fairly true to the opening of the movement. It is the four-bar codetta
to the larger, self-contained A section of the movement that stands out
for its stentorian delivery of the opening motif and its harmonic
sophistication in handling dissonant sonorities as pre-dominants and
dominants (Example 27). Notice yet again the use of a suspended dominant sonority for the penultimate chord. It will be this material, almost doubled in length, that will close the movement and the sonata.
This grand pause mid-movement signals a change not only of tempo but also of texture and mood. While inner voices earlier provided traces of contrapuntal lines, the central section of this movement is
saturated with counterpoint, so much so that, halfway through the
section, the music pauses yet again, this time to introduce an extended
fugal treatment of the thematic material. Each half of this central
section also has its particular harmonic east: a turgid intermezzo that
moves from the minor to a luminescent major to quartal harmony and
then back to the minor mode, followed by the fugato - so marked in
the score - that begins with the quartal harmony ofthe intermezzo and
heads towards free dissonance. Presented at a pace slightly slower than
what has come before, the two halves constitute a lengthy binary inter?
lude to the outer sections of the movement, an interlude too large for
a classic rondo and too distinct to be called a development section.
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288 STEVESWAYNE
Example 27. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 70-3.
f4#
ffg ii ?rrn-rrn m fff
__
pr; p r-
m W4 n ______ *RF^
^
__
'1 ?!?>-?- >^^t
Nevertheless, the basic musical material once again is derived from the
same three-note cell around which the entire sonata is organized, thus
making it developmental at the same time as it is original. The coun?
terpoint is awkward at times, especially in the fugato, but the sense of
formal balance and musical contrast is unerring and remarkable for
someone who had not written many extended compositions.
Example 28 tabulates the motivic relationships between the interlude
and the openings ofthe other three movements. For the first theme of
the first movement, the motif appears in its original form; all other
motifs have been transposed to this opening pitch for the sake of
comparison. An asterisk above a note signifies that it has been trans?
posed up from its original octave. This motivic economy over the
course of a composition more than 300 bars long clearly demonstrates
that Sondheim's interest in generating larger musical structures from
smaller motivic kernels pre-dates his postgraduate studies with Milton
Babbitt.26 If anything, here Sondheim appears to have been fixated on
squeezing as much musical juice out of his motif as possible. Of particu? lar note is how, for the second movement and the intermezzo, Sond?
heim manipulated the motif to appear in a minor mode, a feat made
manageable by leaving the third degree of the scale out of the 'Ur-
version' of the motif.
The use of the minor mode in the intermezzo is only one reason the
ubiquitous motif sounds fresh. In addition to the variations of rhythm and number of notes, Sondheim continually varied which notes of the
motif receive the main stress. The variation ofthe motif that opens this
third movement consists of two amphibrachs; in the intermezzo, the
motif opens with an iamb followed by an anapaest (Example 29, left
hand). Here the motif, marked marcato and appearing in the tenor
register, uses the upward leap of a fifth and then continues with a
second upward leap of a fourth (a). As the accompaniment figure shows, it is this secondary leap resolving stepwise in the opposite
26 See SBM, 22.
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sondheim's piano sonata 289
Example 28. Motivic relationship in Sondheim's Piano Sonata in C
major.
lst movement, 1st theme
2nd movement
3rd movement, lst theme
| j J J J f
J
3rd movement, intermezzo and fugat< ? $ j^'
* * *
y j p n
^^
direction that receives the most thorough treatment. In the right hand, the motif in diminution continuously folds back upon itself (a). The
tenor melodie idea moves beyond the motif to incorporate an ascend-
ing scale that is reminiscent of the second theme of the third move? ment (e). The dramatic change of character from the opening section
to the intermezzo effectively obscures the derivative nature of most of
the musical material in this central section.27
The piano writing for this intermezzo finds Sondheim at his most
Ravelian. The sound world of the Sonatine and Jeux d'eau lies just
beyond Sondheim's harmonies, which continue to emulate Hinde-
mith's Third Piano Sonata. The texture, however, is vintage Ravel, down to the cascading demisemiquaver arpeggios that appear immedi?
ately before the return of the main intermezzo idea. After the melody turns to the major mode, the music puckishly dances around the key- board, almost in echo of 'Ondine' from Gaspard de la nuit (Example 30). The notation is unusual not only for its three staves but also for
the figuration in the right hand in bar 91, which, though marked stac?
cato, is phrased throughout. In the fastidiousness that marks most of
the manuscript - witness the superabundance of pedal markings
-
Sondheim wanted to make sure the reader would see the shape of the
line.
After a climax that sounds more forced than inevitable, the harmonic
rhythm slows down and the texture thins out to make way for a fugato built on the same melodie idea as the intermezzo (Example 31).
Throughout the sonata and especially in the intermezzo, Sondheim
had demonstrated his interest and skill in counterpoint, and this fugato serves as the capstone of his contrapuntal writing. It nevertheless feels like a miscalculation. It does little to develop the musical material
beyond what the intermezzo has already done. It also postpones the
27 While it is most likely a contrapuntal happenstance rather than a deliberate derivation, the alto voice in this figure could be construed as an augmentation of the d material in the second theme of this movement.
