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The Gift that Keeps on Giving

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The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist Mark Horowitz.

As it’s the holiday season, it seems appropriate to express thanks for a series of extraordinary opportunities that the Music Division has afforded me…and to celebrate some of the other good things they lead to.

It mostly started in 1996 with a grant I received through the Library from a fund endowed in Dr. Billington’s name by Abraham and Julienne Krasnoff. The purpose of the fund was to allow curators to propose special projects that would enrich the Library and our collections in a special way. My proposal was to do a series of videotaped interviews with Stephen Sondheim in his New York home with his manuscripts at hand, and to use them as a guide to imagine the kinds of questions future generations of musicians and scholars would wish to ask when examining his manuscripts that would then be in our collections—as they were already promised to us as a bequest.

I was awarded the grant, but the actual interviews took more than a year to arrange (in part because Sondheim first had to recover from a fire from which his manuscripts miraculously survived—some of his manuscripts were left with singe marks and curled-up edges). Preparation for the interviews also included an earlier trip to examine his manuscripts, take notes, make copies, and contact musicians and musicologists soliciting suggestions for questions to include.

The interviews took place over three days in October 1997. I received the original tapes from the film company and deposited them in the Library’s Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. In theory, the project was over. But I couldn’t resist paying for a set of copies for myself, and after a couple of viewings I decided it would be good to transcribe them so that someday I could provide some kind of index to the tapes. Much to my wife’s chagrin, thus began months of evenings and weekends of listening, typing, pausing, rewinding, repeat. By the time I was done I had much of the interviews memorized. While the original notion had been that the interviews would be for a narrow universe of musical scholars, I had also decided when the interviews began that if Sondheim digressed in any way, I would allow him to do so, and when appropriate, follow up. As a result, the interviews were far more wide-ranging than I had initially intended, and it seemed that they well might be of interest to a larger universe. Thus the notion of turning the transcripts into a book began.

Before we get to the book, however, another event took precedence. Sondheim’s 70th birthday was in March of 2000. In March of 1999, Jon Newsom, then Chief of the Music Division, wondered whether it would be possible for us to produce a concert to celebrate the event and the Library’s close relationship with Sondheim. Discussions began. As we made various proposals for what such a concert might entail, Sondheim responded: “As for the other choices, a commission is out (I don’t have the time). I would love to have a concert of The Frogs, but that’s hardly a full meal. The ‘desert island” concert would be nice, and certainly the easiest. And I would enjoy sharing my enthusiasms with a lot of people who might not have heard some of the more obscure songs. All of which leaves us up in the air, as usual. Perhaps a potpourri of all the above might be a best: a couple of songs by young writers, a selection of the ‘desert island’ stuff, four or five songs from The Frogs, etc. What do you think?”

What I thought was: “Oh, my God, we’re really going to do a Sondheim concert and he’s going to be involved!” This consumed the next year of my life. As the concert evolved, it included the following. We opened with a concert version of the complete score for The Frogs, with bits of dialogue between (some of it newly written, and even with input from me), and all newly orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick. We then had a long section that straddled the intermission: thirteen “Songs I Wish I’d Written (At Least in Part)”, introduced by Sondheim, and several of them arranged and orchestrated by Tunick. And we closed with five “Songs I’m Glad I Wrote”. The concert was conducted by Paul Gemignani, included a chorus, and the featured performers were: Nathan Lane (also as host), Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Marin Mazzie, Debra Monk, and Davis Gaines. Tickets were gone within 5 minutes of them being made available. Most of the concert was broadcast on NPR.

All of this was enough in itself, but it turned out that there was so much more as a result. First, as I pursued with Sondheim what songs we might perform as “Songs I Wish I’d Written (At Least in Part),” he began mailing me and faxing possible song titles (this was before he used email). I compiled one master list of 55 songs which I organized by composer and annotated with information about what shows they were from (for those that were from shows), what year they were written, who the lyricists were, etc. As the concert itself neared, it turned out that Sondheim was being featured by a cover story/interview with Frank Rich in the New York Times Magazine, also celebrating his 70th anniversary. Sondheim mentioned our list to Rich, and I was asked to provide a copy which was included as a sidebar to the article. Also, as a surprise to Sondheim, I contacted the living composers and lyricists who had songs included on the list, and asked them to provide some comment that we could print in the concert program. This unexpectedly had the side benefit of beginning relationships between several major songwriters and the Library, some of which have already resulted in collections either coming to us (Charles Strouse), or being promised (Hugh Martin).

And I’ve just begun. “Bambalelê” was an obscure Brazilian song that Audra McDonald sang in the concert, and she became so taken with it that she recorded it on her next album. Barbara Cook heard of our concert and the notion behind it, asked us to fax her the list of “Songs I Wish I’d Written,” and formed her own “Mostly Sondheim” concert using those numbers—a concert that was then recorded and released both on CD and DVD. Perhaps most significantly, shortly after our concert the first recording of The Frogs was made (using our cast and orchestrations), and Nathan Lane became so taken with the work that he convinced Sondheim to collaborate on a revised and expanded production that opened at Lincoln Center in 2004.

Meanwhile, back to the book. After reading the transcript of the interviews, Scarecrow Press agreed that they would like to publish it in a book. Sondheim agreed. Not only did he agree, but he would review each chapter as it was edited and make suggestions to clarify, correct and add information to improve it. The book, a co-publication with the Library of Congress, came out in 2003. It went on to win the ASCAP Deems Taylor Special Recognition Award, and the ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Sound Research: Best Research in Recorded Popular Music, History (the book also included a discography of all known commercial recordings of Sondheim songs). The book even made an appearance last season on the television show Glee. One of the characters goes to the library for an assignation, when a book is knocked off the shelf in front to her. She picks it up, looks at it, and says “Sondheim on Music”. And indeed it is.

This year a second edition of Sondheim on Music was published. It includes transcripts of two new interviews with Sondheim. The first of the new interviews took place in Washington (while he was in town working on the musical, then titled, Bounce), but the second one took place in his New York home, and once again the Library paid for my travel and the hiring of an audio-engineer to record the interview. During that interview Sondheim mentioned that he was working on his own book of collected lyrics and commentary and asked whether I’d be willing to look at it and respond. Thrilled, I said yes. A few days later I received a disc in the mail with several chapters, and subsequently received emails with attached chapters as he completed them. His book, Finishing the Hat, was published this fall to deservedly rave reviews, even debuting at number eleven on the New York Times Bestseller list. I’m proud to say that the book includes a few lyrics that he had forgotten he’d written and was reminded of by me.

I should add that Sondheim on Music itself has found many fans, particularly among composers and songwriters, as well as being used as a text book in some college courses on Sondheim. The second edition of the book even features blurbs on the back cover from the Broadway composers Stephen Flaherty (Ragtime), and Jeanine Tesori (Caroline, or Change).

All of this is a long way of showing how one modest grant fourteen years ago became the catalyst to so many unexpected and wonderful consequences.

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