I’ve been waiting for someone to post an acknowledgement here of Stephen Sondheim’s passing, but several hours after the news hit the wires, it still has not happened.
I’m not interested in talking about what he did to modernize American musical theater, I just want to share the joy that I have felt hearing his words and humming his famously un-hummable tunes—get ‘Another hundred people just got off of the train’ into your head and it never gets out, hummable or not.
The joys I have felt seeing performers on stage working their way through his marvelous wit, his wonderful insights and his intimate understanding of the English language and its idiosyncrasies.
The joys I have felt playing the records of his shows over and over again, and then the cassette tapes, and then the CDs, the videos and DVDs, and now on my phone. ‘The sun sits low, diffusing its usual glow.’ I’ve had that on every medium and I still can’t get enough of it.
The joys I felt with what I think is his greatest work, Sunday in the Park with George, speaking not only to the connection between creativity and the completed artwork, but between bonds of genetic heritage and familial culture, and how love generated by the latter fuels the former. How art is at the very center of emotion just as emotion is at the center of art.
Until recently, he was still working and I was hoping that more would come. Now I can only hope that amid his unfinished projects, someone will feel there is value enough to share with others, for the entirely selfish reason that I want to hear more and see more.
Into the Woods would have been a fantastic musical if it had ended at the intermission, but Stephen Sondheim should have stayed alive for another 90 years. He will be greatly and constantly missed, although his presence will always linger, now in perpetual sunset.