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290 STEVE SWAYNE
reprise of the opening and threatens the architectural balance of the
emerging sonata-rondo form. And pianistically it is one of the more
ungrateful moments in the sonata. Beyond its obvious technical value
as an exercise in fugal writing, what might have been Sondheim's (and
Barrow's) aesthetic aim in including a fugato in the third movement?
Given Sondheim's admission that a comparison between his sonata
and the music of Hindemith is 'on the nose',28 a counterpart of Sond?
heim's fugato can be found yet again in Hindemith's Third Piano
Sonata. There, the fourth movement is a boisterous double fugue whose
second subject is taken wholesale from a fugato section in the slow third
movement. In addition, the subject entries in the Hindemith exposi- tions do not follow the standard tonic-dominant-tonic exposition of a
Baroque fugue but enter as tonic-dominant-supertonic-tonic. Simi-
larly, Sondheim took his subject for the fugato from earlier in the sonata
(the intermezzo), and the fugal answers enter at the subdominant and
the mediant. Another telling feature about Sondheim's fugato is that it
is the only place in the outer movements that has a key signature -
G minor, presumably -
although Sondheim quickly goes far afield from
any tonal base. (The Hindemith uses no key signatures and is tonally
free-ranging but is in the key of Bk) Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata also employs quartal and quintal
harmonies within its basic triadic framework. The climactic passage from the third movement of the Hindemith shown in Example 32 is
clearly rooted in A, but triads yield to more complex chords, with some
that remain in a tertian universe and others that move into a quartal realm. One does not have to look far in the Hindemith to find other
similar passages. Hindemith's influence on Sondheim's sonata has been noted before.
Although he had not seen the sonata, Banfield presciendy remarked
that it showed an indebtedness to Hindemith, surmising that Barrow's
influence on Sondheim - and Hindemith's on Barrow - would echo
through the sonata.29 And although quartal harmony has also been
attributed to Barrow's other European teacher, Vaughan Williams, the
linear-contrapuntal writing in much of the Sondheim resembles 'the
linear-contrapuntal manner of the New Objectivity (neue Sach-
lichkeit)', to use David Neumeyer's description of Hindemith's musical
language.30 Elsewhere Neumeyer referred to 'Hindemithian counter?
point - with its arched tension curves, crisp formal contours, and
melodies and harmonies of seconds and fourths', features evident
28 Personal correspondence, 19 January 2001. 29 SBM, 19. Banfield refers to the piece as a three-movement sonata, giving the impression of
a completed work rather than a projected conception. 30 Alain Frogley, 'Vaughan Williams, Ralph', The New Grove Dictionary ofMusk and Musicians (2nd edn, online version), accessed 12 March 2001; David Neumeyer, The Music of Paul Hindemith (New Haven, CT, 1986), 4. Not everyone shared Hindemith's enthusiasm for Kurth's notion of linear counterpoint; Schoenberg dismissed it as 'nonsense' and 'imitation-imitation'. See Arnold Schoenberg, 'Linear Counterpoint' and 'Linear Counterpoint: Linear Polyphony', Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold Schoenberg (Berkeley, 1975), 289-97.
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sondheim's piano sonata 291
Example 29. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 74-5.
Meno mosso (J = 104)
Example 30. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 90-1.
intrrtfyrTffrfPf tE
r-rf-?*-*?
w staccato
=F*
%e- =*t=* s
e *$fc. %%b.
Example 31. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 100-4.
100
Fugato rit. a tempo
? - *
v 'lUJJ%j
^ m p f _~._ m rT" TT
m J J i sempre legato
i v P \^=*
T f f f
P ^J^f-CJ/H/
?
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292 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 32. Hindemitii, Piano Sonata no. 3, third movement, bars
134-42.
tv s i 0 ? ~f _* ~tii *v i
^
i rirr' T
?
throughout the Sondheim.31 And the use of 'counterpoint-sonata form' in both Sondheim's sonata and Hindemith's Third Sonata makes
the Hindemith connection even stronger.32 Indeed, this modelling after Hindemith - and, to a lesser degree,
Prokofiev- also helps to contextualize Leonard Bernstein's criticism of
Sondheim's deliberate 'wrong-note' writing in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962) .33 Some 12 years before Forum, Sondheim
unashamedly engaged in such 'wrong-note' writing. The passage shown in Example 33 clearly begins and ends in G minor - and note the
allusion to the opening of the third movement at bar 115 - but the
harmonic language between the tonic cadences makes no concession
to Tin Pan Alley concepts of tonality. Sondheim did not increase the
dissonance in his Broadway music in comparison with other composers, as Bernstein accused. Rather, it appears that Sondheim may have cir-
cumscribed his own adventurous language in order to make his Broad?
way music more readily accessible. Because of his compositional
exemplars, Sondheim's 'wrong-note' writing had been a part of his
musical vocabulary from his Williams days forward.
