Product Description
This 1954 Stephen Sondheim musical was given new life when London's Bridewell Theatre Company, with Sondheim's consent, produced the world premiere in 1997. Saturday Night is published for the first time in this edition. Songs: All for You * Class * Delighted, I'm Sure * Exhibit "A" * I Remember That * In the Movies * Isn't It? * Love's a Bond * A Moment with You * Montana Chem. * One Wonderful Day * Saturday Night * So Many People * That Kind of a Neighborhood * What More Do I Need?. Includes notes on the show's history, a plot synopsis, and a discography of the songs. ... Read more

Product Description
Book by James Lapine

Introduction by AndrŽ Bishop

Winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize! "Sunday is itself a modernist creation, perhaps the first truly modernist work of musical theatre that Broadway has produced ... a watershed event that demands nothing less than a retrospective, even revisionist, look at the development of the serious Broadway musical."- Frank Rich, The New York Times Magazine ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Interpretation
Sondheim and Lapine wrote an excellent musical about the pointillist painter George Seurat. I really started to love the musical when I read Marc Bauch's "Themes and Topics of the American Musical" (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2001. ISBN: 3828811418), which I recommend to get to know how intertextually Sondheim worked. Bauch put Sondheim in the tradition of the American Musical with reference to his themes.

Pulitzer and Seurat put together by Sondheim and Lapine
This show is like a work of the main Character Georges Seurat. Point and point are putted together to a great piece of art. Stepehn Sondheim who recieved the Pulitzer Prize for this astonishing work of American MusicalTheatre puts all the points together to one brilliant composition of storyand storytelling his co-author James Lapine who wrote the book whileSondheim wrote the lyrics does a great job, too. It is the most beautifulkind of lyric I ever had seen in this masterpiece: Children and art. Ireally enjoyed to read this book and it is essentially for everybody who isinterested in the Musical Theatre. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the book of the play, with text and lyics, not the musical score. ... Read more

Product Description
The songs in this award-winning musical are particularly notable because their pointilistic composition captures in music the painting style of Serault, on whose life this play is based. This is classic stage music, especially the stirring ballad, Move On. Other titles are: Sunday * Finishing the Hat * Beautiful * Children and Art. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Only 5 songs
When I read the description where it listed songs, I thought those were just examples. I didn't realize that was the entirety of the book. Five songs is far fewer than one would expect from a book of vocal selections from a musical, especially with a musical such as this one that has such a rich selection of songs to choose from.

Some of Sondheim's most complex Music.
This vocal selection is a wonderful companion to those who love this show. Be warned: the piano acompniment is for advanced pianists only. It is quite beautiful, and the lyrics are some of Sondheim's cleverest. The vocal parts are as always difficult, but people familar with his works should expect nothing less. The music's complexity is what really sets it apart from other shows.


The titles include; SUNDAY, FINISHING THE HAT, BEAUTIFUL, CHILDREN AND ART, and MOVE ON. These are some good ideas for a selection, but when every song is a gem , it must have been hard to choose.


To Sunday lovers, this is priceless. To pianist searching for new, challenging material, look no further.

Sondheim has a stroke of genius
The lyrics and musical score of Sondheim is pure elegance. His decadent style reaches a creative "stroke" of shear brilliance. To put it simply this peice of music encompasses the time , the mood, and the mindset of Sondheim.

One of the Best for Auditioners!
I, myself being a person who thuroughly enjoys Sondheim, completely enjoyed singing some of these songs. Though I was never in the show, the songs have a deep meaning for me. Some of the songs are perfect forauditions, and I personally use "Move On" sometimes as my balad.It is an excellent compliment to an amazing show. ... Read more

Product Description
Titles are: Sunday * Finishing the Hat * Beautiful * Children and Art * Move On. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fantastic!
Very clean, easy to read score.1000 times better than what comes with the show materials!There are a few errors/differences from the original, but the little bit of time it takes to fix those is well worth the benefit of having such a nice version of the score.

