Stephen Sondheim: The Story So Far...

Sony Classics
Now Available
We now have, in a handsome presentation, an anthology entitled Stephen Sondheim: The Story So Far... It comprises four CDs of well above 70 minutes duration each and containing together 77 Sondheim numbers in essentially chronological order.

All major Sondheim shows provide some numbers, but represented also are some lesser works, juvenilia, movie scores and songs, and some occasional pieces as well as contributions to unrealized shows or films. There are also some helpful explanatory notes by Sondheim (who sings some to his own piano accompaniment), and a number of songs that were replaced by others in finished shows.

These substitutions were sometimes urged on Sondheim by his savvy producer-director Harold Prince, sometimes prompted by Sondheim’s own relentless pursuit of perfection. Hearteningly, the replacement song is always a considerable improvement, although “Can That Boy Fox Trot!” replaced by “I’m Still Here” in Follies is no slouch either.

What emerges from such an anthology more clearly than from individual show albums, whether of the original-cast or studio variety, is a certain similarity in diversity. By no means a fault, it is rather a virtue: Despite some atypical surprises, it is a wonderful thing to trace again and again a characteristic Sondheim mode or mood.

The generous booklet for this release contains a goodly number of fascinating photographs, though never of productions (except some curtain calls) but rather of creators and casts in the process of rehearsal, probably a wise choice for this sort of publication.

But The Story So Far is up against some lacunae probably inevitable but intensely felt. Tunes can be appreciated on first hearing—which is not to say that they cannot improve even further with rehearings. But lyrics are at times drowned out by the music; at other times, a performer cannot quite make the words perspicuous, especially hard for soprano voices. Yet when lyrics are as ingenious as Sondheim’s, and when that ingenuity resides in part in inner rhymes, or rhymes that come in stunning abundance and rapid consecution, having the lyrics before one’s eyes becomes very nearly mandatory.

With this many items—a few, to be sure, orchestral and wordless—to reproduce all lyrics might have been awkward in bulk and prohibitive in cost. An insoluble problem, most likely; still, how sad it makes me not to be able to enjoy this subtle, unobtrusive brilliance to the utmost, and sometimes savor it just by rereading as sheer literature, however much Sondheim himself claims that his lyrics are not poems. We do get the lyrics for nine lesser-known numbers, but that only makes us yearn for more.

Another problem, equally insoluble, is the matter of choice. Didier C. Deutsch and Darcy M. Proper, the editors—or compilation producers, as they are here termed—had to pick somewhere between one and four numbers from each source, and there is no way everyone will agree with their selections. Especially in a show like Follies, whose every song hits home. The booklet informs us that one could have compiled 10 times the number from Sondheim’s catalogue.

The next quandary involves which version of a song to pick. Most of them exist in numerous recordings, with the originals not necessarily the most interesting. Sondheim’s biggest hit, “Send in the Clowns” from A Little Night Music, exists in over 400 recordings. And even if an original version was excellent, a later version by some famous interpreter may have great curiosity value and, being later, better recording technique. Often, again one would so wish to have two versions in juxtaposition; say, Ethel Merman’s “Everything’s Coming up Roses” from Gypsy (which we get) and Patti LuPone’s (which we don’t). On the whole, the choices made here are discriminating and commendable.

The booklet essay, by the scholar Mark Eden Horowitz, is quite extensive, well-considered, and informative. Without being too technical, it does not shy away from some technicalities along with the biographical and historical data. Also, everyone should enjoy the good-looking box with Sondheim’s backlit head in silhouette. One could also profit from studying the photographs for Sondheim’s very different look at various ages, and draw some conclusions about his growth and variety.