As Table 4 shows, the recapitulation of the opening section is fairly
straightforward. The most notable variants are the change in
accompaniment for the second theme and the complete elimination
of a final statement of the opening material, a characteristic more in
keeping with a recapitulation of a sonata movement. Yet another
formal novelty is the return of material from the intermezzo in the
coda, a feature also found in the first movement.
With its eclectic mix of forms, harmonic language, counterpoint and
texture, the third movement in particular provides evidence of a
31 David Neumeyer, 'Hindemith and his American Critics: A Postmodern View', Hindemith- Jahrbuch, 27 (1998), 218-34 (p. 229).
32 See Joseph Dorfman, 'Counterpoint-Sonata Form', Hindemith-Jahrbuch, 19 (1990), 55-67, where Dorfman discusses, among other pieces, Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata: 'the intro? duction of counterpoint into all sections of the sonata movement - exposition, development and recapitulation - in effect created a new and unique structure, which we shall call counterpoint- sonataform' (p. 55).
33 Sondheim: *You might be interested to know. . . that I played the score of Forum for Lenny and he criticized it because of its having "arbitrary" wrong notes, by which he meant (among other things) the tritones. You might also be interested to know that his use of the tritone throughout West Side Story hadn't occurred to him until I pointed it out.' Personal correspondence, 19 January 2001.
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SONDHEIM S PIANO SONATA 293
Example 33. Sondheim, Piano Sonata in C major, third movement, bars 111-15.
in
jt^j^ iE==5? 31
BP S^ m Li r *2T
^m ^m m
115
J4h^
Lr dim. poco a poco - - -
S m n S
^f
capable musical craftsman whose imagination rarely outran his
abilities. It also looks forward to the music in the professional shows
much more profoundly than the Williams shows do. One can easily see, from the strength of this sonata, why Sondheim was awarded the
Hutchinson Memorial Scholarship to study with Babbitt.34
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SONATA
If this sonata gives such clear indication of Sondheim's talent and the
direction his music would take, then why has it languished for over 50
years? The main reason is that it is housed in the Williams College archives.
34 'In memory of her son, the late Hubbard Hutchinson '17, Mrs Eva Hutchinson, of Columbus, Ohio, provided in her will for an annual scholarship of $3,000, to be awarded to that member of the graduating class at Williams "most talented in creative work in music, writing, or painting". The award, which will be known as the Hubbard Hutchinson Memorial Scholarship, is nearly twice the amount of any previous Williams scholarship and ranks with the highest in the United States. The winner of this award, who will be chosen by a committee consisting ofthe head of the fine arts department, a member of the English department, and the faculty member in charge of music, will receive the grant for the two years following his graduation, with no restric- tions upon its use. "He shall be entirely free to study, travel, or loaf, as he may see fit," the terms of the award state. In addition, he may apply for a year's renewal at the end of two years, which may be granted at the discretion ofthe college authorities.' 'New Scholarships', Williams Alumni Review, 32/3 (February 1940), 76-7. The 1951 college prospectus lists Sondheim as the recipient of the 1950 scholarship.
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294 STEVE SWAYNE
Northwestern Massachusetts is both rural and remote, and the
material for the Sondheim scholar at Williams is sparse. Yearbooks and
student handbooks, stories in the student newspaper, and articles and
columns penned by Sondheim for student magazines make up the
body of research material at Williams, and these have not as yet been
gathered together. In fact, the Williams collection pales in comparison with the holdings of three other collections. Sondheim gave the bulk
of his pre-1965 papers to the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater
Research at the University of Wisconsin; certain artefacts (such as the
script for the unfinished 1952 musical Climb High that contains Oscar
Hammerstein IFs annotations) are available for research only there in
Madison. Sondheim has promised the bulk ofthe remaining papers to
the US Library of Congress, to which he has already given his sizeable
LP collection. And he has been uncommonly generous to scholars by
granting access to manuscripts that are currently in his possession and
kept in his Manhattan townhouse. Other than the piano sonata, then, there has been little reason for a Sondheim scholar to travel to
Williams, and in fact few scholars have done so.
This lack of investigation has in turn led writers to speculate about
the sonata and its importance in Sondheim's development, usually with
the result of ignoring the ramifications that emerge from the work.
Banfield, for example, failed to discuss to what degree Hindemith shad-
owed Sondheim after the sonata, as though Sondheim might have
mimicked Hindemith and Barrow while in college only to outgrow them on graduation. Similarly, not having examined the sonata, com-
mentators have emphasized the seemingly unlikely apprenticeship that
Sondheim had with Babbitt.35 Because of the proximity of his first pro? fessional musical, the 1954 Saturday Night, to his lessons with Babbitt
(autumn 1950 to spring 1952), Sondheim's musical traits - motivic
development, attention to musical structure and 'the long line',
piquant harmony - are traced back to Babbitt and not further back to
his years at Williams.
Sondheim himself has inhibited scholarly work on the sonata
through his reluctance to allow the sonata to gain wider distribution.