A must have for any Sondheim Fanatic!
At first glance, the price for this selection may seem a trifle hefty.It is worth every penny to be able to own the score to the most emotional musical written by Sondheim.The music is amazing to listen to, but theexperience is heightened when one is able to study the score in conjunctionwith an excellent recording.This score serves as a resource for anyoneneeding audition music, and it is great as a teaching tool in an advancedBroadway piano class.Incredible buy! ... Read more

Product Description
With thirteen Broadway musicals to his credit, Stephen Sondheim's career in the musical theater has outdistanced those of most of his contemporaries. Each of his shows has presented new challenges to audiences, and each has cast fresh perspectives on the nature and potential of the American musical, as well as probing deeply, often painfully, into the nature of our culture.
Sondheim's Broadway Musicals is the first book to take an in-depth look at Sondheim's work. Stephen Banfield examines each of Sondheim's musicals for Broadway, from West Side Story and Gypsy to the 1987 musical Into the Woods, and includes A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, Anyone Can Whistle, A Little Night Music, Pacific Overtures, Merrily We Roll Along, Sweeney Todd, and Sunday in the Park with George. Banfield also discusses Sondheim's other work, such as the 1991 show Assassins and his music for the 1990 film Dick Tracy--for which "Sooner or Later" won him an Academy Award for Best Song.
"Banfield seems almost to hear Sondheim's music with Sondheim's ears. This extremely valuable work discusses Sondheim's early training and subsequent career, his general compositional concerns, and his style. The meat of the book is a musical-dramatic analysis of his musicals . . . . For each musical, Banfield places the work and its components in a historical and typological text. He also treats in welcome detail the musical profile or universe of each show: Sondheim's use of generative intervals or interval complexes as source material, motifs that reappear in various guises in various songs, the sound world that defines the musical's emotional mind. The book will be as useful to those who are cool to Sondheim's work as to his fans." --Choice
... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Scholarly Sondheim
This is an excellent publication, but very dense, and designed for the musicologist rather than just the fan.This covers Sondheim's works up to and including "Into The Woods".

Banfield is not "starry eyed" about Sondheim, and is, at times, critical of his 'borrowings' from other composers.He also insists on placing all his citations within the body of the text, rather than as footnotes or as an appendix at the end of the book.This makes for a very disjointed reading experience.

Worth a visit, but quite a plod through it's technicalities.

Not a book for everyone but one of the best out there
This book is wonderful in that Banfield has created a series of dissertations on the composition of each of Sondheim's most importantworks. Those of you who have extensive music theory background will find this book to be golden. Banfield uses musical exceprts and analyzes these small musical moments in regard to how they support the character or the situation and even foreshadowing at hand. I am reminded of a Bach sacred work in which the work is scored in such a way that the printed page creates a picture of the crucifix, yet at the same time depicts a remarkable musical moment. This is the sort of detail and craft that Sondheim uses. Sondheim is a man who is writing many years before his time. The politics and unions of New York Theatre have jaded him, but at any given moment one of Sondheim's works is being produced in revival and being understood far more so than the original production. "Merrily we Roll Along" is a brilliant work that has yet to be completely understood by the public, though "Sweeney Todd" is finally begining to be seen as the major work it is: one of the most important pieces of theatre to have been created so far. "Passion" was recognized as best musical at the Tony awards though never did a road production. "Passion" is brillaintly written so that there is no applause break, no intermission and the audience is not permitted a single moment from start to intense ending where he may slip back into the "real world." In this way, "Passion" moves more like a film, so that the audience, once caught into the magic, is not permitted even an instant of coming back to the surface, making the intensity of this work even more powerful. Sondheim's inteligence and insistence that our fast food nation use its mind to experience an evening of brilliance that often hits very close to home is both part of his brilliance and part of what causes critics to shy away. (We now laugh at the foolish critics who criticized the brilliant second act of "Sunday in The Park With George." Stephen Banfield's "Sondheim's Broadway Musical" gives us a book that is not only fun to read, but allows us to understand the work better. Before staging any Sondheim work yourself you must read this book and if you teach music theory, musical theatre or acting, then this is a book that must be included in the curriculum. For me? I read it both for the professional need as well as the intellectual stimulation. This is not a souvenier book but rather a brilliant study for those who are very serious about music, lyrics and the creation of character, life and art on the stage. Sondheim is an international treasure and we have the very unusual experience of living as contemporarys with a man who will be placed in history beside Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Banfield's book will begin to show you why.

A Scholarly Investigation into Sondheim's Musical Methods
This is not a book for the casual Sondheim fan. Be warned, unless you have a fair degree of musical sophistication -- and this involves music theory and musicology -- this is not the book for you. But for those who do understand such arcane things as harmonic (including Schenkerian) analysis, or how a typical Broadway tune is constructed, or, to use Banfield's favorite term, the diegetic uses of music, this 1993 book is a gold mine. The emphasis throughout is on the music, not on dramatic construction or the lyrics themselves; they are noted but not dwelt on.

Banfield gives us some historical and biographical background, with a fair discussion of Sondheim's pre-Broadway career (including some tidbits about the collaboration with Bernstein on 'West Side Story'), an overview of the compositional process, detailed exegesis of each of Sondheim's works from 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum' through 'Into the Woods.' There are many scholarly references and a voluminous bibliography as well as a slightly light-weight index. One is disappointed that the book stops in the early 1990s. Perhaps Banfield will update it one day.