Not only has he rejected all requests to publish the sonata, but he has also kept a tight rein on the proliferation of copies ofthe manuscript.36 Given its proximity to the unpublished college shows -
Phinney's Rainbow (1948) and All That Glitters (1949) - the sonata has generally been viewed as a student work, and hence an immature one. Lastly, its
incompleteness suggests some dissatisfaction with the work on
35 See Anthony Tommasini, 'Finding Still More Life in a "Dead" Idiom' [profile of Milton Babbitt], New York Times (16 October 1996), H39 and passim, Meryle Secrest, Stephen Sondheim: A Life (New York, 1998), 85-7; SBM, 20-6; Craig Zadan, Sondheim & Co. (2nd edn, updated, New York, 1989), 6-7.
36 In December 1997,1 contacted the archivists at Williams College and asked for a photocopy of the sonata. I was informed that all theses required the permission of the author for photo- copying and that the archivist would be in touch with me. The following month, I received a letter from Stephen Sondheim, dated 20 January 1998, informing me of his decision not to permit a photocopy of the sonata to be sent to me. When I was finally able to view the sonata at Williams in September 2000, it had a3"x5" card appended to it: *Note: Stephen Sondheim has refused requests to duplicate his thesis and presumably will continue to do so. See 1/22/98 correspon? dence in "Theses" folder.'
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SONDHEIM'S PIANO SONATA 295
Sondheim's part, although many of the compositions he began between 1949 and 1962 -
including stage pieces - were left incomplete
for a variety of reasons.
But for all its inaccessibility and neglect, the sonata is far from
insignificant. Sondheim's earliest extended composition demonstrates
a musical dexterity that is exceptional for a 20-year-old composer and
hints at greater accomplishments in the future. The musical language of the sonata already contains the sonic hallmarks that are character-
istic of the mature Sondheim. And the work provides the clearest evi?
dence so far available of whom Sondheim chose as musical mentors
and how those choices reverberate in the later musicals.
As a chronicle of Sondheim's musical development while he was at
Williams, the sonata does not stand alone. The class history in the 1950
Williams yearbook unexpectedly details Sondheim's compositional maturation. One reads of a growing dismay on the part ofthe unnamed
author as Sondheim becomes more and more serious in his pursuits. For his sophomore year, Sondheim composed the parodistic Phinney ys
Rainbow, an oblique reference to Burton Lane's Finian's Rainbow
(1947) - still on Broadway at the time Sondheim wrote Phinney's Rainbow- and a direct reference to Williams's president, James Phinney Baxter III. The author singled out Sondheim for that sophomore (and somewhat sophomoric) production: 'One of our boys, Steve Sondheim, wrote Phinney's Rainbow, which was brought to the AMT stage over
Spring Houseparties. We were sure he was a genius.'37 If the author held this opinion, he seemed less sure by the time of
Sondheim's junior-year musical. 'That spring [of 1949] we enjoyed All
That Glitters and had quite a sober spring house party, or we should say
proper.'38 Perhaps the astute reader knew that Sondheim was the
genius behind All That Glitters, but the author doesn't bother to identify him, even though the 1949 yearbook referred to the musical as a
'resounding success'.39 The reviewer for the Williams Record, though, was as sober as the writer for the Gul
In general the songs were second-rate ... Phinney's Rainbow made no
attempt to be Serious Art; it was satirical throughout, and even poked fun at its love interest. Sondheim's new music, on the other hand, seeks to mix
parody and social significance, to combine a straight romantic love affair with biting satire. To me it seems an unstable compound, and I believe that the play would have been better had it stuck to parody.40
37 1950 Gul (College Yearbook), 35. 'Much praise went to co-authors Steve Sondheim and T. S. Horton for an extremely successful and entertaining production.' 1948 Gul (College Yearbook), 122.
38 1950 Gul (College Yearbook), 35. 39 'The sophomores.. . came out with the news that they were sponsoring a dance on the week-
end of March 19.. .. This was the same week-end that Cap 8c Bells was presenting its second production of the year, All That Glitters, a musical written by Steve Sondheim. Both the dance and the musical were resounding successes, and as everyone expected, there was a slight snowfall., 1949 Gul (College Yearbook), 73.
40 Edwin N. Perrin, 'AU That Glitters Shiner for Cap and Bells, Cast', Williams Record (23 March 1949), 4.1 thank W. Anthony Sheppard at Williams College for making me aware of this review.
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296 STEVE SWAYNE
What was perceived as an unstable compound at Williams would
become standard fare for the mature Sondheim.
Sondheim's senior-year project -
High Tor - had to be shelved
because Maxwell Anderson would not grant Sondheim the rights to set
his play to music.41 Strangely, there is no mention of Sondheim or High Tbrin the events ofthe senior year, although in at least one other place in the 1950 yearbook the aborted musical is mentioned, suggesting that the campus community was well aware of Sondheim's work on yet another musical.42 A student revue, Where To From Here, was substituted
for High Tor; Sondheim contributed one song, the melancholic 'No
Sad Songs for Me', to the show.43 By that time, the author seems to have
grown cool towards Sondheim; no further mention of him is made in
the class history. The student who was hailed as a genius as a sopho- more is voted the second most original student on campus by the end
of his senior year.44 It appears that the genius may have become a bit
too serious - or perhaps too prickly - for his fellow students.
It appears, too, that the music for these productions became increas?
ingly sophisticated and less accessible.45 Certainly the sonata, with its
extended tonality and free use of non-harmonic notes, furthers this
trend towards greater musical abstraction and complexity. It is a
forward-looking work, not merely an academic exercise, in which the
increasing contrapuntal and harmonic complexity of the later shows is
foreshadowed.
A particular syntactical feature of the sonata's harmonic language is
the preponderance of suspended dominant chords, which presages a
trait that one repeatedly discovers in Sondheim's shows. Authentic
cadences both in the sonata and in later Sondheim often use such sus?
pended and unresolved dominants. The song 'Lovely' from A Funny
Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum provides a fine example of such
cadences. A duet between the two young lovers, Philia and Hero,
'Lovely' opens with an instrumental introduction, after which Philia
sings her verse, and then Hero reprises her music with his verse.
Example 3446 is extracted from Hero's verse. In all three cases - the
introduction and the two sung verses - the 'normal' dominant is
41 Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, 79. 42 The AMT Committee felt we ought to get familiar with the classics by going to see their
Agamemnon, and Steve Sondheim was supervising a group of amateurs in the production of another Masse musical, following Maxwell Anderson's axe of his HIGH TOR adaptation.' 1950 Gul (College Yearbook), 90.
43 'Cap and Bells sponsored and enginered [sic] Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, William Saroyan's My Hearts in the Highlands, and a student written musical, while the AMT Committee launched the season with Faust (Part I) in connection with the world wide celebration of Goethe's two hundredth birthday.' 1950 Gul (College Yearbook), 127. See also Secrest, Stephen Sondheim, 82-3.
44 In the 1950 Gul, Sondheim received votes from his peers in a number of categories: Most Versatile, 22 (3rd place); Most Brilliant, 14 (6th); Most Likely to Succeed, 29 (4th); Done Most for Williams, 4 (last); Most Original, 32 (2nd).
45 See SBM, 16-19, for discussion of the music of Phinney s Rainbow, All That Glitters and High Tor.
46 'Lovely', music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. ? 1962 (renewed) Burthen Music Company, Inc. (ASCAP). All rights administered by Chappell & Co. (ASCAP). All rights reserved. Used by permission. Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc, Miami, FL 33014.
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SONDHEIM S PIANO SONATA 297
Example 34. 'Lovely' (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the
Forum), bars 63-80.
Win - some Sweet and warm and win - some, Ra-di-ant as
m
TTTT
X 1
v & * 4 J ? * r * t
jJ_J
TTTT
X
^^ ^ ^^ ^
mou - sand _ ships _ Would have to die of shame.. And I'm
withheld until the final authentic cadence (not shown in the example). Notice how the tenor line, counterpoint to the melody, provides the
'normal' dominant on nearly every third beat of every odd-numbered
bar. This use ofthe suspended dominant appears not only in the sonata
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298 STEVE SWAYNE
but also in so many of Sondheim's non-pastiche songs that it becomes
difficult to single out examples in the mature Sondheim. The tide
number to the musical Company (1970) and 'Sorry-Grateful' from the
same musical employ this suspended dominant, as do the tide numbers
oiMerrily WeRoll Along (1981) and Into the Woods (1987). In the sonata, these suspended dominants come from the same harmonic realm as
does the quartal harmony, which in turn finds resonance in Hinde?
mith's harmonic language (cf. Example 2). The omnipresence of this
harmonic feature suggests a far greater reach for the musical language contained in the sonata than has heretofore been proposed.
It is not only the harmonic language of the sonata that extends
beyond the confines of Williams. The linear counterpoint that suffuses
the work informs later Sondheim as well. The tenor voice in Example 34 is but one example, and the instances mentioned in the preceding
paragraph also involve considerable contrapuntal writing. Hindemith
again seems like a logical point for such counterpoint, but another
influence upon Sondheim needs to be examined.
In his unfinished novel, Bequest, written while he was at Williams, Sondheim's protagonist, pianist-composer Edward Gold, is referred to
as 'Mr Rachmaninoff \47 And, as recendy as 1998, Sondheim referred
to Rachmaninov as 'one of my favorites'.48 But this lifelong love of
Rachmaninov seems to find litde oudet in Sondheim's music. The long- breathed melodies that are a Rachmaninov trademark are rare in Sond?