This is definitely a book for serious students of Sondheim's work. It is a densely written text that definitely repays close study.

Scott Morrison

Impressive, arrogant, unclear...
Despite the wealth of information which is hidden in this book, the professorial writing style makes it very difficult to unearth. The average sentence runs on for 7 full-length lines, and is annoyingly interrupted by literary name-dropping (Sondheim 1980) disguised as references and countless "the former" and "the latter"s. Many opinions are arrogantly offered with no clear examples, which is sadly typical of the "professor" mentality. I'm ashamed that my own college music lit professor is the editor of the series, and didn't ask the author to rewrite the book in a style meant to communicate rather than pontificate.

Dense material, but worth the work
As a Sondheim afficionado and serious music student, I adored this book and the insights it gave into the techincal aspects of Sondheim's compositions.As Banfield says in the introduction, too often the music isn't given the serious consideration compositionally that it deserves.Just a warning though, the book is really just about the music, there is fairly little discussion of the dramatic or theatrical aspects of Sondheim's work.That being said, this is an amazingly intelligent, in depth, and scholarly treatment of Sondheim purely as a composer. ... Read more

Product Description
Drawing on interviews with friends, family, collaborators and lovers, this biography of Stephen Sondheim looks to bring us not only the artist - as a master of modern compositional style - but also the private man. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A deep look into the world of Southern music
Barney Hoskyns delivers a beautiful insight of the various sounds of the South of the US. This is recommended to all music lovers who don't have a problem listening to country and soul at the same time. Hats off, Mr. Hoskyns! ... Read more

Product Description
Contains: Back in Business (Dick Tracy) * The Ballad of Booth (Assasins) * Barcelona (Company) * Broadway Baby (Follies) * Children Will Listen (Into the Woods) * Send In the Clowns (A Little Night Music) * Water Under the Bridge (Singing Out Loud) * You Could Drive a Person Crazy (Company) and many, many more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

NOT what you think
The book is ok and the songs are good but, what i loved about this show was the mixing of songs which are NOT in this book. It is a book of songs from the original shows. It really should be part of the all sondheim collection of books cause that's all it really is. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A jewel in the crown
This musical failed after only 9 performances.It's too bad because it boasted Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, Herbet Ross, and David Merrick among its credits.The book was published 10 years after it closed using the last existant script known.It's the story of a town so broke that they fake a miracle to bring in pilgrims who'll spend their money on it. Through a convoluted, although fascinating plot and characters that you really have to pay attention to the story unfolds.No spoiler here.It is tightly written and the "break" between spoken and sung word is seamless on paper.This is a good book for anyone who loves Sondheim, Laurents, or the theater in general to have.It will take a lot of visualization and multiple reads to get it all (it also helps to have the cast album - not the concert one with Kahn, but the original one with Lansbury).If you really want to be challenhed and entertained get this.

WHO WAS STUPID ENOUGH TO TAKE THIS BOOK OUT OF PRINT?
This is one of the most hilarious, yet intelligent and moving shows one can ever read.Even without hearing Mr. Sondheim's delightfully flowing melodies one can still find enjoyment in Mr. Laurent's book and Sondheim'slyrics. ... Read more

Product Description
Continuing in this great series of songs from this preeminent composer for the Broadway stage (and occasionally the Movies). Songs include: Beautiful Girls (Follies) * If You Can Find Me, I'm Here (Evening Primrose) * Move On (Sunday in the Park With George) * Multitudes of Amys (Company) * Pleasant Little Kingdom/Too Many Mornings (Follies) * Sooner or Later (Dick Tracy film for which Sondheim won the Academy Award as Best Song)* and many other songs ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

SUPER SONDHEIM!!!
This is a fine collection of the songs of Broadway's most celebrated
composer-lyricist, Stephen Sondheim.
His music has been consistently superior to any and all who have ever written a Broadway musical, particularly those of his contemporaries.
His works have been performed all over the world for decades now, a
clear indication of the admiration and respect due to a composer of
the highest caliber and genius of Stephen Sondheim.


... Read more

Product Description
Includes: I Never Do Any Thing Twice (from The Seven Percent Solution)
* Little Dream (from The Birdcage)
* Back in Business
* Live Alone and Like It
* More
* Sooner or Later
* What Can You Lose? (from Dick Tracy). ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, and a Pulitzer Prize. He has been described as "the greatest and perhaps best-known artist in the American musical theatre." His most famous scores include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, and Assassins, as well as the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy. He was president of the Dramatists Guild from 1973 to 1981. ... Read more