heim's work, and the sumptuous harmonies are also absent for the
most part. Thus it is all the more curious that Sondheim should have
said of Rachmaninov (and other composers), 'the way the tune sticks
in your head has less to do with melodic line than what did they do har-
monically underneath'.49
Yet Rachmaninov was also a master contrapuntist, whose works are
overrun with complex inner voices that play with and against the
melody and harmony. While the melodies routinely draw comment,
very often these melodies are accompanied by extended counter-
melodies, with the result that Rachmaninov's harmonies are often
arrived at through linear means. Undoubtedly, Rachmaninov's
appreciation of and skill in counterpoint are traceable to his years at the Moscow Conservatory and to his teacher, Sergey Taneyev, who
taught counterpoint there and who wrote a treatise on counterpoint.50 But Rachmaninov was attuned to counterpoint throughout his life. In
a 1909 interview, 'Modernism is Rachmaninoff's Bane', he decried
Elektra and praised Die Meistersinger, in part because of the ways in which
counterpoint is handled: 'To what end all this polyphonic wilderness
[in Elektra] when the result is incomprehensible? ... How infinitely more effective is the counterpoint at the close of the second act [of
47 Stephen Sondheim, Bequest (unfinished novel), 10 (at Wisconsin). 48 Swayne, 'Hearing Sondheim's Voices', 345. 49 Ibid. 50
Sergey Ivanovich Taneyev, Podvizhnoy kontrapunkt strogogo pis'ma [Convertible counterpoint in the strict style] (Leipzig and Moscow, 1909; Eng. trans., 1962).
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SONDHEIM'S PIANO SONATA 299
Meistersinger] than all that of Salome and Elektra.'51 In a sketch for an
unnamed piece, contrapuntal issues concerned Rachmaninov from the
start.52 And the noted Rachmaninov scholar David F. B. Cannata
argued that contrapuntal writing 'was crucial to the tonal coherence of
Rachmaninoff's symphonic structures'.53 It is the activity of the inner
voices that gives Rachmaninov's music its rich texture; they are the
'harmonically underneath' musical matter that Sondheim so readily imitates in his own work that sounds nothing like Rachmaninov. Here,
then, an important connection exists between Hindemith, Rachmani?
nov and Sondheim. In the sonata, Sondheim engages in musical ges- tures that at times show a greater indebtedness to one composer than
another. (See Example 8 for a more Rachmaninovian imitation.) But
in his commitment to counterpoint, Sondheim imitates both Hinde?
mith and Rachmaninov, using harmonic language that, in the main, is
beholden to neither composer. In addition, Sondheim's use of the term martellato resembles Rach-
maninov's usage. In the final bars of the latter's Second Piano Con-
certo, the music is marked 'Risoluto' and contains an additional
marking for the solo instrument, with its triplet figuration (and melody in the thumbs, as it were), of martellato. Sondheim played the first, not
the third, movement of the concerto,54 yet where the term appears in
his own first movement it accompanies triplet figuration, and in the
third movement it signals the sonata's peroration. Given that some of
Sondheim's figuration cannot easily be 'hammered out' - see Example 15 with its slurs - one wonders if Sondheim fully understood the term.
He probably appropriated the widely known but rarely used term from
a score he knew, and this unusual notation in Rachmaninov would
seem the likeliest source.55
The sonata, then, provides evidence of the influence of Ravel, Satie
and Rachmaninov, composers who have already been linked to Sond?
heim, and Prokofiev and Hindemith, composers not usually associated
with Sondheim. Hindemith's presence in fact is such a pronounced factor in this early work that it is difficult to imagine that Sondheim
could have completely jettisoned Hindemith's sound world in forging his own. When asked what he was listening to at the time he wrote the
Concertino - a work that followed the sonata by mere months - Sond?
heim remarked, T'd say I was in my Hindemith phase, especially "The
Four Temperaments".'56 How long did this phase last?
51 As quoted in David Francis Buder Cannata, 'Rachmaninoff's Changing View of Symphonic Structure' (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1993), 33.
52 Ibid., 51. 53 Ibid., 97; see also 98,101,104, 191 and 198-201. 54 See above, note 6. 55 Rachmaninov also used the term marteUato in the Variations on a Theme of Chopin, op. 22 (see
Variation 10), and in the third movement of the revised version of the Fourth Concerto, op. 40 (see four bars before Figure 47, where the term is spelt martelato). This information comes courtesy of David F. B. Cannata, who added that 'the term is indeed unusual' in Rachmaninov (private correspondence). 56 Anthony Tommasini, 'A Ldttie Classical Music from Sondheim's Youth' [review of the Concertino], New York Times (17 May 2001), B5. For more on Sondheim's choice of The Four Temperaments as a significant work, see Steve Swayne, 'Sondheim's "Hindemith Phase"', unpub? lished paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Society of American Music, Lexington, Kentucky, 7 March 2002.
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300 STEVE SWAYNE
Example 35. 'Witch's Lament' {Into the Woods), bars 1-6.
Rubato
/
yt j j j j > ^ jj, j
This is the world I meant. Could-n't you lis - ten?_
m s_r _____
S_i
f /J 3 J
JQ JJ. 3 J 1 J
In tempo (J = 100)
-EEEfe
Could-n't youstay con-tent,_ safe_ be-hind walls,
=fc
pp
=_=d ii
As
?4e
TTTT
IlllI
?
mp
^
(b?
could not?
/Lv
mp
n^
fi^m.
r r r r
Space does not permit a full discussion of Hindemithian echoes in
the mature Sondheim. But by way of example, the central sections of T Know Things Now' and 'On the Steps ofthe Palace' (Into the Woods) bear sonic traces of Hindemith. The opening ofthe 'Witch's Lament', also from Into the Woods (Example 35),57 has a distant relationship with the opening ofthe third movement of Hindemith's Third Piano Sonata
(Example 36). Note in particular the move from one chord to another
by means of linear counterpoint as well as the presence of pedal notes in each example. In drawing this comparison, I am not suggesting that
57 'Witch's Lament', music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. ? 1998 Rilting Music Inc. All rights administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
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sondheim's piano sonata 301
Example 36. Hindemith, Piano Sonata no. 3, third movement, bars
1-8.
Mafiig schnell (J = etwa 84)
frra ?j J7i ,q.
g>P?gi u
r THr r^m
Sondheim consciously borrowed from the Hindemith in writing his
song. Rather, I wish to show how Sondheim transmuted Hindemith's
language into a musical language that is both distinctly Sondheim's and
yet remains traceable to Hindemith.58
One composer conspicuously absent from the sonata is Copland. In
his article on Sondheim in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Banfield
made a claim he was to repeat in his later book: 'Sondheim's musical
language, in which melody and harmony are closely argued, retains
strong affinities with Ravel and Copland, while making sophisticated use of jazz and dance idioms; it is intensely personal, often bittersweet, in its expression.'59 Sondheim, however, has stated that 'Copland hasn't particularly influenced me. He's influenced every American
writer. But. .. Copland doesn't influence me particularly'.60 The sonata supports Sondheim's assertion that Copland's influence
on his musical language is minimal. The metrical east of the move?
ments does not resemble the metrical shifts so often found in
Copland's music. The thickness of the harmonies runs counter to the
58 In speaking of influences on Hindemith, Forte mentions, among others, 'August Halm and, perhaps more important, Ernst Kurth, whose psychological approach - as well as his notion of "linear counterpoint" - was very influential upon Hindemith's generation' (p. 64). And of Hindemith, Aaron Copland said: 'He wrote a kind of linear counterpoint that infused new life into ancient contrapuntal procedures.' Aaron Copland, Our New Music: Leading Composers inEurope and America (New York, 1941), 111, as quoted in Neumeyer, Hindemith-Jahrbuch, 27 (1998), 227.
59 Stephen Banfield, 'Sondheim, Stephen (Joshua)', The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London, 1992), 450-2 (p. 451). In discussing 'Pretty Litde Picture' from A Funny ThingHappened on the Way to the Forum, Banfield wrote: 'This song is close to Milhaud's style, itself only a few steps away from that of one of Sondheim's primary mentors, Copland' (SBM, 106).
60 Swayne, 'Hearing Sondheim's Voices', 331.
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302 STEVE SWAYNE
leanness of texture usually associated with Copland. Even the act of
employing traditional forms as scaffolding differs from Copland's characteristic slow-fast-slow alternation in large-scale compositions. Elsewhere I have written about Sondheim's motivic development as the
most likely connection that exists between his writing and Copland's,61 and indeed this sonata bests Copland in generating reams of musical
material from the humblest of motifs. One would expect that this early work would clearly show the springs from which Sondheim imbibed to
create his own musical language. Copland's spring, Appalachian or
otherwise, is notably dry here.
Thus the sonata presents a challenge to the way musicologists tell the
story of the emergence of Sondheim's music. In terms of mentors, Ravel remains; Copland is absent. Rachmaninov reappears, as does
Satie. Hindemith and Prokofiev now enter into the account much more
prominendy than before. (And to those critics who complain about the
unhummability of Sondheim's music, it can be noted that it is also hard
to hum Hindemith or Prokofiev.) Add to this melange George Gersh-
win and Harold Arlen - composers Sondheim mentions elsewhere as
seminal influences - and one begins to understand the musical lan?
guage Sondheim has created and why he is considered sui generis in the
realm of the American musical theatre.
Moreover, the similarities between mature Sondheim songs and the
sonata are evidence that his musical voice was fairly well established by the time he graduated from Williams. When I asked Sondheim specific?
ally about Climb High, the apprentice musical he was writing when he
was studying with Babbitt, he answered:
I probably showed [Babbitt] songs from Climb High (1952), because I was
writing it at the time, but I don't remember doing so, and certainly the work was independent of any work I did with him. It had nothing to do with him. I did not write anything studying with Milton. We analyzed, is all we did -
analyzed and talked, analyzed and talked.62
And Babbitt himself corroborated Sondheim's recollection ofthe inde-
pendence of Sondheim's musical language from the lessons when he
wrote:
He never worked on any of his shows with me, but I saw many of the songs, including the celebrated Tm In Love With A Boy' [from Climb High]. I
thought them to be very accomplished and knowing.. . . Steve was, and is, a singular creator, and I would be proud of him if I thought it was relevant or proper to be 'proud' of one's students. But I am delighted by his success and enormously impressed by his achievement, whether I made any contri- bution to it or not.63
It thus appears that Sondheim's lessons with Babbitt polished an
already considerable gift more than they taught the young composer skills and concepts that he did not learn while at Williams.
61 See above, note 13. 62 Personal correspondence, 21 March 2001. 6S Personal correspondence, 12 June 2001.
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sondheim's piano sonata 303
Unlike some ofthe student composers who followed him at Williams, Sondheim provided no dedication for the sonata. A look at these later
dedications, though, shows how important and imposing a figure was
Robert Barrow, the Yale graduate and disciple of Hindemith.
To Professor Robert Barrow, for his patience and assistance above and
beyond the call of duty throughout my college career, and, most of all, for his stealthy masterminding of these 'artworks'.
To Robert Barrow, through whose painstaking assistance, fatherly concern, and gentle prodding, four years at Williams were made much more fruitful and rewarding.
The composer would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Professor Robert Barrow without whose constant instruction and sugges? tions this composition would have been impossible.64
If Sondheim neglected to mention Barrow back in 1950, he made up for it in the 1973 cover story for Newsweek magazine. Fresh from his
success at having three Tony-winning musicals running simultaneously on Broadway- the first composer in the history of Broadway to achieve
such a feat - Sondheim made it clear how much he owed his principal
composition teacher. 'Before Barrow, I waited for all the tunes to come
into my head. But he took all the romance out ofthe music. 'You learn
the technique," he said, "and then you put the notes down on paper and that's what music is!" I adored it.'65 The sonata gives ample evi?
dence that Sondheim learnt the technique and that Barrow was indeed a formidable teacher whose Hindemithian shadow fell on Sondheim
well beyond 1973.
And now, outside its importance to musicologists, what fate awaits
Sondheim's piano sonata? One can only hope that Sondheim will
relent and allow the sonata to see the light of day. As the work of a
young composer, it remains a profound testament of Sondheim's talent
and compares favourably with juvenile and unfinished works by other
composers. Mendelssohn's four-movement E major piano sonata, for
example, written when that composer was 17, has entered and
remained in the repertory. Perhaps Sondheim will yet discover the
completed second movement among his manuscripts; perhaps he or
another enterprising composer will realize the sketch.66 If not, unfin?
ished piano sonatas by Schubert and Janacek grace concert pro-
grammes from time to time. Given Sondheim's popularity, there is
every reason to expect that the sonata would find a welcome among pianists.
64 See Table 1. The comments are taken from the composition theses of Robert Kelton Goss, David Gregg Niven (both class of 1957) and Robert J. Stern (class of 1960), respectively. 65 Charles Michener and others, 'Words and Music - by Sondheim', Newsweek, 81/17 (23 April 1973), 61.
66 For the time being, Sondheim is maintaining his stand not to publish the sonata. T fear the lost second movement will never be found and, despite your ingenuity in filling it out, it's simply not what I would have written. Please forgive me.' Personal correspondence, 26 June 2001.
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304 STEVE SWAYNE
In many respects, Sondheim's C major sonata resembles another C
major work by another adolescent composer. Like Sondheim, Georges Bizet was destined to write for the stage. By the age of 17 he had already
spent seven years as a student at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1855, he
had earned some money by arranging Gounod's First Symphony in D
major for piano four hands; Gounod was among Bizet's teachers at the
Conservatoire. What Bizet learnt from the Gounod he poured into his
own four-movement Symphony in C major, a work destined to remain
unperformed and unpublished until some 80 years after its creation
and some 60 years after Bizet's death. There are, to be sure, some mis-
calculations in the symphony; the fugato at the centre of the second
movement sounds strained, for example. But such a miscalculation is
easily forgiven when put next to the prophetic oboe melody of that
same movement. Winton Dean wrote that '[t]he Symphony shows
more than promise; it stands on its own feet as a work of precocious
genius'.67 Sondheim spent far less time than Bizet studying music and spent it
in a far less disciplined environment than the Conservatoire. In the
sonata, one can clearly see the fingerprints of his teacher and his
musical influences. All the same, in the sonata Sondheim turned out a
work of precocious genius. Let us all hope that we will not have to wait
until 2030 for this work to enter our repertory.
ABSTRACT
Stephen Sondheim composed a three-movement piano sonata for his thesis in music at Williams College and submitted the two outer movements upon graduation. Sondheim has since been unwilling to publish or disseminate the
work, and a college stipulation has prevented reproduction of the thesis. The sonata shows the influences on Sondheim's emerging musical style - predomi- nandy Ravel, Rachmaninov (influences previously established by scholars), Prokofiev and Hindemith (influences less well established) - and demon- strates that his compositional language was significandy developed by the time of his graduation. Similarities abound between the sonata and the mature musicals ofthe 1970s and beyond. In addition to providing examples from the
completed movements - a feat made possible by Sondheim's decision to grant limited permission to reproduce the sonata - the article examines a two-page sketch for the second movement, a manuscript that had remained in Sond? heim's sole possession until October 2000.
67 Winton Dean, 'Bizet, Georges', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 1980), ii, 749-63 (p. 751).
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